UPDATE: 8AM PST 9/13/10 JAXA has updated with their final Sept 12th data, up for the second straight day there’s been a gain:
The latest value : The latest value : 5,005,000 km2 (September 12, 2010 final data)
While the vagaries of wind and weather can still produce an about-face, indications are that the 2010 Arctic sea ice melt season may have turned the corner, earlier than last year.
In the JAXA data, there was a gain of 33,593 km2 in a single day on 9/11/10 and another gain of 18, 594 km2 on 09/12/10 (final data):
09,08,2010,4989375 09,09,2010,4972656 09,10,2010,4952813 09,11,2010,4986406 09,12,2010,5005000
Last year, when I correctly called the turn, it was September 14th:
Arctic sea ice melt appears to have turned the corner for 2009
I wrote:
That is a gain of almost 26,719 km2 from the Sept 13th value of 5, 249, 844 km2 which may very well turn out to be the minimum extent for 2009.
And it is not just the JAXA plot that indicates a turn the corner bump for 2010. The DMI 30% extent graph is showing a very sharp uptick.
Here is the relevant area zoomed and annotated:
ADDENDUM: Last year’s DMI graph about this time had similarly abrupt uptick:
Temperatures at 80°N and above are now dropping quickly, after some delay:
The annotations are mine, the current temperature is approximately -5.5° C. I say approximately, as DMI doesn’t make the data available here, only the graphical output, so I’ve had to draw a line and estimate based on the coarse scale they provide. Seawater freezes at a temperature of -1.9° C (source here) but varies with salinity. Call it -2° C, but clearly now air temperatures are cold enough above 80°N to expect some refreezing.
The NSIDC Arctic extent plot shows the beginning of a flattening, but since their smoothing algorithm adds a reporting delay, we won’t see the turn (if it holds) until about two days from now.
NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or greater – click to enlarge
If it is indeed the turn, then Arctic Sea Ice minimum for 2010 will end up at 4,952,813 km2
I may make a follow up post and have a look at all the forecast players mid to late week if the turn is confirmed. Of course my forecast has been proven incorrect already, but then, so have others.
Polar weather forecasts suggest colder weather ahead, and historically, the timing is right for a turn.
One such indicator is the Arctic Oscillation, shown below:
Source, NOAA Climate Prediction Center:
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao.sprd2.gif
The forecast shows a deepening AO in the next few days, which traditionally means colder temperatures and a refreeze.
So, we’ll watch and wait, and I’ll update if the turn is confirmed.
Looks like Bastardi nailed it.
I still say looking at the extremes is fun, but there’s too many things that can affect the extremes. I don’t think it’s a good place to look for a trend.
Looking at the middle, May and Dec, no matter what the extreme was, it all comes back together and there’s no trend at all.
But that’s just me………..
-AO means we cool off on the east coast. Can’t wait. We’ve had a hell of a summer here…
It’s possible that we’ve seen the low, but we’ll see if it can be confirmed in the next few days. The high pressure systems over the Arctic currently are more favorable for divergence and hence, we could still see a follow-up round of compaction before the final low freeze up.
I will be curious to see how AGW skeptics paint this year’s melt season. Early on there was talk of 6.0+ milllion sq. km. for the low, as all the supposed thick MY ice was just not going to melt. We suffered weeks on end with Steve Goddard talking about PIP 2.0 data showing how much MY ice was left and how it suredly was going to stay around. Rather, it got transported out into the open waters of the Beaufort sea and melted. This season, the fact is we saw either the greatest or second greatest loss of ice from the March high extent to the September minimum. (2008 was either #1 or #2) This is of course hardly any sort of “recovery” and of course, neither really was 2008 and 2009, as only a certain group (i.e. AGW skeptics) tried to paint it that way.
REPLY:Assuming the turn has occurred, I would say it will be equally interesting to see how NSIDC’s Mark Serreze “paints” his forecast of a new record low year. Like I said, others missed their forecasts too. -Anthony
May trend looks like this latitude
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100608_Figure3.png
December looks like this
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100105_Figure3.png
When I resided in Eureka in ’79, around this time, we had temps drop to -10 or colder and in 2 days the entire Fjord froze over, so it won’t take long for the Arctic to start freezing fast. As to tipping point etc. i have no time for these people. Scare stories are to sell time on TV. I predict it will freeze up this winter and start melting again next year. Repeat….
However, I enjoyed watching you’re articles this year Steve, keep up the good work.
Off topic, but I have a post up on what I think was the most pivotal testimony of Lord Oxburgh at the HOC Science and Technology Committee. He testified that there is not way to reconstruct global temperatures over 1000 years, that it is currently impossible! Therefore, there is no way to determine whether current climate is significantly different from past climate periods. The foundation of global warming theories have all been knocked to the ground if he admits the “massive” uncertainties in global temperature reconstructions exist and make comparisons inconclusive.
R Gates,
“I will be curious to see how AGW skeptics paint this year’s melt season.”
Well, can’t speak for others, but it’s an amusing diversion, a guessing game. It tells us nothing about CO2 forcings and feedbacks. For that we must seek many more decades of various satellite data.
AndyW says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:33 am
May trend looks like this latitude
==============================
Andy, I appreciate it, but I’m talking about the graphs Anthony put up, only.
Thank you. Fine update.
If there be a downturn in extent anomaly coming weeks, it will be because of wind packing and that must come from the East-Siberian side. But GFS for the coming week or more suggests opposite wind conditions on a blocking event up through the Bering Straight that starts about now, and anticyclonic conditions within 80° NL.
——————————–
R. Gates,
There is no need to “paint” anything. It is obvious to any unbiased observer that the Arctic ice is not going to disappear, as predicted by Gore and other anti-scientific prophets of doom by 2012. And that’s what counts: you lose, we win.
” This is of course hardly any sort of “recovery” and of course, neither really was 2008 and 2009, as only a certain group (i.e. AGW skeptics) tried to paint it that way.”
Mr Gates, please share with us how a recovery or not is relevant to anything? How long is the cycle of arctic ice? Do we know? Is there one?
Is the current melt unprecedented? Is is nailed down as due to agw rather than natural variation?
Bremen also has shown an uptick over the past ~3 days.
So we have JAXA, NSIDC, and Bremen all either slowing down in slope or bottoming out.
If this is the low (or nearly so), it will be interesting to see how rapid (or slow) the uptick rates continue through to the end of September.
I’m thinking (call it a SWAG) that it might be a slow rise as there is that pronounced lobe sticking out that happens to be furthest from the NP and exposed on three sides.
The month of September 2010 may still beat September 2008, on a monthly average basis per NSIDC data analysis/reporting.
Thank you Mr. Goddard for your very interesting postins on the Arctic.
I have learned a lot. I think we will see in the times ahead that it will get colder again.
The natural cycles will become obvious for everyone to see. Those who are in denial regarding natural cycles might have to accept that we are just dust in the wind.
REPLY: Mr. Goddard was not the author of this article, I am. – Anthony
“I will be curious to see how AGW skeptics paint this year’s melt season.”
First, whatever happens with the ice in the Arctic, that does not have anything to do with AGW. Please stop that misinformation. The ice melt in the Arctic proves only that ice melts in the Arctic, to some extent caused by warming (just “warming”, not AGW, notice that!) and to some extent by the wind patterns and ocean currents changes.
Further, even if we assume a direct link between the polar ice melt and AGW, why do you think that AGW skeptics (or for that matter anyone else) should be looking only at the Arctic sea ice extent, and not e.g. at the global Sea Ice trend, which is approximately flat in the last 30 years. Maybe, because the data for the Antarctic don’t look good for your thesis? And actually are at the record high levels in the last couple years?
“However, I enjoyed watching you’re articles this year Steve, Anthonykeep up the good work.”
You do realise that over the next few days the media will say
“It’s worse than we thought. It is the second lowest ice extent on the record.”
————-
Joe Bastardi
click, click.
Joe Bastardi
“The recovery of the northern ice caps will become more obvious in a two-steps-up, one-step-back fashion, but the Southern Hemisphere ice will retreat back to near normal. Overall global ice is right on top of normal and has had no change in the past 30 years.”
Clearly a robust recovery to arctic sea ice this year.
@R. Gates says: September 12, 2010 at 9:33 am
“Rather, it got transported out into the open waters of the Beaufort sea and melted.”
Are you suggesting that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are responsible for “transporting ice”? How does that work, then?
Personally, I’d “paint this year’s melt season” as well within the variability that we can expect. Interesting in a geekish way but basically a bit boring.
But I wouldn’t think it was a very big deal if it had all melted. It will freeze again in due course. I promise to get excited if it remains melted all winter. Will you do the same if the Irish Sea freezes over?
This is of course hardly any sort of “death spiral”.
Not only is the DMI 80N indicating well below freezing temps, but this satellite photo mosaic:
http://exploreourpla.net/explorer/?map=Arc&sat=ter&lon=0&lat=89,9&lvl=4&yir=2010&dag=254
shows the rest of the Arctic Ocean turning into a slushy very rapidly.
Yes, it is freezing up, currently.
Andrew, I copied a snip from Joe Romm’s site where he posted:
“An unexpected source suggested I ask NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve to explain what is going on. I did, and she replied:
We’ve dropped to 4.76 today.”
So it would be interesting to know where the 4.9 figures came from??? This was on Sep 9th and I know it’s not area because we’ve been bumping around 3.0xxxM on area for a while.
Vince,
I hear that children in the EU like to play “chicken” with high speed (150mph) passenger trains. At least once a year one of them gets smeared on the side when they get it wrong.
Whilst you are free to believe whatever you want and play whatever chicken you want, there are an awful lot of other people on this planet with you.
Personally I didn’t expect a 2007 or even 2008 event this year. Whilst I was aware of the impact of shrinking volume I was also aware of the drop in output of the sun this solar minimum. I was expecting that any startling event would coincide with the increase of Solar output to the dying days of cycle 11 (2006/7).
I was wrong. This year was pretty dramatic in terms of ice pack breakup and open water in the arctic basin.
Just goes to show you that the planet can surprise us every time. The only difference between my point of view and the POV on this site is that everyone here is waiting for it all to return to normal, whilst I’m just waiting for things to build up to the point where a blind beggar on the streets of Naples will know that it’s AGw that’s causing the Arctic Ice to vanish.
At that point I expect WUWT to be ranting on about short term effects and the onset of “global winter” RSN.
What happened to Steven Goddard?
REPLY: he has his own blog now at http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com
-Anthony
R. Gates,
“It’s possible that we’ve seen the low, but we’ll see if it can be confirmed in the next few days. The high pressure systems over the Arctic currently are more favorable for divergence and hence, we could still see a follow-up round of compaction before the final low freeze up.”
Come on!
Anthony showed that it is already cooling down and at the MINUS 5.5C level.That means it is already freezing back.
Then we have the now feeble solar radiation effect dwindling down, since it is barely above the horizon now.
Try this simple sunlight map and see for yourself:
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/thread-49-post-5096.html#pid5096
REPLY: We could still have a wind compaction event, even with dropping temperatures. Extent with winds and 15% sea ice is highly variable. – Anthony
NeilT says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:39 am
Fear alone will not turn a tide.
For that, you need to retain the services of a Cardinal. 🙂 +
Yeah I agree about wind compaction.
rbateman says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:38 am
Not only is the DMI 80N indicating well below freezing temps, but this satellite photo mosaic:
http://exploreourpla.net/explorer/?map=Arc&sat=ter&lon=0&lat=89,9&lvl=4&yir=2010&dag=254
shows the rest of the Arctic Ocean turning into a slushy very rapidly.
Yes, it is freezing up, currently.
_____________________________________________________________
Slushy? ROTFLMFAO!
250m pixel resolution and you can see slushies? ROTFLMFAO!
The Arctic is mostly cloud covered, that’s your slushy, the cloud cover looks slushy, like it always does.
I guess you have X-Ray Vision and can see through images at sub-pixel resolutions.
Hey, your Superman! ROTFLMFOA!
For the death-spiral folks, you have to admit you are settling for second best to what you believed was going to happen only a year or two ago. At least the most honest among you are going to have to admit the death-spiral is in remission and admit the patient’s recovery possibility is there (I admired Trenbreth for his statement to the effect that it was a travesty that there had been no warming for ten years in the climategate papers – where is the heat). If global warming is running away and with irreversible tipping points and all, I would have to say that what is happening still puts the sceptics on the winning side of the argument. I have stated my case on other occasions that if CAGW is going to be so drastic, there shouldn’t be any serious slow-ups or reversals of the kind that we have seen over the past 10 years. It shouldn’t be necessary to cook and homogenize temp data to several tenths of a degree and to proclaim the hottest year on record when it is only half way through if there is a serious problem. CAGW would by now have simply overwhelmed variations (isn’t that the claim?) – its had 40 years to do this. When you melt lead, you melt lead – micro differences from second to second are unimportant. All the believers have done in the last few years is to take the C off CAGW, lower their temp and sea level projections for 2100, fit in a temporary cooling period and next they may have to drop the A as well and then who knows where things will go? Champions like Ehrlich already have their anthropomorphic ice age prediction from 40 years ago to dust off and say “I told you so”. Soon the goal-posts will be so close together that you won’t be able to swing your leg at the ball.
Been on vacation last couple weeks. A few weeks back I noted that it appeared to be shaping up for “revenge of the establishment consensus” year. This now appears to be confirmed. The establishment panel of experts, 16 of them, had a median (which is a much better metric than mean for such things) of 4.9M km/2. So it appears after a few years of near total ineptness in predicting by the establishment (for solar as well), they finally just about nailed one. Optimally, that’s what you’d like to see from a large panel of so-called “experts” –that the “actual” is pretty close to the median prediction.
Last year, none of the 16 managed to be “over” the actual. This year the actual is right in the center.
So good one, at last, guys. Hat tip, etc.
My prediction, made in late March, was for 6.0-6.2M. Yeah, not so much. Back to the drawing board on basic algo questions for me. If it had been much worse than that and I’d have to stop mocking Mark Serreze (tho thankfully I didn’t do *that* badly in comparison) and the fellow who predicted in the establishement panel for a 1M minimum this year.
NeilT says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:39 am
Andrew, I copied a snip from Joe Romm’s site where he posted:
“An unexpected source suggested I ask NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve to explain what is going on. I did, and she replied:
We’ve dropped to 4.76 today.”
So it would be interesting to know where the 4.9 figures came from??? This was on Sep 9th and I know it’s not area because we’ve been bumping around 3.0xxxM on area for a while.
___________________________________________________________
It’s NSIDC’s extent for that day, as Anthony mentioned, NSIDC does a 5-day smoothing based on follow-up days, the NSIDC extent is currently ~4.73E6 km^2, that too may change ofer the next two days.
Assuming the turn has occurred, I would say it will be equally interesting to see how NSIDC’s Mark Serreze “paints” his forecast of a new record low year.
Red herring alert. Serreze never forecasted this. He said it was a possibility. And it was possible. If it weren’t for the Beaufort Gyre and Transpolar Drift Stream stalling during July and the first half of August (because of low-pressure systems dominating the Arctic, bringing clouds and low temps), we’d now be discussing how far extent would go below 4 million square km.
Roger Knights says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:07 am
Looks like Bastardi nailed it.
It does.
Nightvid Cole says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:49 am
What happened to Steven Goddard?
REPLY: he has his own blog now at http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com
-Anthony
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
So he is not guest posting here?
latitude says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:59 am
AndyW says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:33 am
May trend looks like this latitude
==============================
Andy, I appreciate it, but I’m talking about the graphs Anthony put up, only.
_____________________________________________________________
Well then, why did YOU mention May and December? Everyone knows it goes up, then it goes down, then it goes …
However all months do trend downward, long term, in the satellite era (1972). Before then (recorded history of the Arctic), it appears to have been a more or less a stationary random process.
Back in mid-August, I did some “technical analysis” on IARC-JAXA ice data in post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/15/sea-ice-news-18/#comment-458213 The result was a prediction of Labour Day (September 6th) as the date of the minimum value. I missed by 4 days, assuming that the uptick from the 10th to the 11th continues.
Here’s another one. I call it the “August 28 Index”. I’m not offering any explanations, just pointing out interesting numbers, which may have some predictive value. The 5 columns of numbers are…
Year, Min value for the year, Rank of the year, Value on August 28, Rank amongst all August 28’s.
Note that the ranks are identical. This will be something to watch for next year.
Year Overall August 28
Year Min Value Rank Value Rank
2003 6032031 1 6353125 1
2004 5784688 2 5971563 2
2006 5781719 3 5966406 3
2002 5646875 4 5957656 4
2005 5315156 5 5771250 5
2009 5249844 6 5554219 6
2010 4952813 7 5342656 7
2008 4707813 8 5163125 8
2007 4254531 9 4724844 9
REPLY:Assuming the turn has occurred, I would say it will be equally interesting to see how NSIDC’s Mark Serreze “paints” his forecast of a new record low year. Like I said, others missed their forecasts too. -Anthony
Including Mr Gates !!
Grr, I posted my initial thoughts on the Sept 11 JAXA number last night before this thread was created. It’s here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/06/sea-ice-news-21/#comment-480483
The revised JAXA number is considerably higher though, as Anthony said. This is actually the largest single-day “gain” in the JAXA record before Sept 12 (previous high was 21875 set on both Sept 10 & 11, 2008). I’d give Sept 10 of this year only a 50/50 chance of being the 2010 minimum though, as 2003 had a combined 139000 km^2 gain on Sept 12/13 and still managed to have its minimum after those days. Supporting evidence for being past or very near the minimum is that since Sept 8 Cryosphere Today shows a net 2962 km^2 gain in area and a net 1346 km^2 gain in extent…essentially a complete flatlining for four days. However, even if we’ve reached the area minimum, compaction could still yield a decrease in extent as much as two weeks from now.
With the revised JAXA number, current extent is predicting a minimum extent of 4.91e6 km^2. My preferred method gives 4.89e6 with a standard deviation of 112000 km^2. At this point, however, these numbers don’t mean much as the uncertainty now incorporates the current minimum (by a good margin).
I’d say it’s all up to the weather now. Good weather for the ice will mean we’ve passed the minimum, but bad weather could still lead to as much as 200000-300000 km^2 of loss in extent, putting us near 2008’s minimum (2005’s behavior exhibits this late loss).
-Scott
For the life of me I cannot understand why and how “compaction” is counted as “melting”! ! !
Surely we should discuss “volume”?
Serreze’s comments are reported here:
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Another+Arctic+thaw+experts/3496268/story.html
Perhaps he has been misquoted, or perhaps as a director he is not required to have scientific integrity, but if he was accurately quoted and he claims to be a scientist, then he has lost my respect.
