NOTE: This post has several images, including two animations. Those on slower connections, please be patient while they load.
This week, I suppose the best word to describe the status of Arctic sea ice would be “uncertainty”. I alluded to this uncertainty (due to weather) in Sea Ice News 22 saying:
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.
By all indications it certainly looked like we reached a minimum, the extent data went up for three days straight and NSIDC officially called the minimum on 9/15:
The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year. It was the third-lowest extent recorded since satellites began measuring minimum sea ice extent in 1979. This year’s minimum extent fell below the 2009 minimum extent and above the minimum extents in 2008 and 2007.
Then defying even the experts, it started back down again.
The only thing that has gone down and stayed down this past week is Arctic temperature above 80°N as seen in this DMI plot:
Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
The good news is that Arctic Ice extent has not gone below the 2008 value yet, and seems to be making a slight turn up again:
Here’s a zoomed view:
Here’s the most recent JAXA data, including the preliminary Sept 19th data, which will be updated again at 8AM PST Sept 20th.
Source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
09,01,2010,5332344
09,02,2010,5304219
09,03,2010,5245625
09,04,2010,5192188
09,05,2010,5136094
09,06,2010,5093281
09,07,2010,5027188
09,08,2010,4989375
09,09,2010,4972656
09,10,2010,4952813
09,11,2010,4986406
09,12,2010,5005000
09,13,2010,5008750
09,14,2010,4998594
09,15,2010,4948438
09,16,2010,4890938
09,17,2010,4842031
09,18,2010,4813594
09, 19,2010, 4822500
Source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
The US Navy Ice Thickness forecast plot shows that we still have a lot of 2 and 3 meter thick ice, but that it is mainly concentrated near Northern Canada and Greenland:
Source: http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/
What I find most interesting though is the wind driven sea ice displacement plots. For example this one from the NAVY PIPS output:
The strongest vectors of the wind driven displacement are where the NAVY PIPS thickness plot show the greatest areas of thickness, Northern Canada near Ellesmere Island and Northern Greenland.
An overlay of the thickness and wind driven displacement vectors shows where the ice is being pushed to. The longest vectors show the greatest displacement in the direction of the arrow:
While the graphic overlay I made is not a perfect match, it is very close.
Since in the first temperature graphic from DMI, it is clear that average temperatures at 80°N and above are well below the freezing point of saltwater/seawater, which is approximately 271.15 kelvin (-2°C) See the line I’ve added below in magenta.
And that the majority of the remaining arctic ice is at 80°N or above in latitude, as seen in the PIPS map above and backed up by this map from UUIC/Cryosphere Today:
It suggests that like in 2007, wind is a more significant factor in sea ice depletion than from melting, especially this past week where the DMI temperature drop shows well below freezing point of sea ice temperature at 80°N and above.
WUWT regulars may recall I reported on this NASA JPL study that suggests winds may play a key role in pushing Arctic sea ice into lower latitudes where it melts. The author suggests winds may be the dominant factor in the 2007 record low ice extent:
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
Interestingly we can now watch this actually happen thanks to an animation of AMSER-E satellite 89Ghz sounder images. Koji Shimada of JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology ). See the animation below (note- size is 7.1 MB, this may take awhile to fully load):
If you want more detail, a full sized Video animation is available here as a flash video or here as an AVI file (highest quality 7.3 MB) A hat tip to WUWT commenter Bill and to Thomas Homer-Dixon for this video.
What is interesting about this video is that you can watch sea ice being flushed out of the Arctic sea and pushed along Greenland’s east coast, where it then finds its way into warmer waters and melts. Also note how in the lower right, in the Beaufort sea, older multiyear ice gets fractured and broken up as winds and currents stress it.
While indeed we can watch some of the Arctic sea “melt in place” during this animation in the fall of 2007, we can also see that winds and currents are a significant contributor to breaking up the sea ice and transporting it to warmer latitudes.
I’m hoping JAXA will produce a similar video for the 2010 melt season.
UPDATE: Ron de Haan reports in comments this finding below. He says “sea ice has grown”. It sure looks like thickness has increased, doesn’t it?
He notes this from Pierre Gosselin’s No Tricks Zone. Pierre writes:
But now take a look at the following chart that compares September 1 ice to September 18 ice. Which would you prefer to be standing on?
These charts are taken from: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi
Which ice looks thicker?
Don’t sweat the ice area statistics. The thickness is much greater today, and we could even say the volume is likely more. Arctic temperatures above 80°N have been colder this summer and September. The ice area will rebound quickly, of course. I projected a 5.75 million sq km min. for 2011 a couple weeks back. I’m sticking to it.