If it weren’t for natural forces operating on both sides of the Artic melt/freeze equation, we’d be discussing how the previous permanent open Arctic Sea or permanent Arctic Ice Cap managed to reverse itself 500 million years ago, and has remained to this day.
Richard111 says:
September 12, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Simple…there are no good sources of volume information. Cryo-Sat 2 will fix this, but we won’t have good volume data historically…it’ll start in 2010 (or 2011) and we’ll need several years of data to get an idea of baselines/trends.
-Scott
-Scott
The forecasts of February 2010:
Phil.: I’d be very surprised if the arctic sea ice minimum isn’t at or below 2007 levels.
R. Gates: Though I still think 2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km
Alexej Buergin: Therefore the safest guess seems to me about 4.8 M sq km.
And from July 25:
Alexej Buergin says:
So everybody can still hope (my simpleminded prognosis from November 2009 was 5 Million sq-km because “minimum ice has never increased 3 years in a row”).
The next few days will be crucial.
Sea minimum was predicted here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/06/sea-ice-news-21/#comment-477810
I think we can conclude that this years minimum will be higher than 2008.
This year we had the an El Nino only seen stronger once in the last 25 years or so, as I remember, and still the Arctic has “survived”.
K.R. Frank
The longer term:
Forecast for 2011 by R. Gates: 2.5 Million sq km
Forecast 2012 by A. Gore: …when the Northpole is EXPECTED to be ice-free (his words).
About the ice-free NP by Phil.: … 2013 will be interesting.
Alexej Buergin says:
September 12, 2010 at 1:22 pm
The forecasts of February 2010:
Phil.: I’d be very surprised if the arctic sea ice minimum isn’t at or below 2007 levels.
R. Gates: Though I still think 2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km
Alexej Buergin: Therefore the safest guess seems to me about 4.8 M sq km.
And from July 25:
Alexej Buergin says:
So everybody can still hope (my simpleminded prognosis from November 2009 was 5 Million sq-km because “minimum ice has never increased 3 years in a row”).
The next few days will be crucial.
_____________________________________________________________
So the next time I go gambling at the Roulette wheel, I’ll take you with me, because you’re sure to guess the right numbers for the next seven months.
In other words if there are enough people at the table, all the numbers are likely to be covered.
And one of those numbers will, of course, be correct.
Folks, we have a weiner!
Here’s one for you, take JAXA minima (2002-9), throw out 2007, because, well it was an outlier, you know, and what do you get?
SG’s w-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-y over the top guesstimate of 5.5E6 km^2.
Please everyone, go visit SG’s new website, I kid you not, as of today SG’s still claiming 2010 as a “recovery” year.
He’s already predicting 2011 based on his already proven deeply flawed analyses.
Seriously funny stuff over there. Just needs to change the website name to Tumbleweed Science.
Now the seelevel will rise twice as faster, right?
But, no mention of U-know-what; nor, no mention of the other U-know-what. Tsk.
Just this: “The ice island hit Joe Island last week, and since then, combined forces of ocean currents and strong winds have weakened its structure.”
…-
“Huge Arctic ice island splits in two
A gigantic ice island floating in Arctic waters between Greenland and Canada has split in two”
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2010/09/12/15324371.html
Alexej Buergin said;
September 12, 2010 at 1:22 pm
The forecasts of February 2010:
“Phil.: I’d be very surprised if the arctic sea ice minimum isn’t at or below 2007 levels.
R. Gates: Though I still think 2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km”
R Gates. Did you actually say that?
tonyb
R. Gates said, “I will be curious to see how AGW skeptics paint this year’s melt season.”
Do you assume that AGW is responsible for the Arctic sea ice melt? Quite an assumption.
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 11th: 4986406. Updated charts …
15-day: http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/4927/15day20100911.png
7-day: http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/8793/7day20100911.png
A flash in the pan?
REPLY: [snip] Junior, that’s really, really immature bringing Joe Bastardi’s mother into the discussion. Take a timeout – Anthony
NeilT says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:39 am
Just goes to show you that the planet can surprise us every time. The only difference between my point of view and the POV on this site is that everyone here is waiting for it all to return to normal, whilst I’m just waiting for things to build up to the point where a blind beggar on the streets of Naples will know that it’s AGw that’s causing the Arctic Ice to vanish.
NeilT,
Define “normal”. Normal for the last million plus years has been the ice age regime. interglacials such as the Holocene are the exception. You imply that skeptics will never accept CAGW no matter what the evidence. I turn your implication around and ask what evidence would dissuade you from your convictions about CAGW. We skeptics keep seeing the warmists moving the goal posts as the tipping point keeps receding into the future.
I also took an even simpler minded guess back on the 23rd of Aug for a slow down after the 6th & a min on the 12th but I’m thinking that we will post another gain for the 12th & if it drops down the road it won’t get down to the 10th’s min..So the 10th it is!!?..I think that would be good news for a good recovery.
Well … Steve …
Regardless of what the alarmists may say .. I’ve found your exercise fun and enjoying. You were not wrong .. you were not right. Nobody can be wrong or right in a chaotic system … all they can hope for is that the “dice” end up on their number.
Aside from it all .. .there is NOTHING GLOBAL about the arctic. The Alarmists will for sure toot their little party makers claiming that the ice caps will be gone by next week …but the fact of the matter is …. ice extent etc is more dependent on the “weather” than on the “climate”. .. so tell the alarmists to stick that one into their weather isn’t climate category.
We in the South had the unfortunate luck of having a massive high pressure park itself on top of us for most of the summer. When someone shows me how CO2 effects High Pressure systems, that might peak my interests. But to be sure, our triple digit summer had nothing to do with CO2 .. it was totally weather.
Hope you don’t give up on your PIPS scheme, or the rest of your efforts. It’s been worth the read. …. a hell of lot more than thinking my SUV is killing the earth .. and that some Polar Bear is going to come and give me hug if I buy an electric car that likely wouldn’t even make it up the grade of my driveway, let alone pull my boat.
fishnski says:
September 12, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Definitely no certainty that the minimum was the 10th. As for a recovery, I think it’s pretty much a draw this year. Glass half full/half empty kinda thing.
-Scott
This has been my first season closely following the Arctic Ice Area and Extent numbers.
What this season has shown me is that localised wind and ocean currents play a huge role in determining the final result.
In the end though, warmer/cooler temps play their part. Irrespective of whether or not you trust global temp measurements, it was a very warm year and ENSO conditions did contribute towards significant warm SST anomalies in the Arctic. Under these conditions it was probably unrealistic to expect this years extent to beat 2009. It was significant that it did not go below 2008 though.
Looking at the transition into the last el-nina in 2007/8 I see similarities going into 2011 except at this stage we are going into a stronger la-nina cycle. The last la-nina lead to some quite cool SST anomalies in the Bering Sea going into the 2008 melt season. If we see something similar or more pronounced into 2011 then we will see very cool SST’s at least on the pacific side of the Arctic and from this presumably a higher extent.
I will be watching SST’s in the Bering Sea quite closely going into next spring and these will probably paly a major role in my predictions for 2011. If they are as cool as models are predicting or cooler, I will be predicting an extent over 6 million.
This year though ENSO conditions prevailed.
EFS_Junior says:
September 12, 2010 at 11:13 am
No, I am not Superman, and neither are you.
You didn’t bother observing what the 367 band has to say about present conditions.
If the temps don’t reverse real soon, the inevitable freezeup will occur and minimum will have passed.
Amazing what data can reveal if one simply takes the time to observe.
Do you have anything to discuss about that 367 data?
This years ice extent isn’t much different to what it was last year at this time, I don’t see any decline, there is more ice further from the pole than last year. I don’t know if the ice will continue to increase from here or not, or how fast it will grow when it does get past the minimum extent, I will take these things as they come.
With ice extent and area already at their third-lowest point in the satellite era, very low volume, and most of the multiyear ice gone, Arctic ice cover is not “recovering” by any recognized metric.
This year’s pattern has been consistent with a steep downward trend towards a seasonally ice-free or low-ice state, many decades sooner than the IPCC’s apparently too-optimistic prediction.
What has this got to do with man-made co2? Not one mention of co2, greenhouse or carbon dioxide on the NSIDC news page.
and in February
Now, I will be curious to see how R. Gates paints this year’s melt season As for 2011, 2012, & 2013 we have you on the record. There’s nothing wrong with predictions as long as you own up when you are wrong. You could still be correct though though. Let’s wait and see.
By the way where on earth [pun intended] did you get this “record amounts of CO2 and methane” from?????? Was it a typo?????
EFS_Junior says:
September 12, 2010 at 2:27 pm
REPLY: [snip] Junior, that’s really, really immature bringing Joe Bastardi’s mother into the discussion. Take a timeout – Anthony
___________________________________________________________
Yeah, I know it was w-a-a-a-a-a-y over the top.
But what was posted made absolutely no sense, the links had nothing to do with the current discussion.
Thus my “low brow” question and answer.
I’m still ROTFLMFAO!
REPLY: Still doesn’t excuse it, it was vulgar beyond anything I’ve ever seen here. An apology would have been appropriate. 24 hour timeout – All further posts until then snipped. – Anthony
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 3:50 pm
There is plenty of ice left up there, and it’s still the uninhabitable place it has always been.
4,900,000 square kilometers of frostbite.
Think of the endless vistas of frozen and the Cruiseline possibilities.
Oops, someone already tried that. Crunch. They got lucky, and were rescued.
If the stories of ice-free keep up, though, there will be the unlucky ones who will not live to tell about it.
Mere facts will never sway a true believer. I just watched a program on television where a comedian sailed the Northwest passage. He was prevented from doing so, but mentioned that the passage was successfully navigated by Amundsen over a century ago. It would never occur to a true believer that a repetition of a weather event from 1906 indicates a repetitive cycle of these things. The lack of heating in the oceans, or the atmosphere, is of no moment to a true believer. Do not expect a robust level of ice in the arctic to sway any of them either. If there has been no warming since 2004 then the globe is no longer warming. That is a mere inconvenient truth to the true believer. And I have been called evil for pointing it out.
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 3:50 pm
With ice extent and area already at their third-lowest point in the satellite era, very low volume, and most of the multiyear ice gone, Arctic ice cover is not “recovering” by any recognized metric.
This year’s pattern has been consistent with a steep downward trend towards a seasonally ice-free or low-ice state, many decades sooner than the IPCC’s apparently too-optimistic prediction.
============
You could have just said: “It’s worse than we thought”.
Climatic cycles be damned!!
Jimbo writes (and many others express similar sentiments),
“This is of course hardly any sort of ‘death spiral’.”
But it is. The spiral is still on. Can you name some actual Arctic scientists who disagree that the Arctic seems headed for a seasonally ice-free state, decades ahead of the IPCC predictions?
If Serezze had meant a monotonic decline he would have said “free fall,” not “spiral,” which is a more wobbly image — exactly as we are seeing. Serezze, unlike most commenters here, knows Arctic ice very well. Year-to-year variations depend partly on weather, while climate change drives the average down.
This year’s weak extent and melting of multiyear ice are totally consistent with that decline. They are not at all consistent with any return towards the satellite-period mean.
Michael Gersh writes,
“Mere facts will never sway a true believer.”
Indeed, but you illustrate your own point. Amundsen’s 1903-1906 voyage through the Northwest passage took three years, with three winters trapped in the ice. That does not resemble present conditions at all, much less give evidence for “a repetitive cycle of these things.”
[snip. you knew it was inappropriate. ~ ctm]
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Amundsen chose his timing, and spent a good portion of that 3 years learing from the Inuit.
He didn’t have GPS and Icebreakers to bail him out if he erred.
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 5:07 pm
“Indeed, but you illustrate your own point. Amundsen’s 1903-1906 voyage through the Northwest passage took three years, with three winters trapped in the ice.”
He only got stuck in the ice, because his satellite pictures got lost, dang that 1st mate! Also, by choosing store brand batteries, his GPS device died. He should have heeded those Duracell commercials.
Remember more people traverse the Sierr Nevadas than ever before so that also proves Global Warming!
Anthony, and of course Steve, an early thanks for a fascinating summer, I sure absorbed a lot of good weather, arctic geography, and physics from all of these weekly posts.
Speaking of physics, while following this summer’s melt I’ve toyed with some different views of the JAXA extent data and this one is quite intriguing:
IARC-JAXA without seasonal sine imprint
( my first attempt to link, hope it does work! I not this http://tinypic.com/9thh6w.jpg directly)
This graph is rather simple, it has the sine imprint AND the small linear downward trend both removed. Now from what I have always read about scientific data, if you view a data series and there is a definite pattern present or imprinted or of certain characteristic you just may be seeing an underlying physical reason for that pattern or repetition, but only a possibility of course. It is only the physics of it all that moves and melts this ice.
Now I don’t know about anyone else, but that chart has some peculiar lineups across multiple years and to great precision. And, in order for it to be physics behind this, both the energy causing the melt AND the wind forces must be considered. Now isn’t that strange? (but, it is just a curiosity so far) That graph didn’t look at all as what I imaged before making it, I assumed totally random noisy data with no real unusual attributes. I knew there would by a divot for 2007, higher points for the following years but not this same-amount-every-year type of points.
That graph also led me off into the toolies for I used it to calculate by those trend equations my guess of 6,125,000 for the final extent. Boy was I ever off! My slip, of course that was calculation the trend crossing, I should have subtracted the offset. Well, maybe closer next year. That is why this series of posts was so educational for us all Anthony. Thanks all.
REPLY: The tinypic site reports the image moved. Try again? – Anthony
Gneiss says:
“If Serezze had meant a monotonic decline he would have said “free fall,” not “spiral,” which is a more wobbly image — exactly as we are seeing.”
————–
This is the problem! People see wobbles where there aren’t any.
There is nothing wobbly about a spiral. Its progress in the y axis is uniform, it just rotates as it descends.
I imagine the expression originated with aircraft shot down in the (probably) WW1.
Not an apt description, but plenty evocative.
wayne says:
September 12, 2010 at 5:28 pm
=======
After all your hard work, I can’t see the links??
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Jimbo writes (and many others express similar sentiments),
“This is of course hardly any sort of ‘death spiral’.”
But it is. The spiral is still on.
_______________________
So when the “plane” (Artic Sea Ice) started it’s “death spiral” and got down to 4,250 feet (2007) then pulled up to 4700ft (2008) and up again to 5,210ft (2009) and lost a little altitude in 2010 at 4952ft (although not a final number) and you call that a death spiral?
Now I am not arguing that the short-term trend (yes 30 years is a short-term trend) is not down, it is, but your definition of a death spiral is inaccurate.
In response to one of my “if ” statements, a very wise old gent from Texas, with whom I used to work, once opined to me that: “If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t flop his butt on the ground.”
u.k.(us):
September 12, 2010 at 5:40 pm
After three strikes, I’m out! Does anyone know a simple way to get a reliable way to get a small image on the internet so I can show a link? Tinypic doesn’t seems not to be it. It gives me a link. I put it on Word, press on the link, it works. Write the comment, post it, it doesn’t work, deleted I guess. My first one on Test Page failed but I thought I had it handled. Frustrating.
REPLY: Don’t post it into Word. MS Word is probably changing the link somehow. Find it on tinypic, highlight in address bar of browser, copy/paste into a WUWT comment box and let’s see if that works -Anthony
Oliver Ramsay writes,
“There is nothing wobbly about a spiral. Its progress in the y axis is uniform, it just rotates as it descends.”
Jon P writes,
“So when the “plane” (Artic Sea Ice) started it’s “death spiral” and got down to 4,250 feet (2007) then pulled up to 4700ft (2008) and up again to 5,210ft (2009) and lost a little altitude in 2010 at 4952ft (although not a final number) and you call that a death spiral?”
Are we taking the metaphor so literally? Ice does not really experience “death,” either. Serezze could equally have said (and probably has), “Due to positive feedbacks, Arctic Ocean ice cover is wobbling down toward a seasonally ice-free state.”
Although that’s not as catchy; he’s got a sense of humor.
And my apologies to the man, I’ve been spelling Serreze wrong.
History tells us that there was no AGW feedback spiral in the past so why should warm southerly WINDS be a spiral? Ignoring your spiral speak for a moment, where is your evidence that the melting is caused by man-made co2??????????
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/278/5341/1257
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/papers-on-1500-year-climatic-cycle/
Here is what the warmists at NASA think about melting Arctic ice (negative feedback in the form of more clouds and more albedo).
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticReflector/arctic_reflector.php
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticReflector/arctic_reflector2.php
“So in addition to changing sea ice, we can kind of guess that something must be happening in the atmosphere over the Arctic, too.” Clouds are bright, too, and an increase in clouds could cancel out the impact of melting snow and ice on polar albedo.”
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticReflector/arctic_reflector4.php
“Although sea ice and snow cover had noticeably declined in the Arctic from 2000 to 2004, there had been no detectable change in the albedo measured at the top of the atmosphere: the proportion of light the Arctic reflected hadn’t changed. In other words, the ice albedo feedback that most climate models predict will ultimately amplify global warming apparently hadn’t yet kicked in.”
“According to the MODIS observations, cloud fraction had increased at a rate of 0.65 percent per year between 2000 and 2004. If the trend continues, it will amount to a relative increase of about 6.5 percent per decade. At least during this short time period, says Kato, increased cloudiness in the Arctic appears to have offset the expected decline in albedo from melting sea ice and snow.”
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/gorodetskaya/irina_ipccpaper.pdf
“The predicted substantial decrease in Arctic summer sea ice concentrations during the twenty-first century may favor cloud formation, which should diminish or even cancel the ice-albedo feedback by shielding the surface.”
“Water droplets are more effective in reflecting and absorbing solar radiation than nonspherical, typically larger ice crystals (Dong et al. 2001).”
Oliver Ramsay says:
September 12, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Gneiss says:
“If Serezze had meant a monotonic decline he would have said “free fall,” not “spiral,” which is a more wobbly image — exactly as we are seeing.”
————–
This is the problem! People see wobbles where there aren’t any.
There is nothing wobbly about a spiral. Its progress in the y axis is uniform, it just rotates as it descends.
I imagine the expression originated with aircraft shot down in the (probably) WW1.
Not an apt description, but plenty evocative.
But Oliver, you are somewhat right about the spiral, however, if I can ever get the image to my graph mentioned above I will show you exactly, it is a more a screw. From 2002 to 2007 it was cutting threads so very precise like a fine lathe, BUT, in 2008 it started screwing back out, and, just as precisely! Now this slip in 2010 looks figurative as if it is just that, a slipped thread, and it looks like that! Will it continue to cut the threads back out? Will it cut them in? Will it slip again? Guess we have to wait till next summer for the games to begin ☺!! It is intriguing.
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 6:02 pm
How many straws did you grasp! That was amazing effort!
Jon P says:
September 12, 2010 at 5:46 pm
“So when the “plane” (Artic Sea Ice) started it’s “death spiral” and got down to 4,250 feet (2007) then pulled up to 4700ft (2008) and up again to 5,210ft (2009) and lost a little altitude in 2010 at 4952ft (although not a final number) and you call that a death spiral?”
==================
Sounds like a typical flight in Alaska, I think there is an extra charge, for a “death spiral”. 😉
Ok Anthony, try four, directly from TinyPics edit control to comment box:
( it might be because I really don’t want to open an “account” there but they do say it doesn’t matter, and, putting in Word is just the letters of the link, oh well, shouldn’t matter)
JAXA sine and trend removed:
http://i51.tinypic.com/2s7euly.jpg
Jon P writes,
“How many straws did you grasp! That was amazing effort!”
None, so far as I know. What was it that amazed you?
Prediction:
Global Sea Ice Maximum for 2010 will top 21.5 M km^2.
See you in November-Decemberish.
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Jimbo writes (and many others express similar sentiments),
“This is of course hardly any sort of ‘death spiral’.”
But it is. The spiral is still on.
This year’s weak extent and melting of multiyear ice are totally consistent with that decline. They are not at all consistent with any return towards the satellite-period mean.”
How about the natural climate cycles like the PDO and AMO. I guess they’ve played no part in whats happened eh?
This years decline is consistent with positive PDO and AMO values. This is something which has really dominated the past decade. The period from 1980 to 2000 saw at least a negative AMO coupled with positive PDO. This combination saw a steady rate of ice loss but the rate of loss accelerated in the past decade when both the AMO and PDO were positive together for a significant portion of the decade.
We saw loss in extent for the majority of the past decade with the exception of 2008 and 2009 when lo and behold the PDO went negative.
Talk to me about a death spiral when we go through a decade where both the PDO and AMO are predominantly negative.
Here is how I see the impact of the PDO and AMO.
(A) Positive AMO and PDO = highest reduction in extent
(B) Positive AMO and Negative PDO = modest increase in extent
(C) Negative AMO and Positive PDO = modest reduction in extent
(D) Negative AMO and Negative PDO = highest increase in extent
2008 and 2009 were scenario B and we saw the extent increase. 2010 was pretty much scenario A and we saw a reduction in extent (as were 2002 to 2006).
As for 2011, I would say were looking pretty clearly at scenario B. PDO is going solidly negative but at this time the AMO is still sitting on strong positive values.
Incidentally the last time, both PDO and AMO values were concurrently negative were from about 1964 to the late 1970’s which coincides with when the MSM were all discussing the possibility of a coming ice age.
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Well when you say, “Ice does not really experience “death,” either. “, the “either” must mean it is not a spiral. So if it’s not “death”, not a “spiral” nor a “death spiral”, why do you continue to twist on this point? Just say it with me, “Death Spiral is not an apt metaphor for the state of the Artic Sea Ice”, and move on.
David W says:
September 12, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Interesting information. Have link(s)?
David W, about 10 or 15 years back, quite a few Arctic researchers considered that the Arctic changes widely noticed by research in the 1990s might be due to oscillations such as AO, NAO, or PDO. Most have abandoned that hypothesis because the evidence just didn’t support it. Oscillations were oscillating, sometimes affecting year-to-year variation, but they did not predict the longer-term warming trend.
If you think you’ve got a model that you can show fits past variation well and offers testable predictions for the future, start by reading up on what has already been tried. You might be surprised how much research has been done in this direction. But if you still believe you have something new, beyond what’s been tested and found wanting, by all means do the math, write it up, and send your best work in to one of the journals read by Arctic scientists.
Jimbo says:
September 12, 2010 at 4:21 pm
and in February
R. Gates says: February 9, 2010 at 2:44 pm
All this, combined with record amounts of CO2 and methane. Though I still think 2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km, but a tiny bit above 2007′s summer minimum.
Amazingly accurate: lowest so far this year 3.0721295, 2007 2.9978635 about 2.5% above the record minimum.
EFS_Junior says:
September 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm
So the next time I go gambling at the Roulette wheel, I’ll take you with me, because you’re sure to guess the right numbers for the next seven months.
In other words if there are enough people at the table, all the numbers are likely to be covered.
And one of those numbers will, of course, be correct.
Folks, we have a weiner!
Here’s one for you, take JAXA minima (2002-9), throw out 2007, because, well it was an outlier, you know, and what do you get?
You’re kidding, right?
You dismiss Alexej’s prediction as mere gambling, but then you say 2007 should be thrown out as an “outlier”. I’m sorry, but you are just as guilty of gaming the situation. When you have a system where the total content from one year significantly determines the total content in subsequent years, you can’t legitimately negate an outlier. And this system relies on not only the mass of accumulated ice, but also on the accumulated thermal energy of polar waters.
wayne says:
September 12, 2010 at 6:34 pm
A most interesting picture is portrayed there.
Apparently, prior to 2007, most of the time was spent equally above & below the zero line.
After 2007, most of the time the ice is above the zero line.
The “Death Spiral” is pinned on the extreme low points, of which the least amount of time the Ice Extent/Area is spending.
It’s an inferred tipping point, as if, somehow, once the Arctic is Ice Free in September, The Winter Ice-up cannot ever attain normal due to warmer waters.
Anthony, your correct. It must have to do with the clipboard internal format when you copy then paste. Well, the link works from this side in Sea Ice News and I’ll assume a click by others works too. Thanks for the help, … I’m now free !!! … A picture saves a thousand works right? Also saves at least ten comments back that still can’t describe what your point is you are trying to convey. ☺
Personally, I think AGW is one of the bigger scams ever foisted on humanity. Whether I’m right or not is beside the point, and if the Arctic is ice free in 2, 5 or 20 years, I’ll still probably thing AGW is a scam, because it bears the earmarks of a scam, and I will attribute the declining ice pack to the warming that’s been occurring since the end of the Little Ice Age that Mann tried to obliterate with his Hockey Stick nonsense (one of the earmarks of the scam, by the way.)
So why follow the Arctic ice at all if a downward spiral won’t convince me of the “truth” of AGW? Because the AGW crowd has staked their theory on the ice extent, essentially. While I certainly hope the recovery from the Little Ice Age isn’t ending yet, it would almost be worth it to put the final nail in the AGW coffin, though it’s hard to believe the Climategate emails weren’t sufficient to nail it shut and safely secure it six feet under ground several months ago.
The AGW theory, at least as presented by AGW believers here, simply won’t withstand a prolonged recovery of Arctic ice. If it does recover, the theory is toast. Hence, my interest. It will put an early end to the scam. If it does continue to “spiral” downward (something the last three years already make it somewhat difficult to claim with a straight face) then we will get to see if that magic tipping point actually occurs, with warming accelerating due to the lack of ice albedo, etc.
At times I wonder if we shouldn’t just cover the Arctic with soot in February, crisscross it with icebreakers spreading salt all summer long, and get rid of all the ice so we could see if the doomsayers are onto something. If we make it through just fine, we’d save a ton of tax dollars in the end. And if we don’t, well, it’s too late to do anything anyway, right?
5001406 – looks encouraging! Will it stick? Hmm.
” but I’m thinking that we will post another gain for the 12th & if it drops down the road it won’t get down to the 10th’s min..So the 10th it is!!?..I think that would be good news for a good recovery.”..(Fishnski Quote)
JAXA up another 15000…..Here is another Predict….The skins will Scalp the Cowboys!
… An unseasonably warm week ahead for northern Alaska…
A large ridge of high pressure aloft more typical in mid-Summer
will remain in place across northern Alaska this week. The ridge
will keep the interior dry and mostly clear with well above
average temperatures. High temperatures this week in most areas
will range from the mid 60s to the lower 70s. The warm weather
will extend all the way north to the Arctic coast where highs are
expected to be between 55 and 65 degrees… warmest inland.
Temperatures may approach record highs this week at Fairbanks. The
record high temperatures this week range from 71 to 75 degrees. By
comparison the average high temperature this time of year at
Fairbanks is 56 degrees. Here are the record high temperatures at
Fairbanks this week and the year that they were established.
I noticed a slight relaxing of the colder temps at the Ice edge on the Pacific side so when I Cked out the F-cast for Barrow,AK I saw this…The temps are very cold on either side of & north of Greenland & air temps as cold as -6/7 along those Islands between Svalbard & the russian side so maybe those temps will help offset the abnormally high pacific side….confirmed…cowbow scalping..good nite!
– 6/7 Celcius..Sorry.
R. Gates says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:33 am
I will be curious to see how AGW skeptics paint this year’s melt season.
=================================
Thanks for finally confessing.
You are not a skeptic. Not 40% not 5 %. There is no such animal.
You are a chicken little, Co2-demonizing alarmist, through and through.
You have no intention whatsoever of being open-minded and standing down when your 3 million or 4 million ice forecasts come in woefully wrong.
If you ever had the ability to admit you were wrong, it is now.
?????
The silence is deafening.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Gneiss says:
September 12, 2010 at 7:37 pm
“David W, about 10 or 15 years back, quite a few Arctic researchers considered that the Arctic changes widely noticed by research in the 1990s might be due to oscillations such as AO, NAO, or PDO. Most have abandoned that hypothesis because the evidence just didn’t support it. Oscillations were oscillating, sometimes affecting year-to-year variation, but they did not predict the longer-term warming trend.
If you think you’ve got a model that you can show fits past variation well and offers testable predictions for the future, start by reading up on what has already been tried. You might be surprised how much research has been done in this direction. But if you still believe you have something new, beyond what’s been tested and found wanting, by all means do the math, write it up, and send your best work in to one of the journals read by Arctic scientists.”
I would actually be surprised if any research was done in this area that wasnt tainted by pro-AGW views and research ethics. And the research your talking about by your own admission was done 10-15 years ago.
What about recent research? I can find plenty of links on the net discussing how the PDO and AMO impact Arctic Ice but am having a very difficult time finding anyone who says it doesnt.
Sometimes the most obvious solutions are the right ones. I can see very clear correlations between the AMO and PDO and Arctic Ice extent that don’t require a degree or a thesis to understand and observe and I see very clear and logical reasons why there would be a correlation given how the AMO and PDO impact SST’s.
Since I’ve never presented my views as being a scientists views I don’t necessarily feel the need to put a paper together and submit it through a sham peer review process in order to present my views on this blog.
But Gneiss, feel free to explain exactly why it is the AMO and PDO aren’t major contributing factors to Arctic Ice extent. Should be fairly simple for you given your knowlege of all the scientific papers on the subject.
(Preferably without simply saying “another scientist said so” as that sort of position doesnt quite cut it round here).
rbateman says:
September 12, 2010 at 7:57 pm
A most interesting picture is portrayed there.
Is interesting isn’t it. One thing to keep in mind on that graph is not only is the sine removed but the trend also, in other words there is an inherent downward slope within the graph itself. That missing slope is -168 km per day.
Therefore, see that big blob which was just before August? It hovered there from end of March to beginning of August. I thought it might actually stick there all summer. Well, you know way happened then. Next year should register in a bit above that zero line even above that poly tread (really hate poly trends, generally misleading) if recovering. It has to be slightly above zero and keep threading out to show this. If it just keeps “slipping threads” sideways it is still sliding down that very shallow slope. We’ll see.
Glad you said something, now I know these tinypic links really do work. Other times I wish I could just show someone what I was talking about, now I can.
Phil. says:
September 12, 2010 at 7:38 pm
“Amazingly accurate: lowest so far this year 3.0721295, 2007 2.9978635 about 2.5% above the record minimum.”
================
Nothing personal, but I think the party is over.
Nobody believes in Catastophic AGW anymore, it is too expensive.
Reality can overcome fantasy.
The hard part will be breaking the news to GE.
rbateman
One think i wonder if you would have any input. See those blue key lines? To me those lines represent the slope of the energy gain or loss in order for all of the arctic ice to have that given extent, not area, not volume. Right? But wind it is said to have a major influence. It just amazes me that those minimums are lining up that perfectly. To me they shouldn’t, too much physics going on with all of the variances, wind, water temperature, air temperature, cloud cover, on and on. Yet 2007 to 2008 to 2009 all fall on a straight line. Incredible!
Other minimums follow those same slopes, might have an offset but the slopes are the same.
What do you make of that?
The prediction in the News Headlines was Ice Free (No Ice, None) in 2013.
I wonder when the News Media will let us know that they realize how duped they were?
Ice Free in 2013, do not let the New Media forget their own Headlines.
The Headline was “Ice Free Arctic in 2013”.
wayne says:
September 12, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Are you sure that what you’re looking at here aren’t just periodic residuals from subtracting a sine wave function from a dataset that isn’t 100% sinusoidal? I would think that plotting anomalies instead would give you a clearer picture if what you’re seeing is real.
-Scott
I wonder if we have reached the lowest extent already given the current value?
It would have been interesting to watch the large iceberg hit Joe Island, talk about monumental forces at play.
Andy
wayne says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:53 pm
All those slopes are the very same slopes to be seen in the Antarctic Sea Ice timeseries.
They say to me that all the forces (wind, sea temps, air temps, etc.) are acting, but not necessarily one dominates all the time.
You could probably generate such slopes by having 3 or 4 cycles offset in both min/max and duration.
Like 3, 4, 5, 7 etc.
Nature has a funny way of mimicking itself in microcosm/macrocosm.
Like Galaxy Clusters resemble the forms of ordinary Star Clusters.
UPDATE: 8PM PST 9/12/10 JAXA has updated with their preliminary Sept 12th data, up for the second straight day:
And the satellite images are showing increasing signs of sea areas about to freeze over.
It came on quick.
Some people believe they will see ice-free Arctic in 2 years, others believe they can see canals on Mars, and others yet believe that when the Day of Resurrection comes, Allah shall pour molten lead into the ears of all who enjoyed listening to music.
Well, the haters of music are in the best position: nobody ever would be able to prove them wrong, since they can wait for the Day of Resurrection until Kingdom Come (pardon the pun).
The Mars-canal believers may have a three or four decades yet, judging by the retreating glacial pace of the governmental space exploration.
The worst fate awaits the climate-change scaremongers; 2013 isn’t far off, and it’s already obvious that the Arctic ice is not going anywhere.
So, Gneiss, close your eyes and repeat after me:
“The world is pink. The world is pink. The world is pink…”
AndyW says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:33 am
May trend looks like this latitude
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100608_Figure3.png
December looks like this
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100105_Figure3.png
Do you have the equivalent graphs for the Antarctic?
Jimbo says:
quote
“So in addition to changing sea ice, we can kind of guess that something must be happening in the atmosphere over the Arctic, too.” Clouds are bright, too, and an increase in clouds could cancel out the impact of melting snow and ice on polar albedo.”
[]
“Although sea ice and snow cover had noticeably declined in the Arctic from 2000 to 2004, there had been no detectable change in the albedo measured at the top of the atmosphere: the proportion of light the Arctic reflected hadn’t changed. In other words, the ice albedo feedback that most climate models predict will ultimately amplify global warming apparently hadn’t yet kicked in.”
[]
“According to the MODIS observations, cloud fraction had increased at a rate of 0.65 percent per year between 2000 and 2004. If the trend continues, it will amount to a relative increase of about 6.5 percent per decade. At least during this short time period, says Kato, increased cloudiness in the Arctic appears to have offset the expected decline in albedo from melting sea ice and snow.”
[]
unquote
Who would have thought it?
Well, Robert Essenhigh, actually.
JF
Neil Jones says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Got March here:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/MarExtentVSArea.JPG
and the whole kit & kaboodle here:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/TempGr/YearlySeaIceAv.GIF
Done in response many moons ago to RGates Arctic Trends based on PIOMASS and other things.
Neil Jones says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Do you have the equivalent graphs for the Antarctic?
___________________________________________
Afraid not, they are just what NSIDC puts up on their update. I would imagine the December one at least is increasing though.
Andy
Scott says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Are you sure that what you’re looking at here aren’t just periodic residuals from subtracting a sine wave function from a dataset that isn’t 100% sinusoidal? I would think that plotting anomalies instead would give you a clearer picture if what you’re seeing is real.
Hi Scott. Sure, they are residuals off the perfect sine form, that is why I made that graph in the first place to concentrate the variances, easier to compare to other years. The ‘base’ variances from zero were expected of course, no year of even the mean follow a sine perfectly. I’ll take the time soon to do that with anomaly offsets too.
My comments above were just that the graph held some other surprises, to me anyway, once I plotted it. The variances off of those ‘expected’ or ‘base’ variances seem to be too perfect in a certain sense. Probably just a coincidence but those constant slopes do tend to stand out. Maybe some else could help answer why or someone else knows exactly why it does this. Maybe it’s just be the way JAXA detects edges and computes concentrations, you know, an artifact. I just thought it curious and tend to ask why and after looking at it all summer, I can’t seem to answer that question. Though I might get some other possibilities.
Spiral and helix:
In geometry a spiral is a figure in a plane (a bit like drawing a circle but with a radius that is continuously getting smaller (or bigger)).
A helix is a 3-dim figure (movement in a circle as seen from above, but with a continuous loss of height). Like the thread of a bolt.
When pilots practice “spirals”, the aim is to fly with constant radius, constant banking, constant speed and constant loss of altitude. All very controlled. Thus what they fly are helices.
“Amazingly accurate: lowest so far this year 3.0721295, 2007 2.9978635 about 2.5% above the record minimum.”
Even a Phool. should have noticed by now that we are talking JAXA here.
Latitude – Is the reason why May and Dec always come together in the graph because the Arctic is pretty well land-bound. and the ability of the ice to change its rate of decline or growth is very limited at about the time that it contracts or expands to its land boundaries – but at other times temperature, winds and currents can exercise greater yoy variability? A way to test it would be to see if the Antarctic follows the same pattern, because the Antarctic ice is not so constrained. If the Antarctic pattern is similar, then I am wrong (no time to look right now).
Alexej Buergin says:
September 13, 2010 at 1:40 am
“Amazingly accurate: lowest so far this year 3.0721295, 2007 2.9978635 about 2.5% above the record minimum.”
Even a Phool. should have noticed by now that we are talking JAXA here.
Clearly he was not since “2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km, but a tiny bit above 2007′s summer minimum” must refer to CT area since the JAXA minimum was 4267656!
Alexander Feht writes,
“So, Gneiss, close your eyes and repeat after me:
‘The world is pink. The world is pink. The world is pink…'”
Doesn’t work for me. Does it work for you? Is Arctic ice on a pink upward trend?