BONUS:
Finally, WUWT readers may recall that earlier in the week, I caught NOAA saying that 2010 was the “second lowest extent on record” when it wasn’t, and with the help of Dr. Walt Meier of NSIDC got them to correct that blunder.
The screencap of the NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory also had another apparent error on it. Note the ice depicted withing the red “Average Extent 1979-2009” line below.
A number of WUWT readers pointed out that the presentation was biased and it appears that the ice edge was based on a 90% or greater extent, and not the 15% everyone else in the sea ice business uses. I fired off another letter to Walt Meier on the issue, but I never heard anything concrete back from him on the issue. But, it appears the message got through one way or another.
Now have a look at that web page today:
Notice anything different? Here’s the blink comparator of the before and after sea ice extent visualization image. NOTE: You may have to click on it if not blinking in your browser.
Looks like somebody at NOAA had to fess up to the fact that what they were presenting earlier in the week was grossly biased in the way it presented Arctic sea ice extent, making it look like there was far less ice than there actually is.
Again I ask, why is it us bloggers and members of the public are the ones that have to keep pointing these things out? Maybe we should be the ones getting compensated for our time.
To the credit of the NOAA Vizualation Lab, they fixed the problems we pointed out to them, and reasonably quickly. My thanks to Dr. Walt Meier of NSIDC for his help. Compare the response this week to that of Dr. Mike Mann with his still inverted Tiljander proxies and stations with messed up latitude and longitude that are still in his supplemental data years later, after numerous people have pointed it out.
I propose a test of the ice free arctic theory. Let’s build a barrier between Greenland and Iceland to trap the ice flowing out of the basin, then see what happens to the extent numbers. Removing that pesky wind variable from the equation would certainly change the shape of those graphs!
Does anyone know if Cryostat2 is making routine measurements, so that by this time next year, we will have an accurate comparison over twelve months?
“Is the label “average sea ice extent 1979-2009″ meant to represent the average for this particular day of the year or is it meant to represent the average extent of all days over the entire period of 1979-2009? ”
Tom in Florida, in the graph will be plotted the 365 consecutive daily averages for each day of the year, calculated over the years 1979-2009. (I’m unsure of how the odd leap days are accounted for though.)
The average extent of all the days in a year would be a single yearly number — not much need for a graph there.
Interesting article in the National Post.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/20/lorne-gunter-good-news-on-polar-ice-melt-you-may-have-missed/
NASA scientists now claim ice melting rates are half of what was previously claimed.
What? NASA?
Revised JAXA number for yesterday in – 4841563 km^2…a decent gain. Looks like my speculation (near the end of the comments on Sea Ice #22) that the minimum was near was pretty accurate.
However, yesterday showed the first loss in area for quite some time. Is that just noise, or does someone have an explanation for that?
Too busy to add any more commentary than that…
-Scott
Lorne Gunter in The National Post
“Moreover, there are disputes over just how much ice is up there now and whether or not the alarmists are measuring it accurately.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/20/lorne-gunter-good-news-on-polar-ice-melt-you-may-have-missed/
“However, yesterday showed the first loss in area for quite some time. Is that just noise, or does someone have an explanation for that?”
Could be that the holes have finally finished freezing up (as is visible on sea ice concentration maps from CT and Uni Bremen), so no more compensation for area loss due to compaction on the edges? Or the protrusion in the East Siberian Sea dissolving some more.
samspade10,
The good doctor seems to be following Al Gore’s story boards and likely expects to be rewarded by NASA. Or, it could be he just isn’t very bright. Your letter of response was right on.
James Sexton says:
September 19, 2010 at 9:38 pm
…we know the arctic ice has been lower in the past, in fact, we know its been significantly lower in the last century a couple of times.
I don’t know where you get the data showing lower in the last century. Any links?
since 1953-
http://nsidc.org/sotc/images/mean_anomaly_1953-2009.png
100+ years:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
The minimum – so far – this autumn is 4.81 million sq km. OK, so that is better than 2008 (at 4.7m) but the average pre-2007 was 5.7 million.
All the indications are that the ice continues to thin. Remember that thinning ice was one of the keys to the significant collapse in 2007 (caused by the ususual synoptics, but which on their own would not have had the same effect).
Your prediction of 5.75m for 2011 sounds impressive until you realise that it would do no more than put us back to levels earlier this century. The normal minima in the last two decades of the 20th century were over 7.0 million.
Given the accelerating rate of loss each melt season, for your 5.75m to be achieved we will need either an exceptional level of ice formation this winter or an extraordinarily low rate of melt next summer. I doubt you will see either.