NeilT says:
September 12, 2010 at 10:39 am
Just goes to show you that the planet can surprise us every time. The only difference between my point of view and the POV on this site is that everyone here is waiting for it all to return to normal, whilst I’m just waiting for things to build up to the point where a blind beggar on the streets of Naples will know that it’s AGw that’s causing the Arctic Ice to vanish.
I know the concept of natural climate variation is a difficult one for Chicken Littles (speaking of chicken). Newsflash for ya, as far as earths’ climate goes, there is no “normal”. What we have are cycles overlaid upon cycles, with a great deal of fluctuation, or noise thrown in to keep things interesting. You are waiting for the much-vaunted climate doomsday scenario, Serreze’s “death spiral of the Arctic ice. Sorry, aint gonna happen. As for your blind beggar, bad news; he’s too busy trying to survive to care or even know much about CAGW/CC. The thing is, the climate catastrophists are busy trying to make his survival that much harder, by forcing the cost of energy up. But, compared to “saving the planet” that is neither here nor there, is it?
Wayne, one trouble with a sine wave model is that it is systematically wrong, for the Arctic’s asymmetrical cycles. Ice extent declines in spring more steeply than it rises in fall, and the high-extent peaks tend to be broader than the low-extent troughs. A systematically wrong model can create residuals with systematic patterns as well.
Researchers often try to remove the main seasonal pattern by using anomalies, as seen for example in this Cryosphere Today graph:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
What jumps out from the CT graph is that since 2007, even the anomalies show new seasonal structure, reflecting Arctic change.
” Phil. says:
September 13, 2010 at 4:37 am
Clearly he was not since “2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km, but a tiny bit above 2007′s summer minimum” must refer to CT area since the JAXA minimum was 4267656!”
I thought the poor man was just mixing up the numbers 3 and 4.
So the worst forecast from February 2010 was yours, Phil. Nobody else stood so far beside their shoes.
(And we were and still are talking about JAXA here, with some DMI and some ArcticROOS thrown in. US numbers are not trustworthy, UAH excepted.)
Gneiss,
The sine wave model is fine, the issues you complain about that prevent perfect fit are a) an orbital issue whereas solstices and equinoxes are not in phase with Earth’s elliptical orbit.
b) a time delay issue relating to the thermal costs of phase change from liquid to solid water.
Once you account for these issues properly, the sine wave model fits perfectly, which it should.
mikelorrey says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:47 am
Yep, I’d pretty much go with that. Lots of little nuances to investigate that’ll keep the gravy express going and tooting its whistle for a while yet though 🙂
” mikelorrey says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:47 am
Gneiss,
The sine wave model is fine, the issues you complain about that prevent perfect fit…”
This is quite similar to a simple pendulum, which produces almost a sine-oscillation for small amplitudes. For bigger amplitudes one has to do corrections to the sine. That used to be a very common method before the age of the computer (and still is).
I made the 1.0 million Square km Prediction.
On the basis of “freak” Weather, making wildy more difference than the trends.
– – 1.0 – – was Conditional on the Clouds staying away, like 2007, and _No one_ could tell me whether the Clouds would chase away the Sun & slow th e Melt – – or Not. They did. But with 2010 = the 4th Hottest El Nino in 61 years – – I had to Warn everyone.
The NEXT El Nino could be: (most will be #1)
1) An unimportant small ice-loss. And 2007-2037 will have 2 La Nina per El Nino.
2) 2007-repeat = Ice-death.
3) Volcano + EL Nino = super Ice Gain.
In short: I see it as a race between two “freak” year types..
Being in the “cold half” of the 60-year PDO cycle with an underlieing bias towards more La Nina – – means a single BIG GAIN year will ENSURE High Ice volumes for 50+ years.
So I see it as a Low-ice time, lingering, because Low Ice = more Sun … is balancing with La Ninas = more Ice.
The early 1950s had this too: 1947 was the turnover but 1954 the Low year.near the bottom: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/index.html. The PIOMAS 340/year “trend” just gets overwhelmed by the 4000 km3 drop of 2007 – – or similar gains from an El Nino + Volcano year (La Ninas have too little moisture to be a “freak”).
– – 2013/14 – – could go either way.,
No ice – – or 50 years until another Low Ice Era.
Or, like this year “wait till next time”
Weather, not Climate.
wayne says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Wayne, do you think a body of water that size undergoing a massive seasonal energy exchange with geographically restricted external influence doesn’t produce its own weather to some extent? Entropy is a wonderful thing in both senses of the term.
So far it looks like a shortest melt season in the JAXA record.
– – Notice the LACK of Updates ?
Pips is 2 days behind on their Drift “forecast” & the whole Nansen/Norse/Topex complex is stuck on the 9th.Hamburg is still on August 31.
But Bremen is their usual day ahead (If you can reach them). Spt 13 is another Gain day.
Do you think the unsettled conditions have them “hiding” ?
PS the “slush” appearance is likely from the passing Gale breaking up Very Thin ice.
JAXA Dailies + my mini-Ice-Drift forecast based on http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/tkecmnh.html
Daily: ___________2007___ to___ 2010__&__(2009__2008
Spt_10-11______ – 25,650_____ +33,593___(-19,219__-_
Spt_11-12______ – 15,569_____ +14,000p__(-_9,531_-_
Spt_12-13______ -_4,219 ___(Anti-Dipole)_(09 past Minimum
Spt_13-14______ – 32,500_____ – weird __
Spt_14-15______ – 23,437_____ – ?__? _(07=469 over Min
Spt_15-16______ -__157 _____ = High over Pole (clear?)
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 12th: 5005000. Updated charts …
15-day: http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/8172/15day20100912.png
7-day: http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4153/7day20100912.png
And here’s a better view of where we are perhaps …
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/1469/15day20100912feboct.png
Phil. says:
September 12, 2010 at 7:38 pm
I have 2007’s minimum area at 2.9194391 million km^2…is my spreadsheet in error? That would put us more than 5.23% above the record minimum.
-Scott
Confirmed JAXA extent is a bit higher than the preliminary: 5.005e6 km^2, for a gain of 18594 km^2.
I’m still not convinced that we’ve reached the extent minimum. Reasons include (a) we’re almost sure to see a least a few more days of loss, (b) CT’s area went down yesterday, placing us only 5289 km^2 above this year’s minimum area on Sept 9 (though CT’s extent did increase ~12900 km^2 in one day), (c) I’m worried the recent stability/gains in the area are due to refreezes in areas already well above 15% extent and the regions of low extent are not refreezing and may actually be melting significantly, and (d) compaction is still a major possibility.
I’ll raise my confidence to having reached the extent minimum to 55% though. 🙂
-Scott
Whew ! so we didn’t fall off the edge of the pizza after all. Well scrub the kayak trip again. I think I’ll go get a beer and drink a Toast to JAXA, and DMI.
And for you chaps that may have nailed it; Skol !
Gneiss said:
Really Gneiss, 10-15 years back? Really? No evidence? Really? Most have abandoned the hypothesis? Really?
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2009GL038777.shtml
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122261152/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8415720180780275/
You may wish to rethink this…
I’m wondering, but have never checked, if the melt season is increasing in length. Wouldn’t this be a necessary progression for the Arctic ice “death spiral”?
Gneiss says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:03 am
Alexander Feht writes,
“So, Gneiss, close your eyes and repeat after me:
‘The world is pink. The world is pink. The world is pink…’”
Doesn’t work for me. Does it work for you? Is Arctic ice on a pink upward trend?
Yes, as a matter of 367 band visual, it is doing just that.
What do you suppose that ‘pink’ represents on those satellite images?
Using extent, area, or volume day to day wriggle averaging and saying that the smoothed trend is now related to recovery or a death spiral, or to poor parenting, is statistically untenable. Each wriggle up or down is, at that moment, related to weather and oceanic conditions entirely explainable without considering human CO2 emissions for the larger Arctic area and especially so for the specific Arctic.
To say that what has happened every day since what, 1998, and say that this particular string of Sun/weather/water affects on Arctic ice is significantly different than at any other time reveals the myopic vision we have of Earth. These days, Earth is commonly viewed in a space smaller than an 8 by 11 inch page, and talked about in terms of its changes within the life span of a single human. We are subconsciously led to believe one human footprint can cover the entire Arctic surface. However, if one were to place this data in a data base that includes the moment the Arctic area settled into its northern exposure to the Sun, a reasonable person would have to harbor doubts that these days are significant, statistically speaking, even without knowing the day to day wriggles of the past.
Not even my children in their doting years will have enough satellite data to say anything at all about trends other than it is the smoothed average of day to day wriggles. That is not to say that I am oblivious to Arctic conditions. I love the topic. But only because of the teleconnection between Sun/weather/oceanic conditions at the time of observation, and the reaction of the ice to those drivers at the time of observation.
I therefore prefer wriggles to smoothed data. Smoothed data hides the major drivers and inappropriately focuses our attention on pure speculation.
George E. Smith says:
September 13, 2010 at 8:44 am
It wasn’t me that nailed it.
I missed high by 1 million, and that’s what I get for following trends.
It’s all RGates fault, he made me do it (NOT).
It was fun, and I’m on for the Global Sea Ice Maximum > 21.5 M km^2.
Alexej Buergin says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:21 am
(And we were and still are talking about JAXA here, with some DMI and some ArcticROOS thrown in. US numbers are not trustworthy, UAH excepted.)
Uh, because of the conspiracy, right? And I guess the Germans are in it too…
DROPPING. LIKE. A. Oh. … ummm … well .. like a YOYO!!
I was right! 12% of us guessed a level between 2008 and 2009. But I can also correctly pick a coin flip every so often.
Guesses for next year?
Sometimes when working with complex systems it is better to ask what are the range of possibilities rather than making definitive predictions that may or may not turn out to be right due to any number of factors.
So the question on the table is will the arctic be ice free in 2013, some say yes and many here say no but what I would like to know first is: is it possible?
And here is how to answer that question:
1) (total mass of sea ice at summer minimum in gigatons) * (average temp of ice below 0 C) *(joules to raise a gigaton of sea ice 1 degree C) = additional joules required to melt the remaining sea ice
2)the amount of energy in joules that is not radiated back into space due to the addition of co2.
Leaving aside positive and negative feedbacks, weather patterns and cyclical anomalies, how the number from 1 relates to 2 will give a decent indication as to what is possible.
For instance:
If 2 is only 5% of 1 then it would be clear that 2 would have little impact. On the other hand if 2 is 500% of 1 then there is the possibility for a strong impact. Of course it may fall anywhere in between.
Anybody got some numbers they want to throw in the equations?
savethesharks says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:10 pm
R. Gates says:
September 12, 2010 at 9:33 am
I will be curious to see how AGW skeptics paint this year’s melt season.
=================================
Thanks for finally confessing.
You are not a skeptic. Not 40% not 5 %. There is no such animal.
You are a chicken little, Co2-demonizing alarmist, through and through.
You have no intention whatsoever of being open-minded and standing down when your 3 million or 4 million ice forecasts come in woefully wrong.
If you ever had the ability to admit you were wrong, it is now.
?????
The silence is deafening.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
______
My forecast for Arctic Sea ice extent minimum this year was 4.5 milion sq. km. It appears the the low may have been set (though I not completely convinced just yet). PIOMAS (Dr. Zhang’s estimate) was around 4.7 to 4.9, so they obviously were closer. Steve Goddard had been at 5.5 all season. So either way, both PIOMAS and I were closer than Mr. Goddard. It appears that AGW skeptics are busy buying different kinds of thread and getting their spinning wheels oiled up to try and spin this years lower extent than 2009 into some kind of tale that would show that the Arctic is “recovering”.
The essential truth of this season is that the Arctic continues on a long term downward trend. During the “bump up” in March ice extent and then well into April and May there was talk (among the AGW skeptics) of a big follow-on to 2009, with the extent maybe bottoming out at 6.0+ million sq. km. etc. this year. At the same time, I put out my 4.5 million sq. km. estimate. One thing I was pretty certain of at the time, there would be no follow-on “recovery” to 2009. The low solar irradiance during the long and deep solar minimum of 2008-2009 created the illusion that there might be some halt to the slide in Arctic Sea ice. Expect to sea more record global warmth and new record low Arctic Sea in the period of 2011-2015.
My main point of skepticism of AGW relates to 2 main areas: solar effects not related to Total solar irradiance (such as magnetic field strength and length of the solar cycle), and longer term ocean cycles such as the PDO. There is some remote chance that either of these acting alone or in combintation with some other cycle, could be creating the illusion of the kinds of effects we’d expect to get from AGW. This is where my 25% skeptical side comes in, but being 75% “warmist” I obviously think that AGW is more likely, and nothing that happened this year with the Arctic Sea ice has changed that stance.
Jeff P says:
September 13, 2010 at 11:15 am
I’ve thought about this a bit before, but haven’t run numbers previously. Lets do some ballpark calcs. For this, I’ll use 1983 as the starting year and assume that the ice was roughly at steady state then (bad assumption, but this is a quick and dirty calc). I’ll assume that ALL of the extra energy in the northern hemisphere from the CO2 greenhouse effect was channeled to the Arctic sea ice (thus, no global warming, only Arctic melting).
1983 sea ice area minimum = 5.386929 e6 km^2.
Assume average thickness = 1.5 m
Resulting assumed volume = 8.08 e12 m^3
Assumed density = 916.7 kg/m^3
Resulting assumed mass = 7.41 e15 kg
Assumed heat of fusion = 333.55 kJ/kg
Resulting assumed energy needed to melt all Arctic ice = 2.47 e21 J
Now, onto the supposed amount of extra energy collected by CO2:
Assumed CO2 conc 1983 = 341 ppm
Assumed CO2 conc 2013 = 395 ppm
Calculated change in forcing factor = 0.7865 W/m^2
Assume average change half that (integration would be better) = 0.3932 W/m^2
Assume Earth’s radius = 6371 km
Calculated Northern Hemisphere surf area = 2.55 e14 m^2
Time (1983-2013) = 9.467 e8 seconds
Final calculated extra energy from addition of CO2 = 9.49 e22 J
Note that this is a whopping 38x what is needed to melt all the ice. Now, clearly there were a lot of assumptions in this calculation. The biggest is that the earth didn’t warm at all (in temperature). To correct for this, we could take the average NH temperature increase times the average “heat capacity” of the earth’s NH surface and atmosphere. This would give how much energy went into the heating up the NH and subtract that out from the above numbers.
Any comments on this calculation?
-Scott
Scott says:
September 13, 2010 at 7:57 am
Phil. says:
September 12, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Amazingly accurate: lowest so far this year 3.0721295, 2007 2.9978635 about 2.5% above the record minimum.
I have 2007′s minimum area at 2.9194391 million km^2…is my spreadsheet in error? That would put us more than 5.23% above the record minimum.
No you’re right, there was a double minimum and in my haste I copied the wrong one. The point still stands that this year’s area finished very close to the 2007 record as did 2008, and any one saying “about 3 just above the 2007 record” in February has hit the nail on the head. Note that this year is also showing a double minimum and could yet go lower:
3.1467891
3.1098619
3.0876937
3.0721295
3.1011343
3.0906556
3.0774183
Alexej Buergin says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:21 am
” Phil. says:
September 13, 2010 at 4:37 am
Clearly he was not since “2010 summer sea ice mimimum will come in right around 3 million sq. km, but a tiny bit above 2007′s summer minimum” must refer to CT area since the JAXA minimum was 4267656!”
I thought the poor man was just mixing up the numbers 3 and 4.
Then you were wrong weren’t you! I’d like an apology for you insulting remark too, I’d get a 24 hr ban were I to say something like that about you.
So the worst forecast from February 2010 was yours, Phil. Nobody else stood so far beside their shoes.
No because my preferred metric is area and always has been.
(And we were and still are talking about JAXA here, with some DMI and some ArcticROOS thrown in. US numbers are not trustworthy, UAH excepted.)
Those are your biases which I don’t share, I prefer those that use the higher resolution more reliable platform, CT for area and JAXA and Bremen for extent.
Once again RGates, you resort to CO2 as the unmentioned cause but fail to explain how CO2 has become involved with the day to day and year end Arctic ice data. I visit Arctic weather, jet stream, and oceanic current conditions regularly from which I can make an educated guess as to what the sea ice will do that day under those conditions. Not once have I had to say, golly, CO2 must have been “wut dun it”. If day to day conditions are entirely related to natural processes, how can you say that this minimum or that minimum is related to anthropogenic conditions, much less make predictions? Each and every minimum has naturally occurring conditions over the melt and freeze up season that explains it.
If you believe that CO2 is the driver of the trend, kindly explain how, with equations and measurements of CO2 either causing incoming oceanic temps to rise and/or air temps to rise over the Arctic outside the average range to the extent that it is the overriding driver, and not natural variations.
If you ask me what I think happened or what the driver was this year, I will give you a synopsis of the natural conditions that occurred this summer and you will also easily see my point.
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:15 am
Each wriggle up or down is, at that moment, related to weather and oceanic conditions entirely explainable without considering human CO2 emissions for the larger Arctic area and especially so for the specific Arctic.
Great! What, then, are the conditions which explain this? I know I would love to have the answers. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
Assumptions make for very poor models. Scott, your calculations can easily be substantiated as pure fiction. Why? Your model does not even come close to observations of air, land and SST in the Arctic. The reason? Your model does not take into account pressure systems, between cells as well as vertically. Pressure systems are the primary driver of air temperature circulation. Air coming into the Arctic will, if vertical pressure gradients allow it, will push the normally cold air out. Air going out of the Arctic will leave a pressure void, allowing air from somewhere else to fill the hole. As a side affect, the sea ice goes where the wind tells it to, and sometimes that is towards the Arctic where it compacts, or out of the Arctic where it melts. The former still has melt happening but not as much, and volume is either stable or building. The latter melts it like an ice cream cone in a toddler’s hand and volume is unstable or decreasing.
Jakers, you have failed the test and given me an off topic question to my comment. You present averaged data. That data hides the drivers. I am talking about day to day deary, not averages. Today’s sea ice extent uptick is due to entirely natural processes (axial tilt causing decreased Sun exposure, pressure systems correlated with cold temps, and poleward but very mild winds). If tomorrow there is a down turn, please study the weather charts and tell me why there is a down turn. You will find your answer for tomorrow’s ice condition in tomorrow’s weather (and in this case I lump atmospheric and oceanic conditions under the term weather).
I am assuming you believe that the chart you linked to is showing anthropogenic drivers. If my assumption is correct, it’s your belief, so you get to explain it.
However, Jakers, for the argument’s sake, the noaa synopsis of ice-related conditions is quite good at explaining why the ice ended up here or there on a monthly basis. They have a great archive of past conditions. Makes for educational reading.
Yes, but Seth Borenstein still isn’t giving up, with gratuitous quotes from Serreze
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100913/ap_on_sc/us_sci_walruses_ashore
jakers says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:15 am
…
Great! What, then, are the conditions which explain this? I know I would love to have the answers. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
The conditions explaining these thrilling curves are the conditions inside a silicon computer processor. The graphic you showed is the result of GCM computer runs. For some of us, this is not the same as data.
Skeptical? Look at slide 2 in this powerpoint.
http://soa.arcus.org/sites/soa.arcus.org/files/sessions/1-1-advances-understanding-arctic-system-components/pdf/1-1-7-maslowski-wieslaw.pdf
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Once again RGates, you resort to CO2 as the unmentioned cause but fail to explain how CO2 has become involved with the day to day and year end Arctic ice data. I visit Arctic weather, jet stream, and oceanic current conditions regularly from which I can make an educated guess as to what the sea ice will do that day under those conditions. Not once have I had to say, golly, CO2 must have been “wut dun it”. If day to day conditions are entirely related to natural processes, how can you say that this minimum or that minimum is related to anthropogenic conditions, much less make predictions? Each and every minimum has naturally occurring conditions over the melt and freeze up season that explains it.
If you believe that CO2 is the driver of the trend, kindly explain how, with equations and measurements of CO2 either causing incoming oceanic temps to rise and/or air temps to rise over the Arctic outside the average range to the extent that it is the overriding driver, and not natural variations.
If you ask me what I think happened or what the driver was this year, I will give you a synopsis of the natural conditions that occurred this summer and you will also easily see my point.
______
I would always love to hear your explanation. I think the 2008-2009 deep and entended solar mimum to a large extent simply bought some time, and help to push temps down and increase cloudiness just enough in the Arctic during this period to flatten the record low drop seen in 2007. The La Nina during this time also played a lessor role.
In regards to CO2 (and the general increase in CO2 we’ve seen since the 1700’s), one would never expect to see a linear trend from the tiny year-to-year increase in CO2. The effects would both gradual and also show up as sudden jumps or changes in the overall system. 2007’s dramatic decline (on top of the longer term decline) may be one such example. As the loss this year shows (with more overall ice loss from the March high to the September low than 2007) we’ve hardly recovered from that drop, so it appears that was a change in the summer Arctic ice loss that is here to stay.
The effects of increasing CO2 appear to be showing up now after several centuries of gradual increase. Only a few parts per million a year but now up 40% since the 1700’s. Like adding grains of sand to a sandpile, chaos theory would tell us that eventually just one addtional grain of sand will cause a little landslide in that pile, and exactly when the landslide will occur (like the dramatic decline in 2007) is unpredictable. We’ve not yet recovered from that landslide, and new grains of sand continue to pile up– perhaps indicating more landslides ahead.
R Gates,
CO2 has been much higher in the past without causing runaway global warming. Further, there is no correlation between rises in CO2 and subsequent rises in temperature.
On all time scales rises in CO2 follow temperature rises, therefore they are not the cause. CO2 is the effect. But thank you for your speculation. The ‘landslide’ comment was a nice touch, even though it’s falsified by the fact that when CO2 was almost twenty times higher, the planet’s temperature remained within its long term parameters and never went into catastrophic runaway global warming. In fact, planetary warm periods are few and far between.
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Of course they’re pure fiction…and I wouldn’t call them models. All I did was do what Jeff P asked here:
And I even put in a few details how to improve it a bit (which I’ll probably make some estimates on when I get some time later today). If you have a problem with performing this estimation this way, please address those comments to Jeff P.
-Scott
RGates, please provide mechanism for both the Sun and CO2. Unless you have none and are just hoping there is a mechanism. If you are saying the deep minimum increased cloud cover, does that mean that when we are at maximum we should have decreased cloud cover? What does the long term observation say about that?
I know how pressure changes (IE weather conditions) bring about an increase or decrease in cloud cover, both the low thin kind, the high thin kind, the low thick kind, and the deep and high thick kind.
This synopsis of mechanisms is quite good and demonstrates natural drivers well:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Tell me how, not whether, CO2 drives this or that, increases this or that, decreases this or that, whatever. And by the way, oceans have a way of letting go of warm water.
You seem to believe that CO2 is warming the oceans. By how much do you think that is per year, given that CO2 can only warm the surface and with much of that immediately evaporated off. You do understand that my back of the envelope amount is an infinitesimally small amount with a rather large standard deviation. Most people make the mistake of taking CO2 increased temperatures as being applicable to SST’s. It is not. That warming is based on several assumptions and is related to air temps, not ocean temps.
Phil. says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Hi Phil, can you give a quick explanation why CT is best for area and JAXA for extent? If you’re short on time, a reference is fine. I was just curious as to why this is (I don’t know the histories of these databases/satellites.)
-Scott
Scott says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Wow! That was awesome. Clearly at 38 times the potential energy needed to melt the arctic the potential energy is there it’s just a matter of where the energy goes.
I have a couple of follow up questions.
For this calc: “Final calculated extra energy from addition of CO2 = 9.49 e22 J” Is that the total for the 20 year period that you were working with?
Are there satellite measurements of long wave radiation to confirm that the energy is not leaving the earth?
Thanks again that was great.
I think before anyone can claim sea ice is recovering they need to show where all the extra energy is going instead.
As an example of CO2 affects coming with a large standard deviation over land, Wallowa County has been experiencing average to high daytime temps but with below average night time temps. Why? Strong radiative cooling sending the day time warm air up, up, and away at night. We don’t have enough water vapor at night to hold in that heat. The affect of water vapor at night can completely obliterate any CO2 warming affect. It is highly likely that the CO2 effect is well within the standard deviation of water vapor variation alone.
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Assumptions make for very poor models. Scott, your calculations can easily be substantiated as pure fiction. Why? Your model does not even come close to observations of air, land and SST in the Arctic.
————–
Pam,
I wasn’t looking for a model. I was asking is there sufficient energy from c02 absorbing long wave radiation to melt all of the sea ice in the arctic. Scott’s calculation was rough and that was all I was looking for. It is illuminating that even if the numbers are off by an order of magnitude there is still the enough extra energy to possibly melt the arctic. At 38 times the energy required it looks quite possible for the arctic to completely melt and not the impossibility by 2013 that some would like to claim.
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:16 pm
It is highly likely that the CO2 effect is well within the standard deviation of water vapor variation alone.
———
So what?
The question is how much extra energy is in the system due to c02 absorbing long wave radiation all other factors being equal. Is that energy enough to melt all the arctic sea ice if it only went to that purpose? The answers looks like a rough 38 times over. Is that what is going to happen? Who knows. Is it possible? Yes, definitely.
Jeff P says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:13 pm
That’s a very good question and one I don’t have an answer to. All I did was calculate the change in radiative forcing factor (delta_F, W/m^2) using the equation 5.35*ln(C/C0) where C (ppm) is the current concentration of CO2 and C0 (ppm) is the original concentration of CO2. I’m not even sure how appropriate this approach is since I haven’t really worked with these sorts of numbers before.
That’s the next part of my calculation. If you have some numbers on that for me to start with, that’d be great. Otherwise I’ll just do estimates again. 🙂 I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of the energy I calculated goes into things other than the ice. :-O
-Scott
The vagaries of predicting temperature. Even if CO2 increases temps under ideal conditions, we rarely have ideal conditions. The vagaries of longwave radiation cooling or noncooling simply outdoes CO2. Especially at night, but this can happen in the daytime as well.
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints2/423/
Yes, and I could possibly go through a growth spurt at age 54. I eat enough, so why am I not taller? Is it possible for that to happen? In rare cases yes. But real conditions tells us it is not probable. Shouldn’t we be talking about what is probable? Going on these fantasy trips only cheapens your argument, not mine.
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:37 pm
We’re not talking about local weather predictions, we’re talking about total energy held in the system by c02. This number: Final calculated extra energy from addition of CO2 = 9.49 e22 J
Not sure why you continue with local weather predictions.
It’s not “fantasy.” That extra energy has got to go somewhere. And if it is going to the arctic there’s plenty of it to melt all the sea ice.
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Yes, and I could possibly go through a growth spurt at age 54. I eat enough, so why am I not taller? Is it possible for that to happen? In rare cases yes. But real conditions tells us it is not probable.
——–
Interesting analogy but flawed. It is more like if your current food intake keeps you at a steady weight and you then add 1000 calories a day to your diet and change nothing else then it is possible that over time you are going to get fat.
Jeff P says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:52 pm
It’s not “fantasy.” That extra energy has got to go somewhere. And if it is going to the arctic there’s plenty of it to melt all the sea ice.
On the subject of energy, Arctic and space – some things that happened this year:
(1) Near 30-year minimum ice extent
(2) Therefore large area of open water in the Arctic over summer
(3) Exceptionally cold Arctic air over summer
(4) Warmer than normal Arctic sea water (eddys from El Nino)
Put this all together and what do you get?
Exceptionally high loss of heat energy from the Arctic open sea to space.
Periodic low Arctic ice extent is the global equivalent of a dog lolling out its tongue and panting – a way of losing excess heat.
Lots of yapping here & 0 F-casting…Miss gray talks up a big Game so I am going to hope she can analyze all those pressure systems & compute all the sucking in & out of heat & cold..factor in the SST & give us the Ice Forecast for next week…or is there a charge for that?..I’m thinking that there will be a very small increase when we get the new #’s & i’m also looking for a good increase in snowcover in the next couple of weeks to fuel the cold factory..think positive (gains)..!
[bridge too far George ~ ctm]
Jeff said, “…We’re not talking about local weather predictions, we’re talking about total energy held in the system by c02. This number: Final calculated extra energy from addition of CO2 = 9.49 e22 J.”
Jeff, that is a modeled (or calculated, whichever) number based on improbable assumptions. However, I remember a few months back the science community was worried over the observation that they could not find the store of heat energy they had calculated should be in the system. Maybe our Earth’s systems didn’t capture and hold onto all of it.
There must be a hole in the bucket dear Liza.
As for short term forecasting, the Arctic system is large enough to have a fairly predictable ice response on a day to day basis (see noaa’s recap). And to not belabor the point, the trend is a statistical average of day to day ice response to local/regional weather. Nothing more. The global temperature models that factor in CO2 warming do not match the averaged global trend, so there is even less reason to explain ice loss by considering CO2. Which is why I think the data is inappropriately scrubbed of vital cause and effect information when it is smoothed. So don’t ask me to tell you about the smoothed trend. There is no information in it as to cause. Only the day to day wriggles have that information at hand.
Here is an example of a forecast based on local weather and oceanic conditions. It is not talking a big Game. It is straightforward meteorology. And if you give it serious study on a daily basis, you will learn to see the trees that make up the forest.
http://www.arcus.org/search/siwo
5 to 10 Day outlook: June 25 to July 5
A high pressure ridge will build over the central Bering Sea today (Friday, June 25) and persist through Monday, June 28. Southerly winds will dominate the region and with little or no sea ice present, seas will build to 6-7 feet through Monday, June 28. These southerly winds should help move the remnants of shorefast ice northward. A low system will move into the central Bering Sea from the west on Tuesday, June 29, and persist but weaken through Monday, July 5 as high pressure builds to the north of Chukchi Sea.
Alexej Buergin says:
September 12, 2010 at 2:08 pm
The longer term:
Forecast for 2011 by R. Gates: 2.5 Million sq km
Forecast 2012 by A. Gore: …when the Northpole is EXPECTED to be ice-free (his words).
About the ice-free NP by Phil.: … 2013 will be interesting.
_____
I never forecast 2.5 million sq. km for 2011. Please stop this nonsense.
Smokey says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:07 pm
R Gates,
CO2 has been much higher in the past without causing runaway global warming.
__________
When have I ever mentioned runaway global warming?
Yes, CO2 has been higher, but not in at least the past 800,000 years. The last time it was this high, the Arctic was ice free.
Scott / JP: 1983 … 1.5 meters
Subs say 2.8 meters (min)/3 .25 (average) see: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/figures/seaice2009fig4.jpg
– – 1983 just happened to be the RECORD year (“RA” is Subs).
Now the Arctic Ocean is 3% of the Earth’s surface. So the melt took up 1/20th = 5%. That means the Arctic is radiating More than its share, so: – – heat is flowing into the Arctic.
Golly, Scott, you just provided a rationale for the Mysterious increased flow North through Fram Strait since the 1990’s.
I keep telling you: you do not understand how unique, how significant, your calculations are.
Let me suggest you call your local University and ask to talk to the Climate Professore. Or, send this in to Arcus (which is actually Fairbanks University in central Alaska), suggesting they put it on their Sea Ice Mailing list if No one else has done this. The PBS show that talked to the Arctic Ocean Current Scientists about the Fram strait flow, had the Experts say they were stumped.
As to losing heat, JP – – a Quibble. At this moment, we have CLOUDS. They reduced the Melt, but also the Radiation to Space.
Of course, as La Ninas (cold-Equator) make for Less Clouds & they dominate the period after the PDO’s 30 years of heating …Yes, the Planet _IS_ “lolling its tongue”, in the Long term.
UPDATE on the late Updates: Nansen .php lept from Sept.9th to the 12th with an area gain of 134,872 over their 3 day “Holiday”. http://www.nersc.no/main/index2 PS: links lead to Norse, Topaz (forecast), and Bremen (click the AMSR-E)
…Nansen Area is the Norsex/ROOS Area so + 134 K, but Norsex Extent is level — as is the latest DMI , at 160 K above the previous Dip. Bremen is 140 K above its dip. But: Cryo is only 5 K, and further: when I estimated the Components, on their graphs – – like the Arctic Basin http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html – – I got 49 K less than their total, on Saturday, & 91 K less yesterday. Hmmm. I get the numbers by blowing it the graphs & counting pixel by pixel, but it could be off.
Has anyone got their digital data ?
At time of Posting, Pips Displacement, still stuck on 9-11.
Jimbo says:
September 12, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Now, I will be curious to see how R. Gates paints this year’s melt season.
____
Easy. Summer sea ice extent and area continues in the lower range set in the record year of 2007. This year saw the highest or second highest total amount of ice melt (from the March high to the September low), running very close on the heals of 2008. We had to suffer weeks on end of listening to certain folks prattle on about PIPS 2.0 data showing thick MY Ice that just wasn’t goint to melt this year…yet it did melt.
Look for more record low sea ice extent and area in the Arctic between 2011 and 2015. But the most important thing to look in the next few months is CryoSat 2 data forever changing our perspectives on sea ice thickness and therefore volume.
Alexej Buergin …:
The 2.5 million likely is My Sea Ice Outlook, August 2010 .
… It was an exercise in what an El Nino would do, IF no Clouds, like 2007
It was WRONG. But.
Next El Nino melt: 2013 (?) … same risk, same condition: IF no Clouds.
PS: Re previous post – – I was: blowing “UP” the graphs.
phlogiston says:
September 13, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Exceptionally high loss of heat energy from the Arctic open sea to space.
Periodic low Arctic ice extent is the global equivalent of a dog lolling out its tongue and panting – a way of losing excess heat.
————————–
I’m glad you agree that the extra energy is there.
Interesting theory. So you think that there is a negative feedback loop system in the arctic that radiates more heat out to space when there is more open water.
Do you have any supporting docs or research? How much additional heat do you think is radiated into space for each additional million k^2 of open water? Keeping it in joules would make it easier to related back to the extra energy that is coming in that was worked out up thread.
Jeff P says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Jeff P, remember that my super-simple estimate does not take into account increased re-radiation back into space, which is going to be a significant value. Just don’t go quoting that number or using it to justify any ideas. Same goes for anyone else. 🙂
However, if other people want to build/improve on my calculations (especially estimating increase in radiation from Earth), please advise.
-Scott
Scott says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Jeff P says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Jeff P, remember that my super-simple estimate does not take into account increased re-radiation back into space, which is going to be a significant value. Just don’t go quoting that number or using it to justify any ideas. Same goes for anyone else. 🙂
———-
Good point Scott. I should know better than to wander from my original question which held all other variables constant for the specific purpose of exploring whether or not the energy necessary to melt the arctic sea ice is available from c02 forcing alone. I run the danger of trying to build a model here rather than just exploring the range of possibilities within given concepts.
I was enticed by the theory that phlogiston presented because it is the flip side of the albedo effect. Phlogiston, I still would like to hear more about this idea. Perhaps you can put some numbers around it expressed in joules so it’s range of possible impacts could be better understood.
AJB says:
September 13, 2010 at 6:36 am
Wayne, do you think a body of water that size undergoing a massive seasonal energy exchange with geographically restricted external influence doesn’t produce its own weather to some extent? Entropy is a wonderful thing in both senses of the term.
Sure. Absolutely. It is all ruled by the physics at all scales. (now if we could just measure and understand it all ☺)
Hmmm, did the extent increase again today?
Preliminary for the 13th = 4,995,625, a drop of only 9,375 so minimum of 4,952,813
on the 10th still holding for now.
Pamela Gray says:
September 13, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Yes, and I could possibly go through a growth spurt at age 54. I eat enough, so why am I not taller? Is it possible for that to happen? In rare cases yes. But real conditions tells us it is not probable. Shouldn’t we be talking about what is probable? Going on these fantasy trips only cheapens your argument, not mine.
========================================
Repeated for effect. Well said, as always.
Chris
Jeff P says:
September 13, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Interesting analogy but flawed. It is more like if your current food intake keeps you at a steady weight and you then add 1000 calories a day to your diet and change nothing else then it is possible that over time you are going to get fat.
===================================
Talk about a flawed analogy.
There is no proof…..NONE…that CO2 increases cause runaway global warming…..or “getting fat”.
None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Throughout the historical record, CO2 rises lag temperature rises, by 700 to 800 years.
To compare a closed system like a human body who doesn’t exercise and adds two whoppers a day to their diet [they will pretty much guaranteed to get fat], to all the unknowns of Planet Earth and its Climate….is absurd.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Phil. says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:44 pm
[deletia]
I’d get a 24 hr ban were I to say something like that about you.
Feeling sorry for yourself? Oh please. Sometimes you can be so petulant.
Pamela Gray said
September 13, 2010 at 12:49 pm
I visit Arctic weather, jet stream, and oceanic current conditions regularly from which I can make an educated guess as to what the sea ice will do that day under those conditions.
If you ask me what I think happened or what the driver was this year, I will give you a synopsis of the natural conditions that occurred this summer and you will also easily see my point.