Nonegatives says:
September 20, 2010 at 6:25 am
I propose a test of the ice free arctic theory. Let’s build a barrier between Greenland and Iceland to trap the ice flowing out of the basin, then see what happens to the extent numbers. Removing that pesky wind variable from the equation would certainly change the shape of those graphs!
No real need. Ice moving out through the Fram Strait can be monitored by satellite. And this summer it seemed very little outflow occurred.
Günther Kirschbaum says:
September 20, 2010 at 4:43 am
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next El Niño year, especially with a sun that is moving towards sunspot maximum.
Are you and R Gates saying that, every 11 years when there is a sunspot maximum, global temperatures increase significantly and Arctic ice extent dips noticeably? Is this seen in the temperature and Arctic ice records? Will the present weak solar cycle with a lower maximum be no exception? I see no evidence or logic behind this expectation – only wishful thinking.
Confirmed JAXA 15% extent for Sept 19th: 4841563. A gain of 27969.
15-day: http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/715/15day20100919.png
7-day: http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/1612/7day20100919.png
Sorry, very busy today. Lobe at 17oE still looks vulnerable, not yet convinced we won’t see further significant loss.
What is it, phlogiston? Getting nervous already? :-p
Dr. Meier continues to impress with his rather classy demeanor.
NOAA/GISS unfortunately continue to be at a record low from the ideal average curve of scientific efficacy from 1979-present. ;P
At least they did make the correction…but sometimes it seems like they try to get out as much biased garbage as possible hoping we won’t catch it all. Within 3 days it’s normally been dumbed down to erroneous sound bite form for the sheep to consume via the usual press outlets. Perhaps contrary to the statements at various conferences of late, they should focus LESS on PR and more on science.
Günther Kirschbaum,
Is this you?
Smokey,
Is this you?
Way to be a stalker Smokey. Can’t handle the heat?
Smokey is doing his best to stop the cagw madness gunther! (classy pic of you BTW.)
Kirschbaum writes:
“Had the stalling started only 2 weeks later, we’d be looking at a new record minimum extent right now.”
Are we in a competition for drama queen? “Record minimum extent” translates as 1 maybe 2 clicks below where it is now. Could we get back to the language of science, please?
Günther Kirschbaum says:
September 20, 2010 at 11:48 am
What is it, phlogiston? Getting nervous already? :-p
No – bring it on! There is a link of 8 year pattern of temperature jumps, this cant really be stretched into 11. Solar cycles might affect climate but this is most likely over a longer timescale, no-one here except for R Gates argues for a global temperature rise at every 11 year sunspot maximum.
Barring the SSTs (which were higher than in 2008 and 2009, but not higher than in 2007), the absence of the Arctic Dipole Anomaly in July and the first half of August – bringing cloudiness, low temperatures and the stalling of the Beaufort Gyre and Transpolar Drift Stream -> spreading the ice out – is the main reason that 2010 is in a virtual tie for second place with 2008 ONLY.
During July 2007 had an average daily melt of almost 40K higher than 2010, and 10K higher during the first 2 weeks of August. Had the stalling started only 2 weeks later, we’d be looking at a new record minimum extent right now.
This is a classic example of special pleading “if it wasnt for the weather we had in July, we would have had our death spiral…”. Just a little earlier R Gates was joking about Steve Goddard “he attributes the low minimum and September losses to wind patterns – but this too is just an energy phenomenon caused by global warming”. You cant have it both ways. Neither July nor September were “just weather”, it all has a cause and pattern. Neither side called it right since no-one really understands it sufficiently.
It is you, not the month of July, that is stalling.
Günther Kirschbaum says: September 20, 2010 at 4:43 am
Are you standing in for R Gates?
phlogiston says:
September 20, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Solar cycles might affect climate but this is most likely over a longer timescale
There was a consistent meme on here last year and earlier (and still popping up a bit) that “it’s all the sun”. Spencer, Svensmark and other solar physicist types were the heroes of the day. Wonder what happened to that.
Günther Kirschbaum says: September 20, 2010 at 4:43 am
And if the ice isn’t as thick as some people are fervently hoping, an ice-free Arctic (ie below 1 million square km extent) can’t be ruled out either. And then hopefully we can start discussing potential consequences, instead of wasting energy in denying the obvious.
Are you fervently hoping an ‘ice-free’ Arctic will ‘prove’ AGW?
@Jakers
The “sun meme” is still here, its just getting a little more nuanced, e.g. Paul Vaughan’s posts on SCL’.