_____________________________________________________-
Can you state what the driver was for this year for a minimum between 2008 and 2009 Pamela? Also, can you give an estimate for what the ice extent will be tomorrow and why?
I take your point about looking at natural short term fluctuations and day to day changes, but they all add up over time to provide the trend, whether it be AGW connected or not. It does seem that the Arctic summer extent has been decreasing since the 1950’s in this latest cycle, do you have any explanation for that? Feel free to provide equations and mechanisms.
Andy
Is anyone here able to tell me the tidal range in the arctic region/North Pole through the year-with particular reference to neap and spring tides?
tonyb
Jeff P says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:38 pm
phlogiston says:
September 13, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Exceptionally high loss of heat energy from the Arctic open sea to space.
Periodic low Arctic ice extent is the global equivalent of a dog lolling out its tongue and panting – a way of losing excess heat.
————————–
I’m glad you agree that the extra energy is there.
Its only extra energy in the ocean surface, not the ocean as a whole. I’m thinking about the el Nino system as an example. No-one can deny that in the periodic el Nino events, normal upwelling of cold water in the east Pacific is interrupted, and the unmixed surface water warms in the sun. The sun shines just the same in el Nino years as in all other years – more or less. Its just that in el Nino years the unmixed surface Pacific water heats up more than normal – equally the cold deep water that otherwise would be warmed at the surface, stays deep and cold. So there is no net gain of heat in the ocean.
Some videos on Bob Tisdale’s blog show very nicely how gyres of warmed surface water rotate around the Pacific clockwise from the tropics eventually to the Arctic, so the heat is transported northward to the Arctic. And there under conditions of cold air and large areas of open water (small ice extent) the heat loss to space will be increased.
But I dont know the maths of radiation etc well enough to supply any mathematic formulation or estimate of the quantities of heat involved.
tonyb says:
September 14, 2010 at 12:02 am
Is anyone here able to tell me the tidal range in the arctic region/North Pole through the year-with particular reference to neap and spring tides?
tonyb
Not for the Arctic as a whole but I can provide one anecdote. The world record for the largest tidal range between low and high tides is held by an estuary in Alaska. (In second place is the Bristol Channel, UK.)
Phlogistan:
I’m a big fan of your comments (always learning something new from them).
Just thought I would mention the role the trade winds play in el nino and la nina. Normally the trade winds blow warm water west across the Pacific, which creates a huge pool of warm water to pile up along the equator towards Asia. When the trade winds fail for an extended period, this permits this huge pool of warm water to come crashing back to the east, spreading out and releasing tremendous amounts of energy to the atmosphere in the process. So yeah, it seems like el nino must have some cooling effect on the earth.
I have not seen the explanation why the trade winds fail for extended periods.
“So yeah, it seems like el nino must have some cooling effect on the earth.”
After temporarily heating up the atmosphere, much of this heat is lost to space so the net effect of an el nino is to decrease the amount of heat on earth (including both OHC and atmospheric heat).
R. Gates says:
“…..
My main point of skepticism of AGW relates to 2 main areas: solar effects not related to Total solar irradiance (such as magnetic field strength and length of the solar cycle), and longer term ocean cycles such as the PDO. There is some remote chance that either of these acting alone or in combintation with some other cycle, could be creating the illusion of the kinds of effects we’d expect to get from AGW. This is where my 25% skeptical side comes in, but being 75% “warmist” I obviously think that AGW is more likely, and nothing that happened this year with the Arctic Sea ice has changed that stance.”
Although others here have posted that Arctic scientists have pretty much discounted the impact of AMO and PDO cycles on the Arctic Ice pack, I still cannot logically see how this could be true.
I think SST’s clearly are a major player in determining the amount of ice lost each melt season and it is clear that negative PDO and AMO phases do eventually deliver cooler SST’s to the Pacific and Atlantic Side of the the Arctic respectively. However they haven’t both been negative at the same time for any significant length of time since the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
If drift patterns, governed by wind and ocean currents, determine where ice goes, then climate cycles such as the PDO and AMO determine the SST temps the ice will be drifiting into.
In 2007 though we saw both positive PDO and AMO values. Whichever way the ice went it was going to encounter above average SST’s
But the PDO did go negative September 07 to June 09. In this time the extent increased as the ice on the Pacific side encountered cooler SST’s but area remained fairly static as you would expect (pointed out by R Gates in an earlier post).
One other thing. I’ve noticed as well when looking at SST anomalies in the Arctic Circle, is that when you look closely you’ll see cool anomalies in an area right up until the point the ice goes in that area then it instantly turns to a warm anomaly.
This tends to make me ponder whether differences in the timing of ice loss for an area might not distort the SST anomalies for that area. It makes little sense to me that you can have cool anomalies on the ice edge , then as soon as the ice is gone the anomaly turns warm whilst a little further out where there is change in ice coverage the anomaly remains cool.
Just an observation, would be happy if someone can explain to me why this is so. As it stands I have a certain level of suspicion regarding SST anomaly measurements in areas which lose the ice during the melt season.
For this season, the PDO was positive during Winter and through to Spring. El-nino conditions were present and as a result the SST’s on the pacific side of the Arctic were above average. This meant that when conditions in July sent ice drifting into the Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberain Seas we were always eventually going to see a lot of ice lost in August. In hindsight this should have been obvious but as this was my first year monitoring the ice I’ll plead ignorance.
I still think 2011 will be much more favourable. The current La-nina conditions which continue to strengthen will result in lower SST’s in the Pacific side of the Arctic Circle. The spanner in the works would be a counter clockwise drift pattern sending a lot of ice out the Fram Strait whilst the AMO remains positive and SST’s on that side remain above average.
” R. Gates says:
September 13, 2010 at 4:07 pm
I never forecast 2.5 million sq. km for 2011. Please stop this nonsense.”
“R. Gates says:
February 9, 2010 at 11:28 am
Prediction: Summer sea ice minimum of Sept. 2010 will be lower than 2009 or 2008, but not as low as 2007. However, 2011 summer arctic sea ice minimum will be at a record low of somewhere around 2.5 million sq. km.”
You write too many comments, much too many, and many are too long. If you would limit yourself to what is essential, it would unclog this blog and help your memory.
“Phil. says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:44 pm
‘Alexej Buergin says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:21 am
I thought the poor man was just mixing up the numbers 3 and 4.’
I’d like an apology for you insulting remark too, I’d get a 24 hr ban were I to say something like that about you.”
What I said was mainly a joke about myself; but I would understand if “the poor man” (R. Gates) might be offended. Should that be the case, I apologize to him.
I have no idea why I owe you an apology. You seem to be the type than can dish it out but not take it.
In February you were the only one to forecast a new record low for 2010. So yes, that prediction was the baddest of them all.
“jakers says:
September 13, 2010 at 10:32 am
Alexej Buergin says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:21 am
(And we were and still are talking about JAXA here, with some DMI and some ArcticROOS thrown in. US numbers are not trustworthy, UAH excepted.)
Uh, because of the conspiracy, right? And I guess the Germans are in it too…”
If you put Hansen and Serreze in one basket, Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber belong there, too, but not the University of Bremen or the Wegener Institute. But you might add CRU and MeteoSwiss:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/swiss-homogenization/
Alexej Buergin says:
September 14, 2010 at 3:42 am
“Phil. says:
September 13, 2010 at 12:44 pm
‘Alexej Buergin says:
September 13, 2010 at 5:21 am
I thought the poor man was just mixing up the numbers 3 and 4.’
I’d like an apology for you insulting remark too, I’d get a 24 hr ban were I to say something like that about you.”
What I said was mainly a joke about myself; but I would understand if “the poor man” (R. Gates) might be offended. Should that be the case, I apologize to him.
I have no idea why I owe you an apology. You seem to be the type than can dish it out but not take it.
You don’t appear to get it, I’m not allowed to dish it out because of the biased moderation whereas you are allowed to call me a fool without even a snip.[what bias? . . mod]
Still no JAXA final number for yesterday, but CT area increased a whopping 47318 km^2 (extent according to CT increased a trivial amount). Given that, I’ll raise my confidence to having reached the minimum to 70% (and I’ll even ponder a guess that we’ll see the final JAXA number change to show a slight gain.)
-Scott
Please, moderator, let Phil. dish it out as much as he wants to (but only concerning me, of course, not anybody else). Because even more enjoyable than winning is watching the antics of a sore looser.
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 13th: 5008750.
15-day: http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5229/15day20100913.png
7-day: http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/6070/7day20100913.png
2010 Minimum = 4952813, Sept 10 (To Date)
2009 Minimum = 5249844, Sept 13
2008 Minimum = 4718594, Sept 17
2007 Minimum = 4267656, Sept 16
2006 Minimum = 5781719, Sept 14
2005 Minimum = 5315156, Sept 22
2004 Minimum = 5808750, Sept 19
2003 Minimum = 6032031, Sept 18
2002 Minimum = 5646875, Sept 09 (No Data 12-21).
RGates and others may not understand what I am trying to say. Presenting information on extent, area, or trends, as if that alone explains it, is data rich but information poor. Daily weather charts, which I read, along with satellite observations of forecast accuracy, are very informative. Over time, weekly, monthly, and seasonal trends can be fairly explained, using data rich and information rich posts, as in the following example:
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2010/august
But to simply state what the data “did”, as RGates does in a previous comment:
“Easy. Summer sea ice extent and area continues in the lower range set in the record year of 2007. This year saw the highest or second highest total amount of ice melt (from the March high to the September low), running very close on the heals of 2008. We had to suffer weeks on end of listening to certain folks prattle on about PIPS 2.0 data showing thick MY Ice that just wasn’t goint to melt this year…yet it did melt.
Look for more record low sea ice extent and area in the Arctic between 2011 and 2015. But the most important thing to look in the next few months is CryoSat 2 data forever changing our perspectives on sea ice thickness and therefore volume.”
…is information poor, in my opinion. Saying that, for example, 2009 is greater than 2010, does not provide the why. Daily Arctic weather systems analysis does and is provided by several websites. So AndyW, If you want this information, read it for yourself. I’m not your mother.
Here is another very good forecasting web site. Some of the links are broken, but you can still get wave and wind charts, which can be used to estimate where the ice will be going.
http://www.aari.nw.ru/index_en.html
Alexej Buergin says:
September 14, 2010 at 3:23 am
” R. Gates says:
September 13, 2010 at 4:07 pm
I never forecast 2.5 million sq. km for 2011. Please stop this nonsense.”
“R. Gates says:
February 9, 2010 at 11:28 am
Prediction: Summer sea ice minimum of Sept. 2010 will be lower than 2009 or 2008, but not as low as 2007. However, 2011 summer arctic sea ice minimum will be at a record low of somewhere around 2.5 million sq. km.”
You write too many comments, much too many, and many are too long. If you would limit yourself to what is essential, it would unclog this blog and help your memory.
______
I do stand corrected. I did make that comment last February, and was so certain I didn’t because it is not my belief. I didn’t elaborate completely what I intended at the time, and since that time I’ve made many more comments stating that between 2011 and 2015 I expect to see the minimum drop to the 2.5 million sq. km. range. It could happen next year, but I think the probability of it happening between 2011-2015 gets progressively higher as we approach Solar Max in 2013. In terms of actual numbers of posts here on WUWT, I would guess that you exceed me by a fair amount, but I always appreciate your perspectives, and I’ll make sure to keep my posts shorter.
While a year by year recovery since the low of 2007 is not following a nice neat path, I would have to say that the death spiral appears to have stalled. One of the reasons I think this might be the case is the amount of wind driven compaction that has occurred both in 2007 and in most years following. The ice built up between Alaska and Russia quite heavily and was slow to melt compared to other years. The waters there have also been anomalously cold, adding to the slowed melt in the beginning. I also think because of the dipole, ice was not spread out as much as in other years due to the more northerly wind direction keeping the slide shoot out Fram Strait fairly slow but also pushing the edge further north than usual. However, the retention of ice has also been hampered by that same dipole which tends to bring warmer temps into the Arctic. And finally, incoming currents from the Atlantic have been warm, melting the edge along the ice that was wind driven towards the pole.
AJB says:
September 14, 2010 at 7:37 am
2010 Minimum = 4952813, Sept 10 (To Date)
2009 Minimum = 5249844, Sept 13
2008 Minimum = 4718594, Sept 17
2007 Minimum = 4267656, Sept 16
2006 Minimum = 5781719, Sept 14
2005 Minimum = 5315156, Sept 22
2004 Minimum = 5808750, Sept 19
2003 Minimum = 6032031, Sept 18
2002 Minimum = 5646875, Sept 09 (No Data 12-21).
I’m just curious what the perception of the “trend” would have been if the 2009 minimum had come in at, say, 4,850,000 or some other number between the 2008 minimum and what is more and more looking like the 4,952K minimum this year.
My guess is that it would be perceived as decent evidence of a possible reversal of the long term downtrend, whereas the strong year last year and the failure to top it this year is viewed less so. That is, we had a quite strong recovery in 2009, but don’t top it this year so the argument for a trend reversal is diminished somehow. Not sure this makes sense, but that seems to have been the result.
(Like R. Gates, I tend toward long posts so stop reading here if they annoy you.)
My personal experience with weather/climate correlates quite well with the readings in the Arctic, by the way. Here in SW Wisconsin, I’ve shoveled snow off a pretty large driveway each winter for about 15 years now and I spend a fair amount of time cutting wood during the winter as well. Up until the winter of 2007/08, winters were getting progressively milder, to the point that I began to fear we’d start experiencing an in-migration of population if it improved much further. Winters had become quite mild with snowfalls few and far between. Sap would run several times in box elder trees during the winter months when cutting them down.
That changed dramatically in 2007 when winter brought snow early that stayed late and the number of snowfalls increased. I hoped it was “weather” and would return to trend in 2008, but alas, we’ve now had three winters in a row that I would view as the “old-time Wisconsin winters.” Another four or five years of this and I’ll start figuring that we’re going through a climate change around here, at least in the wintertime. The deer population has suffered too, as the solid snow covering has had an icy crust under it each year that persisted during the entire winter making it difficult for the herd to forage. Wisconsin hunting statistics are now reflecting the drop.
Those two ships attempting to circumnavigate the Arctic had better pick up speed.
Ah poor Grant Foster over at Closed Mind cannot post critical comments, what a CSP. All I said was (on his “Death Spiral” post) “Wow, a linear trend prediction on July26th! Tamino, put out your prediction for 2011 and if you are within 5% we all can be impressed.” That is why blogs like this flourish and ones like his remain boring and unpopular, echo chambers are like that.
AJB says:
September 14, 2010 at 7:37 am
A few corrections for you AJB:
2008 min was 4707813 on Sept 9
2007 min was 4254531 on Sept 24
2004 min was 5784688 on Sept 11
If you’re using a Excel, I suggest using the “min” function to pop out the minimum value. This won’t give you the day, so I suggest going into the data (hopefully organized in some way) and bolding/changing the color of the text of the minimum value so you can easily distinguish it and know what day it happened. Some other programs (such as LabView) can give you the corresponding day along with the minimum value simultaneously (does anyone know how to make Excel do that?…it’d save me time in the future at my job).
By the way, with confirmed JAXA number is indeed a bit higher than yesterday’s, but I’ll leave my confidence of having reached the minimum at 70% (what’s the deal with the downtick in DMI’s 30% extent?).
-Scott
NORSEX must have figured out that their 15% extent measurement was 1,000,000 km2 above everyone else and decided to rectify the situation the easy way. Just put it there. (Just kidding, but does anyone have an explanation for the graph below?)
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Rod
Richard Sharpe says:
September 13, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Hmmm, did the extent increase again today?
Yes you’re quite right, it did (current level 13 Sept, 5.009 M km2).
I think the NANSEN arctic-roos site:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
is demonstrating a failure of some sorts in the
Daily Updated Time series of Arctic sea ice area and extent derived from SSMI data provided by NERSC.
Pamela Gray says:
September 14, 2010 at 9:33 am
Those two ships attempting to circumnavigate the Arctic had better pick up speed.
Icebreaker escort, I hope, or at least rescue at the ready, standing by in case of mishap.
With all these hyped reports of an ice-free Arctic piece of cake sailing, the door is wide open to disaster.
Where are they currently?
rbateman says:
September 14, 2010 at 10:17 am
I think the NANSEN arctic-roos site:
and
Rod Everson says:
September 14, 2010 at 9:48 am
We’ve finally hit it…the tipping point. Ice is just falling off a cliff because it was so thin. It’ll all be gone in just a few days! It was indeed worse than we thought!
Seriously though, I think it is just noise in the “unfiltered” results and will be corrected within a day or two…
-Scott
The continuing trend of losing sea ice is consistent with a thawing planet. The sudden expansion of ice 11,500 years ago was an anomaly, and followed a very warm period. Regardless of the increase or decrease in solar activity, regardless of the increase or decrease in CO2, the planet will continue to thaw until it reaches the thermal equilibrium seen as recently as 65 million years ago.
The ice may suddenly advance again if the Atlantic temperatures become too hot, thus causing an Arctic hurricane, as it apparently did 11,500 years ago. Right now, we have nothing to worry about in terms of a sudden advance of ice (glaciers covering all of Eastern Canada and Northern Europe).
Even if the Sun is entering a new deep minimum, and temperatures drop worldwide causing the temporary expansion of ice at the poles, the ice advance will not cause the glaciers that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the past. Within 150 years, the Sun will return to the activity seen during the second half of the 1900s, and global thawing will continue to melt the poles, which is natural for the Earth (as evidenced by the extensive peat bogs in the permafrost).
Global thawing is not global warming in the sense of the planet being cooked. It is simply the gradual return of heat to the polar regions; a process which has been in progress for nearly 65 million years because of the meteor associated with the Chicxulub crater.
(Fishnski quote yesterday)
..I’m thinking that there will be a very small increase when we get the new #’s & i’m also looking for a good increase in snowcover in the next couple of weeks to fuel the cold factory..think positive (gains)..!
The Rocket Sturgeon strikes again!…Thought I was wrong till the update..didn’t ya?!!
Boost your confidence level to 100% Scott..its over Johnny…
R. Gates said:
“I do stand corrected.”
This behaviour is the correct path forward.
An understanding of the basic dynamic of the AGW situation, in that the proponents thereof are never in a position to be forced to provide this response to almost any contention they make is the very heart of the problem with AGW.
Skepticism rules.
It looks like Nansen just keyed in all the 2007 data for today’s date … dropped all the graphs straight down in area and extent to the 2007 levels in 12 hours flat.
That’s a heck of a good trick … Better than Mike’s trick even …
WUWT?
fishnski says:
September 14, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Do you really want snow on the ice to insulate it from the cold air above? Won’t that additional layer of insulation retard the growth of the ice below?
Nope, not yet. The behavior of the ice in 2005 late in September is still looming large. Can’t be overly confident.
-Scott
This is the graph that I’m inclined to think has the greatest bearing on the state of the sea ice the following summer. Since 2000, and particularly since 2005, the period from September through January has been much warmer than the 1958-2002 average. So far, that’s true this year as well, though only modestly.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Until the re-freeze season starts to experience colder than normal temps, or at least average ones, it seems to me that it will be unlikely that we will see minimum ice extents as high as were typical in the 80’s and 90’s. (Note that this says nothing about man causing it, however. It just seems logical to me that significantly warmer than normal temps will lead to less ice volume at the peak and therefore make lower minimums more likely, regardless of all the other factors in play.)
I meant the landmass snow cover Scott..The albedo effect I think you all call it. The faster we can get the ground to turn white especially over in Siberia where the “Real” cold is generated the sooner we can seal the deal (Ice cap).
I’m just hoping for another great snow season especially up in the WV Alpps..this is the only reason why I watch the Ice. I mean..if you don’t love snow & cold, who’s afraid of a little Global warming?..I would say BRING IT ON!!!
Scott says:
September 14, 2010 at 9:47 am
You are correct. Sorry everyone, did it in too much hurry.
Preliminary for the 14th = 4982969. 4952813 on Sept 10 still holding.
AJB says:
September 14, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Yep, a preliminary loss of 25781 km^2. Not too bad…I’m still placing a 70% confidence on already having hit the minimum. This time of year seems to have revised extents be higher than preliminary extents, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the final number is above 4990000 km^2.
I’ll be interested to see the area numbers after yesterday’s gain of nearly 50000 km^2, I’m guessing extent losses will be almost entirely due to compaction instead of melt, meaning it won’t matter much in terms of long-term condition of the ice.
-Scott
Pamela Gray said:
September 14, 2010 at 8:47 am
While a year by year recovery since the low of 2007 is not following a nice neat path, I would have to say that the death spiral appears to have stalled. One of the reasons I think this might be the case is the amount of wind driven compaction that has occurred both in 2007 and in most years following. The ice built up between Alaska and Russia quite heavily and was slow to melt compared to other years. The waters there have also been anomalously cold, adding to the slowed melt in the beginning. I also think because of the dipole, ice was not spread out as much as in other years due to the more northerly wind direction keeping the slide shoot out Fram Strait fairly slow but also pushing the edge further north than usual. However, the retention of ice has also been hampered by that same dipole which tends to bring warmer temps into the Arctic. And finally, incoming currents from the Atlantic have been warm, melting the edge along the ice that was wind driven towards the pole.
_____________________________________________________
A northerly wind would push the ice edge more southerly than normal not more northerly and assist ice movement out of the Fram Straight once the melt had reached that far. Given the northerly and north Easterly wind in the Bering sea at the start of the spring season I would expect it to reduce ice extent loss then as it would be cold air of course and also in a direction resisting the extent reduction.
At least you have finally come out with something though, even though incorrect! Last time I asked you you said your laptop had problems so you could get any data. You still didn’t hazard a guess on daily extent for today though.
Andy
km^2. Not too bad…I’m still placing a 70% confidence on already having hit the minimum. This time of year seems to have revised extents be higher than preliminary extents, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the final number is above 4990000 km^2.
I’ll be interested to see the area numbers after yesterday’s gain of nearly 50000 km^2, I’m guessing extent losses will be almost entirely due to compaction instead of melt, meaning it won’t matter much in terms of long-term condition of the ice.
-Scott
I don’t even look at the DMI above 80 north anymore because I can get the air temp pic 1 to 2 days faster with the resources I have been able to gather.
Even when I posted that I thought there would be a small increase in ice extent the other day I could see a rise in temps up there..(the pam Gray effect of the arctic exhaling)….There was a little compacting going on but there was a little melt of the flash freeze new stuff also I think. The temps up there as of this morn seem to be cooling again so I don’t feel that we will see too much more loss…Maybe that is more of a hope than a belief but thats my answer & i’m sticking with it!
Scott says: September 14, 2010 at 9:43 pm
This seems as good a chocolate pipe wrench as any:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icedrift_anim/index.uk.php (switch to concentration and pan back and forth a day or two). See how that island at 180 degrees detached itself yesterday. Looks like that will now melt but refreeze is taking place elsewhere. That lobe at 17oE could still take a hammering though; I’m guessing it’s jutting out into slightly warmer currents. There’s also a slight uptick in DMI >80N temps.
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 14th: 4998594
7-day: http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6055/7day20100914.png
Dropped the 15-day, a bit pointless now.
JAXA lost yesterday ended up being pretty small in the scheme of things. CT showed another area gain (small…~3200 km^2) as well as a third straight day of extent gain.
Looking at the 30-day animation at CT (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/) makes it clear that the “core” of the Arctic ice has been strengthening for some time now, but the edges seem to be in this delicate balance right now that might easily be disrupted with some “bad” weather someplace. I’ll increase my confidence of having reached the minimum to 72.5%…the threat of weather (acting like 2005) is still too much to raise it more.
-Scott
My bad Andy. My mind said “Northerly direction means the wind was going North”. I should have said Southerly direction, which means (weirdly) just the opposite, that the wind was heading North. I have a rather literal way of thinking on my feet. A decided weakness. I have to keep telling myself that wind direction is stated not which way it is blowing, but which way it is coming FROM. Probably another typical set of vernacular references thought up by men ;>).
Say Andy, I just thought of something. Does this mean that if I say to you, “Head in a Northerly direction, you should turn South?” And men think women don’t understand directions.
Pamela Gray said:-
September 15, 2010 at 9:00 am
I should have said Southerly direction, which means (weirdly) just the opposite, that the wind was heading North.
_________________________________________
No, a southerly direction would mean the wind is heading south and so therefore is a northerly. I’m surprised you don’t know that a wind is described where it is coming from, not where it is going to, considering you claim to look at all the charts every day and therefore boasted how, day by day, the ice will react ( which you have never bothered to show, perhaps we now know why ..)
So a northerly blows from the north, the wind goes south, and in the Arctic it is likely to increase extent due to freezing and spreading. A southerly blows from the south, the wind goes north and in the Arctic it is likely to decrease extent due to compaction and melt on situe.
Andy
Here we go…preliminary JAXA number would be a new 2010 minimum – 4941094 km^2. This is part of the reason I wasn’t super-confident we’d reached the minimum yet…one day of large loss could ruin it. I’m guessing the number will be revised upward…11719 km^2 or more will keep it from the minimum, and that’s a reasonable adjustment. It’ll be a real nail-biter.
Funny it’s coming so close to going below this year’s minimum on the very day the professionals announce that the minimum was already reached.
Honestly, I think the final Sept 15 number will edge out slightly above the existing Sept 10 minimum, but we may be so close to it that another day of loss will make it go under.
-Scott
So Andy, my original phrase was correct according to your tutelage. When I said “more northerly wind direction” in my original post, it was meant by me to describe winds blowing towards the North. Which they did. While there were times that surface winds through Fram Strait reversed and blew South turning it into a fast conveyor belt (the wind was in a Southerly DIRECTION at that time), it was, compared to other years, relatively slow overall wind wise and more often than not blowing towards the North.
Are you disputing that? Do you think the wind direction was primarily Southerly and as a result, Fram Strait was a speedy conveyor belt this summer?
So we can end this little chat over tea, from now on, if anyone reads a post of mine and I say, “the wind was blowing in a Northerly direction”, I mean exactly that, it was blowing towards the North. If you want me to use a different phrase, kiss my grits.
Scott says:
September 15, 2010 at 8:35 pm
Here we go…preliminary JAXA number would be a new 2010 minimum – 4941094 km^2. This is part of the reason I wasn’t super-confident we’d reached the minimum yet…one day of large loss could ruin it. I’m guessing the number will be revised upward…11719 km^2 or more will keep it from the minimum, and that’s a reasonable adjustment. It’ll be a real nail-biter.
Funny it’s coming so close to going below this year’s minimum on the very day the professionals announce that the minimum was already reached.
Honestly, I think the final Sept 15 number will edge out slightly above the existing Sept 10 minimum, but we may be so close to it that another day of loss will make it go under.
-Scott
_____________________________________________________________
I was going to write off 2010, certainly in terms of sea area minimum, and just as certain that the extent minima had passed us by.
But looking at the PIPS vector field for ice displacements;
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/mag/2010/mag_2010091300.gif
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/mag/2010/mag_2010091400.gif
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/mag/2010/mag_2010091500.gif
Suggests that that lobe still sticking out may be compacted into the main body to a certain degree.
So maybe there is a little extra room for some minor compaction within the next few days.
Touche to you Scott!..I would have folded under the presure but you did your homework & hung tough….I was kinda shocked when I saw the updated extent map before they posted the new figures & even now the temps over on the side that is melting/compacting are generally still mild.
Along with the mild temps I checked out a SST F-cast a couple of days ago that showed very little drop in temps for the week….SOOoooo hopefully when these abnormaly warm temps over AK & ice melt area clear out we can see a good spike in extent.
Updated Sept 15 number still hasn’t posted, but I really do think it will come in slightly above the Sept 10 apparent minimum. The thing is, even if it does the ice will be so close to the Sept 10 value (presumably…who knows maybe we’ll see the revised number be 40k higher or something) that any more extent loss could make the difference. Regardless if it goes under or not, I see it as luck in calling it right, and what I’d really like to see is it stay slightly above the Sept 10 value so that (a) people’s overconfidence in already reaching the minimum is shown to have been a bit hazardous and my higher skepticism more warranted, but (b) that I still end up being “right” having a confidence >50% in having reached the minimum (I always want to be “right” 🙂
Note that area went through the roof today with CT showing an area increase of 68943 km^2 (though the inherent noise in area might mean this isn’t that important). If area does scream up in the last half of Sept, maybe we can see the avg area in Sept hit halfway between 2007 and 2009 though. CT also showed an extent increase of 9662 km^2. That’s six days in a row of extent increase there.
-Scott
Phil. says:
September 14, 2010 at 5:19 am
You don’t appear to get it, I’m not allowed to dish it out because of the biased moderation whereas you are allowed to call me a fool without even a snip.[what bias? . . mod]
If I were to call someone a fool it would be snipped or I would be given a time out. If one of the sceptical group here calls me a fool it’s not even snipped. I complained about someone on here using an insulting remark with an asterisk to avoid filters (about someone else not me) and it was eventually removed. The poster was very indignant and called me a ‘tattletail’ and thought because he was a supporter of the surface project he should be able to abuse those who weren’t.
There is a similar editorial bias, just look at this post, there’s a prominent update announcing the further increase which followed a similar one the previous day, what happened to the updates when it went down the next day? We even have a new minimum today apparently!
Recently there were a couple of contentious threads initiated by Stevegoddard that were terminated by Anthony, in one case he said that the post was poorly researched and wrong (the source of the argument), but no Update appeared at the top of the page.
Anthony Watts says:
September 1, 2010 at 8:07 am
Thanks to all for a spirited debate. GISS is not without it’s problems, but at least this one has been put to bed. Mr. Goddard made a mistake, and should have investigated complaints earlier.
You have to read through to the 325th post to find confirmation that the original post was wrong!
[Reply: Compare that voluntary correction with alarmist blogs like RealClimate, which not only never admit their numerous errors, but censor out all uncomfortable comments. ~dbs, mod.]
Goodness Phil.
I stand corrected by myself. When a wind is easterly, it blows from the east towards the west (I have used such a term several times referring to the Easterlies to talk about the trade winds that blow from the East to the West around the equator). However, when the wind is eastward, it blows from the west towards the east.
The suffix is what determines the direction. “Ly” means from and “ward” means towards.
So in my original comment, I should have said, “the wind was blowing in a NORTHWARD direction.
So Andy, you should have said, “a southWARD direction would mean the wind is heading south and so therefore is a northerly”. According to what I have learned from you and from my own investigation, you cannot have used the word southerly in your sentence. I guess we were both wrong and must remember to suffer the little suffixes.
Phil
I do appreciate your comments here, but I know of no other big blog that admits it got it wrong, whether it was as a headline or as the termination of an article.
RC as do the Guardian routinely censor, abuse or fail to admit they could ever be wrong. So WUWT may not be perfect but its an awful lot better than many of its competitors in owning up to mistakes.
I have suggested before that you write an article- I think you said you have no time-I am sure we would all read it with interest , why not give it a go? You might find the process enlightening
tonyb
Looks like my most recent post got it wrong…today is a new minimum by a few thousand square kilometers. Revised JAXA number is 4948438 km^2, beating out the Sept 10 value by 4375 km^2. I’ve seen JAXA post a second revision before, but that’s a longshot.
-Scott
Pamela Gray says:
September 16, 2010 at 8:45 am
I stand corrected by myself. When a wind is easterly, it blows from the east towards the west (I have used such a term several times referring to the Easterlies to talk about the trade winds that blow from the East to the West around the equator). However, when the wind is eastward, it blows from the west towards the east.
The suffix is what determines the direction. “Ly” means from and “ward” means towards.
So in my original comment, I should have said, “the wind was blowing in a NORTHWARD direction.
So Andy, you should have said, “a southWARD direction would mean the wind is heading south and so therefore is a northerly”. According to what I have learned from you and from my own investigation, you cannot have used the word southerly in your sentence. I guess we were both wrong and must remember to suffer the little suffixes.
Yes it can be very confusing when the conventions aren’t followed, particularly one as ingrained as this one. Presumably it originated from sailors many years ago and might not seem particularly logical but we’re stuck with it!
It’s much more complicated when we’re talking about the Arctic, a South wind on one side of the pole becomes a North wind on the other side! So a southerly wind blows the seaice towards the pole but on the otherside it’s a northerly pushing ice out of the Fram!
tonyb says:
September 16, 2010 at 8:56 am
Phil
I do appreciate your comments here, but I know of no other big blog that admits it got it wrong, whether it was as a headline or as the termination of an article.
RC as do the Guardian routinely censor, abuse or fail to admit they could ever be wrong. So WUWT may not be perfect but its an awful lot better than many of its competitors in owning up to mistakes.
Well I’m not posting there so I’m not interested in what they do, were I to do so and was called a fool I’d complain there too. The Mod asked me “What bias…” so I told him.
I have suggested before that you write an article- I think you said you have no time-I am sure we would all read it with interest , why not give it a go? You might find the process enlightening
Term has just started so time will be at a premium (my course enrollment just went up by 50%)! My recollection is that Anthony’s conditions weren’t acceptable, unlike Stevengoddard I would be required to use my full name and affiliation. If that is no longer the case I’d consider it, but not right now.
Hi Phil
“Well I’m not posting there so I’m not interested in what they do, were I to do so and was called a fool I’d complain there too. The Mod asked me “What bias…” so I told him.”
Come on admit it-you like us here really. Glad to hear your course is going well. Presumably you’ll get a 50% wage increase. 🙂
As for that article, it would be interesting to hear your perspective. I can’t comment on the full name and affiliation aspect, other than you must have good reason not to be outed. Hope Anthony might reconsider.
I use my full name AND this acronym-nothing sinister just that my real name is extremely common.
tonyb
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 15th: 4948438. New low.
15-day: http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8535/15day20100915.png
7-day: http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/1626/7day20100915.png
Hopefully I’ve cut and paste them correctly this time 🙁
In reverse chronological order, here are my past weekly (p = 0.5 or 50% or even money chance of occurrence) Monday estimates (JAXA 2003-2010 inclusive) for Arctic sea ice extent (date, extent (km^2), standard deviation (km^2)), updated to include last Monday (9/13) and today (9/15);
9/15/2010,4.923E6,0.026E6 (today’s estimate)
9/13/2010,4.960E6,0.032E6
9/6/2010,4.869E6,0.054E6
8/30/2010,4.916E6,0.091E6
8/23/2010,4.898E6,0.152E6
8/16/2010,4.835E6.0.215E6
8/9/2010,4.812E6,0.267E6
8/2/2010,4.681E6,0.332E6
7/26/2010,4.587E6.0.360E6
7/19/2010,4.493E6,0.418E6
7/12/2010,4.271E6,0.476E6
7/5/2010,3.973E6,0.534E6
6/21/2010,3.886E6,0.646E6
6/28/2010,4.048E6,0.711E6
6/14/2010,4.057E6,0.716E6 (Time zero ~ midpoint of melt season or ~ three months before expected minimum)
Quite consistent over the past six weeks or so, so much so, that the average (8/9 to 9/13 or six weeks) is 4.882E6 km^2 (1.35% below the current minimum).
Date of minima is the same for all estimates 9/19/2010 (the same as it ever was).
From my amaturist prospect I’m seeing the Real climb starting mon/tue of next week..Are we having fun yet??
& amaturish Writing skills…thats my PROSPECTIVE….
fishnski says:
September 16, 2010 at 2:23 pm
From my amaturist prospect I’m seeing the Real climb starting mon/tue of next week..Are we having fun yet??
_____________________________________________________________
Using a 15-day moving average least squares fit shows 2005 and 2007 as the last to rise out of the well, as it were. Both occured right around the dates you suggest, September 20-21, so unless something highly unusual happens weather-wise, I too would expect to see some major movement upwards starting in that same time frame. Ice area is already on the upswing.
Preliminary JAXA extent shows another brutal loss. New preliminary extent is 4892813 km^2. Not enough to discuss it now though.
-Scott
Preliminary for the 16th = 4892813, a further loss of 55,625.
There has been a brutal High presure system sitting over AK combined with a low over on the Russian/Siberian side that has been pumping in warm air thru the bering straits & off a record heated AK for awhile now & thats been the problem.
Like I posted earlier,That weather set up will ease off by the end of this weekend & is why I thought that we could get back into Ice growing by mon/tue….its gotta stop (crying,bummed out funny face)!!…Oh..the main problem is the fact that Scott Jinxed the Comeback!(angry/Smiling funnyface)
AJB says:
Preliminary for the 16th = 4892813, a further loss of 55,625.
Looks like Bastardi nailed it.
The Arctic is playing late season tricks here and those who called the low earlier this week will need a bit of revision in their outlook. I suppose I should pop over to Steve Goddard’s site to see how he is spinning this…but on second thought, nope, I can pretty well figure that one. It’s all the strange winds, high pressure, etc. etc. etc. Never of course perhaps realizing that pressure system and the differential winds that come form them are just another form of energy here on Earth, and AGW is of course ultimately about an energy imbalance. It doesn’t have to show up just as temperature all the time.
I think this season shows why, at some point in the not too distant future, we could actually see the “summer” low not come in until early October even. More open water equals more residual heat equals a more prolonged melt season.
2008’s low doesn’t currently seem to be in jeopardy of falling to 2010, though this last little bump down has made things a bit interesting. Looks like the folks behind PIOMAS, with the mid-summer prediction of 4.7-4.9 million sq. km. should be congratulated this year…
The metric used here is extent via JAXA, so the losses in JAXA definitely count for the evaluation here.
But if anyone is wondering, CT showed another area gain yesterday (16324 km^2) and even an extent gain (11280 km^2). Anyone know why CT’s extent has shown 6 days in a row of gain while JAXA’s last 3 days are losses?
Just more of the numbers intrigue…I love it, it makes for great discussion!
-Scott
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 16th: 4890938. New low.
15-day: http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/3284/15day20100916.png
7-day: http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/7746/7day20100916.png
Lobe at 170E still vulnerable. IMHO, expect further substantial losses yet.
Scott says:
September 17, 2010 at 8:57 am
Just more of the numbers intrigue…I love it, it makes for great discussion!
Chocolate pipe wrenches are best eaten, not used as micrometers 🙂 CT’s animation implies major compaction is taking place, leaving the large lobe at 170E increasingly vulnerable to what I assume are still warmish currents in that region. Anyone know where chocolate SST and current indicators are on offer? Plain chocolate preferred.
I read somewhere that it is better for the Ice to freeze slowly as in opposite of a flash freeze..any truth to that?..+ can all this warmth coming into the arctic caused by the weather set up I mentioned in my last post help or hurt the long term ice health..I mean, is there a burning off of heat right now that will help make it easier for the SST to become User friendly for ice formation down the road?..Inquiring minds want to know..
Scott says : CT showed … even an extent gain (11280 km^2).
Can you tell us where Cryosphere hides its Extent Numbers ? All I get is an Archive that ends before 2010.
DOWN: DMI*, NSIDC, JAXA*, NATICE*, Nansen Area (* 3 new Lows).
Even: Bremen & ROOS-Extent extent even.
UP Cryo Area (4th straight day, yet Nansen down last 3). Both above 2010 Low (by 112, 72K ).
TOPAZ Forecast Page, shows all 4 types: AMSR/SSMI for Area/Extent: http://arctic-roos.org/forecasting-services/topaz/topaz-model-forecast
>> Both Areas Up. … both Extents Down
Total: Extents: 6 DOWN, 2 tie
Total Areas: 3 UP, 1 down.
What we are seeing is the Sea Surface temp fighting the Air temp. And we are talking a 20-to-50 degree fight ! (Fahrenheit).
Cold air is causing 1/10th-Inch ice to form where SOME ice is keeping the surface Cold – – thus converting 20% to 100% which affects Area, but not Extent. Meanwhile, High Winds break thin stuff up, while Behring Strait Water has hit & is melting the “arm” stretching towards East Siberia. And only 3 days of Sun left.
Preliminary JAXA 15% for 17th = 4,832,813, a further loss of 58,125. New low.
As AJB just said, 4832813 km^2 for a new low…rapidly approaching 2008 at this pace. This is getting really interesting. Looking at CT’s animation, the “core” is really getting solid but many of the edges are being compacted while the lobe/peninsula has turned into the island and is melting away.
While I was skeptical of having reached the minimum, I didn’t expect it to go below 4.85e6 km^2 at all…and I really thought the peninsula/lobe was going to pull through. It looks like the few holes in the “main” section of remaining ice have all gotten above 15% concentration and are now added into extent, so the remaining losses at the edges are no longer being counteracted by this. At least that’s my hypothesis. NSIDC called the minimum with the safety net of having a moving average to catch them…but even they may get hammered by this activity. It’s like 2005 all over again (at least in terms of extent).
-Scott
Scott says:
September 17, 2010 at 8:34 pm
As AJB just said, 4832813 km^2 for a new low…rapidly approaching 2008 at this pace. This is getting really interesting. Looking at CT’s animation, the “core” is really getting solid but many of the edges are being compacted while the lobe/peninsula has turned into the island and is melting away.
While I was skeptical of having reached the minimum, I didn’t expect it to go below 4.85e6 km^2 at all…and I really thought the peninsula/lobe was going to pull through. It looks like the few holes in the “main” section of remaining ice have all gotten above 15% concentration and are now added into extent, so the remaining losses at the edges are no longer being counteracted by this. At least that’s my hypothesis. NSIDC called the minimum with the safety net of having a moving average to catch them…but even they may get hammered by this activity. It’s like 2005 all over again (at least in terms of extent).
-Scott
_____________________________________________________________
Scott,
I’ll ask the same question CW asked, where did you get the CT extent number(s) from, all I can find is their daily time series of ice area.
If NSIDC drops by two pixels (daily chart) it will set a new low of ~4.75E6 km^2, makes you wonder if NSIDC will eat crow if this happens and announce a new minimum. As CW states NSIDE droped slightly from the previous day. Also, I’ve been reading their chart daily and plotting the September time series, and as of late, I have to go back through the last 3-4 dailies and check/change them accordingly, and all these have been changing slightly. Kind of makes me wonder about that 5-day moving average, right now it seems more like a 7 or 9 day moving average.
About that lobe, that seems to be shrinking rapidly, it would appear that that area is a proof of concept of ice still melting vs compaction alone. It appears to be shrinking much faster than compacting, which suggests melting as the current dominant process. So maybe the compaction argument alone at this time of year (no further melting) can be shot down as a general argument for explaining extreme minimums.
I agree Scott it is very interesting. I said to Julienne over on Steve’s blog they may have called it too early. If there is another drop tomorrow their average may not help!
However I think the winds have changed in the last 12 hours so I am not convinced we will have too much of a drop tomorrow, perhaps even a rise. I can imagine being surprised again though.
Andy
R. Gates says:
September 17, 2010 at 8:44 am
The Arctic is playing late season tricks here and those who called the low earlier this week will need a bit of revision in their outlook. I suppose I should pop over to Steve Goddard’s site to see how he is spinning this…but on second thought, nope, I can pretty well figure that one.
=======================
Ah, there’s no need to pop over there, R. You can “figure out” how to spin it yourself, as you always do.
A true scientist would just be trying to gather data….not force conclusions.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
OMG OMG OMG….chicken little the sky is falling…
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
I guess no one knows the answer to my Flash freeze Question..Anyway..The best I can tell is that “the Lobe” is within an area with SST & air temps no higher than 32 with the stem in the Freeze..
Okay, this is embarrassing…
Everyone should disregard everything I’ve said about CT’s extent the last few days. I was looking at the area average value (which is close to extent right now) and got confused and thought it was extent. I certainly didn’t always think that…I used to just ignore that column. Don’t know when I got confused here, but clearly I’ve totally screwed it up the last few days. Shows how little I know what I’m talking about.
On a less embarrassing note, area was up again with yesterday’s value~24000 km^2 again. Assuming I’m looking at the right column of course.
-Scott
fishnski says:
September 17, 2010 at 2:26 pm
fishnski,
I’m no expert (and may have just lost all credibility here with my extent vs avg area blunder), but I think this is more theoretical than anything. In a beaker, what you say is true – slow crystal formation provides superior solid material because impurities are excluded (they’re unfavorable thermodynamically and typically only included to a large extent kinetically). I would assume this would be especially true with salt water.
However, in practice I don’t know if this is a reality with Arctic ice. With winds and ocean currents keeping things well mixed, I would assume the ice is always loaded with impurities. It’s just a matter of scale though…comparing purity on the microscopic level vs macroscopic isn’t always straightforward.
Two examples I can think of where melt and refreeze can actually help the final product are:
1. “Rotten ice”. I’m not discussing here how much of it is up there or if it’s more than in the past, but “holey” ice with lots of air pockets should (a) melt faster with respect to volume and (b) provide more insulation for the refreeze than similar-mass dense ice in the winter.
2. “Dirty ice”. If the ice was loaded with dirt/soot/ash, it’s capable of absorbing much more radiation than normal. A complete melt (vs, say, losing 90% of the thickness in the melt season) might be better here because the contaminant will then sink into the water and the new ice will be a superior product.
Just my thoughts,
-Scott
Scott,
Thanks for clearing up the confusion, but I can’t tell you how hard I tried looking (last night) for the CT/UIUC dataset for daily Arctic sea ice extent.
The best I’ve been able to find is NSIDC’s FTP site for daily sea ice extents for 1972-2007 inclusive, but no dailies for 2008, 2009, or 2010;
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/seaice/polar-stereo/trends-climatologies/
This is one area where I’d appreciate more transparancy from NSIDC, similar to JAXA extent dailies (although even though shows daily area charts, they do not post a file of daily areas circa 2002-2010).
The same is true of Zhang’s PIOMAS model numbers (anomaly and total ice volumes).
I won’t go into the details, but both area and volume (even model numbers) would greatly aid a forecasting model of Arctic sea ice extent. And I plan on using both even if I have to reverse engineer Zhang’s chart for the JAXA era (right now I’m mixing CT/UIUC areas (y-axis) with JAXA extents (x-axis), with some very interesting results (2002-2006 vs 2007-2009 vs 2010).
Pamela Gray said:
“So Andy, you should have said, “a southWARD direction would mean the wind is heading south and so therefore is a northerly”. According to what I have learned from you and from my own investigation, you cannot have used the word southerly in your sentence. I guess we were both wrong and must remember to suffer the little suffixes.”
———–
Sorry Pam, you’re still muddled.
To go in a southerly direction means to go sort of towards the south. It’s only when the noun qualified by the adjective ‘southerly’ is ‘wind’ that the logic goes south.
Incidentally, the suffix is -erly, not -ly.
Thanks for the reply scott & don’t sweat the minor goof…Your posts are one of the 1st that I look for. I found this below….
“When surface temperature increases, the upper ocean warms and ice growth decreases. This leads to a decrease in salt rejection from new ice. The salinity of the upper ocean falls. Lower salinity and warmer water results in lower water density in the upper ocean. With fresher, less dense upper water, there is now increased stratification of ocean layers which weakens convective overturning. Less ocean heat is transported upwards. This leads to a decrease in ice melting from ocean heat. Hence we observe an increase in net ice production – sea ice increases.
While all that is a bit of a mouthful, it’s actually a simplification of the process as there are various feedbacks along the process. Warming air increases upper ocean temperature which affects air temperature through air-sea interactions. Warming temperature leads to increased precipitation which increases sea ice growth. More sea ice means less atmospheric heat can penetrate waters.”
GO FIGURE…did mr. gates write that?
Does anybody remember putting salt & ice together in the container that surrounded the “cream” in the ice cream maker…the brine mixture was better in drawing heat from the cream making it turn to ice cream faster. Gotta work on sea ice too..maybe a slow cooling helps in the Brine effect (the removal of salt from the water in the ice formation process)…my head hurts..I need a beer!….going to ck my crab pots..see y’all!
NSIDC has a new low as of today’s chart ~4.69E6 km^2 (17th) vs 4.76E6 km^2 (10th).
If that lobe at ~165E vanishes completely (thins in width or seperates completely), expect to see a very late date of minimum and an extent below 2008’s.
Looking at CT/JAXA/NSIDC/Bremen dailies (in sequence, high resolution CT’s saved to HD daily)) that lobe is indeed shrinking as well as other perimeter areas of low concentration (~120E through 225E).
In other words, I would expect to see a few more days of sea ice extent losses.
Meanwhile area continues to grow, primarily in areas that were/are already above 30% concentrations (DMI).
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 17th: 4842031. New low.
15-day: http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/676/15day20100917.png
7-day: http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/9127/7day20100917.png
Seems likely to track 2005 but may go deeper yet. Will be interesting to watch the day to day variance from here on, unlike 2005 we may see violent swings.
EFS_Junior says:
September 18, 2010 at 7:52 am
Yep, seems to be where we’re heading IMHO.
don’t get your lobe in an uproar…things are stabilizing…
91 K from 2008 .. and are my eyes decieving me or is the Sky CLEARING ?
Yeah, go to it: Ice/albedo effect: you got 2 days of Sun left.
Now 4,798,750 provisional. Not sure about death spiral, but we have some death steps at the moment on JAXA graph. Or should I say Petite Mort steps? 😉
Andy
Or should I say Petite Mort steps? 😉
=============================
No, just pretty much:
étapes variabilité naturelle.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
31 years of measuring this stuff and the AMSR-E since only 2002!
The Earth is 4.6 Billion years old and counting.
Excuse me but does anyone see the irony?
If we are going to be this chicken-little stupid [fight or flight! flight!] ….then natural selection will make sure we are not around much longer.
Sheeesh.
A species that can discover antibiotics and send people to the moon…can be this silly?
Yeah. It is a condition called cognitive dissonance.
It is real, very poorly understood condition, and might be the undoing of our august, but adolescent species.
[We’ve only been around for 200,000 years].
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
OMG OMG OMG the sky is falling!
Charles Wilson says September 18, 2010 at 10:04 pm
… you got 2 days of Sun left.
5 right at the pole, more elsewhere – http://www.athropolis.com/map8.htm
and may have just lost all credibility here with my extent vs avg area blunder
Scott, actually, your credibility went up a notch or two. Making blunders is healthy. To acknowledge them as such is even healthier.
(with Apologies to AJB for summarizing that the Sun’s disk dissappears ON the Equinox, when it takes several days to be gradually Eaten by the Earth-Demon … & thanx for the site. http://www.athropolis.com/sunrise/sun-sep.htm )
News:
+74,531.8 = Cryosphere Area Gain. So Throw in the Towel for Area ?
2009 Area Minimum Day for the Central Basin:
>>> October 8 << DMI just melted off most of the last 2 days’ Gain.
> Bremen new Min: beat 2008 (had tied before) !
> Pips’ “Fram Strait Express”: only a Narrow corridor left by the 20th..
What Next ??? ==>>
>> Clear Skies ? <<
Are you seeing what I am seeing? http://ice-map.appspot.com
Wayne Davidson’s Theory really does work ! Though it took a third longer for this La Nina to eat the clouds of the longer-lasting Modoki-type El Nino = more heat = more Clouds..
At LAST, the Clouds break.
3 whole days before Polar Sunset.
God loves his Jokes.
fishnski says:
September 16, 2010 at 2:38 pm
& amaturish Writing skills…thats my PROSPECTIVE….
…don’t you mean ‘amateurish’, and ‘perspective’? Although the second could be ‘prospectus’, if you’re offering amateurish corrections to amateurist writing…
(if you’re going to try to be the spelling police, be prepared to be policed! 😉
I also was amused by the southerly/northerly wind/direction discussion; the last comment had it right… if it’s a ‘southerly wind’ it is at least somewhat FROM the south; if it’s a ‘southerly direction’ it is at least somewhat TOWARDS the south. As a pilot, we face the same terminology confusion, and it *is* quite important for accurate communication!
Revised JAXA number for yesterday is 4813594 km^2. The losses in extent seem to be slowing. I’m confident we won’t go below 2008 now, and I even think we won’t even reach 4.75 e6 km^2. The reason for this is two-fold. First, I’m not convinced we’ll see the loss of the lobe-turned-island after all. The images from CT show that it may not be disappearing now…or at least it’s slowing. Second, even if it does melt away, it’s currently happening slow enough that gains elsewhere should soon overtake it. As Charles already mentioned, CT is showing a rapid area gain at this point, and this is very normal for this time of year. The core is freezing up and we should start to see refreezing in areas where it will actually affect the 15% extent value soon. A third point to make is that there’s not much more ice left to compress now…it’s either high-concentration or no concentration extent for the large peninsula pointing towards NE Russia.
No statistics involved with this guess (and that’s what it is), but I say we’ll see the extent minimum sometime between the 18th and the 21st, and my guess will be 4.79e6 km^2. How’s that for a long-range guess. 😉
In terms of September performance, this year correlates best with 2003 (though I haven’t run numbers to confirm that). The following table gives dates of minimum area/extent:
2003: 7th/18th
2004: 9th/11th
2005: 1st/22nd
2006: 17th/14th
2007: 8th/24th (though unlike 2005/2010, area stayed low and didn’t give a steady increase until the 21st)
2008: 9th/9th
2009: 10th/13th
2010: 9th/18th (or later)
Eyeballing it, only 2003 and 2005 showed large divergences in area vs extent performance, and 2010 looks to join the ranks.
-Scott
Yeh JPR..I skipped most of my senior year & don’t ask me how I graduated but with Hard work & doing the Jobs that.. thru the whimpyfacation of America.. only a few of us tough but Illiterate white boys could handle I have managed to build myself a very nice lifestyle..I have a ski chalet up in WV..A beach home in wrightsville beach,NC along with a 23 foot offshore boat & a 15 foot skiff that I just brought out of the water with a bushel & a half of the nicest blue crabs that you will ever see…. & a home on down at the clear water springs that feed into the gulf just north of Tampa.
As smart as everyone is here i’m sure it is no problem to figure out what i’m saying.
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
43° F | 33° F
35° F | 27° F
34° F | 31° F
32° F | 31° F
32° F | 29° F
Fog Mostly Cloudy Mostly Cloudy Mostly Cloudy Partly Cloudy
Hourly Hourly Hourly Hourly Hourly
Today is forecast to be Much Cooler than yesterday.
There is my forecast validated from a few days ago that said we would be on the climb by mon/tue(ice growth) because of the weather system that has brought record to near record temps to AK & the waters & air that have been feeding into the area that has shown the most loss in the last 5 days….I might not be able to articulate but I can figure things out..you don’t have to be a rocket scientist..you only have to be a good “Rocket Surgeon”!!
Ok..Dodo brain here again…that F-cast is for Barrow,AK..
Oh, & the JAXA extent is now back up to 4813524…The “Lobe” is hanging tough..
As already reported by Scott, confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 18th: 4813594. New low.
15-day: http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/2110/15day20100918.png
7-day: http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/4845/7day20100918.png
Sorry, busy today. Lobe looking like it may survive yet, touch and go.
Good to see that Arctic Sea Ice is in great shape, although WUWTs reports of “recovery” and “back to normal” over the past 12 months now kind of do look rather silly… Still, easy to mask it up by pointing at other people’s mistakes (like the title of this post).
Looking forward to next year’s “recovery” of Arctic Sea Ice minimum !
There is still another 4.9 million sq.km^2 of melting to go until the North Pole is ice free in summer, and after that happens we can always claim that it was not caused by AGW, but just natural variation.
Keep up the denial, Anthony ! You are doing great ! And your fanclub seems to love you for it.
REPLY: Ah yes, snark from drive by’s. Let’s revisit this conversation in a year, and please have a look at the latest sea ice news, #23, as that would be interesting too. – Anthony