After a false start that fooled even the experts, it appears that sea ice has turned the corner, for real this time. NSIDC issued an update this week:
Update: 21 September 2010
Although ice extent appeared to reach a minimum on September 10, rising afterwards for three straight days, it has subsequently declined even further. NSIDC scientists are closely monitoring the ice extent and will provide another update on the data, as conditions develop.
Our season-end announcement in October will provide the final numbers for the minimum extent, as well as the monthly data for September, which scientists use for establishing long-term trends.
This is confirmed by the other sources:
What is of renewed interest though is what is going on in Antarctica:
While the Antarctic Ice never dipped below normal, the dip itself illustrates what I alluded to in Sea Ice News #22:
While the vagaries of wind and weather can still produce an about-face…
And just like the dip in the Arctic, the dip in the Antarctic is weather related, and is now rebounding with a change in weather.The sea ice on the edge of the Antarctic continent can be affected by winds and weather patterns in the same way as Arctic ice.
Speaking of weather, according to DMI the temperature in the Arctic continues to plummet:
Though, we may see some temperature rebound after the first or second week of October, as the Arctic Oscillation ensemble forecast calls for the AO to go positive then:
More on the impact of the AO in this graphic here (PDF)
And as we see in this CT comparison, the ice is refreezing rather quickly in the month of September:
Click to enlarge. Notice how the areas of lower concentration have disappeared.
Later this week, I’ll do a recap on who forecasted what and how the final tally looked.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Unprecedented!
I’m waiting for revelations of “Hansen” adjustments to these charts as well..
rbateman says:
September 26, 2010 at 11:44 am
Did you even read the text of my comment? I said that area started increasing at that time…aka refreeze. However, extent dropped later on due to compaction and/or melting at the edges.
Multiple databases showed extent to drop after the 10th, so I don’t know what computer problems you’re referring to.
There was a bit of melt at some of the edges, but it was far overshadowed by refreezing of the core. Thus, area increased like I said. The decrease in extent had little to do with the melting.
For extent, R^2 for JAXA extent (2010 vs other years):
2008 = 0.765
2003 = 0.641
2007 = 0.575
2006 = 0.504
(the rest are all below 0.5)
So it looks like there is some correlation to 2007’s extent after all.
Area correlations in September are particularly interesting. To date, 2010 is correlating with 2009 at R^2 = 0.622, with the several years immediately before that being lower. Going way back, 1983 shows the best correlation at a robust R^2 = 0.818. I wonder if that will hold throughout the rest of the month. If so, we can expect an area of 3528061 km^2 for Sept 30. I’m guessing we’ll see a much higher number than that (we could see that number posted for today even), so I expect this correlation to degrade a bit in these last few days of Sept.
-Scott
EFS_Junior says:
September 26, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Again, what glitch?
Nice circular reason to not look.
Are you telling me you weren’t looking?
I say discrepancy after the fact, you say what glitch.
I say images, you say maps.
You still haven’t come to grips with the difference between the two.
One is the actual view from above the Earth, the latter is a pretty picture.
My guess would be the change in ionization in the tropical air mass reaching the arctic as a direct result of the two concurrent [melting during the flush of air into the arctic] episodes of hurricane production, with Earl, and Igor bringing in massive amounts of warm moisture laden air mass with more positive ion content.
Ice is a bipolar crystal and needs a couple spare electrons to form in super cooled atmospheric conditions, or to stay frozen in sea ice or glaciers. Glacial surging has been shown to occur simultaneously with incursions of more positively ionized air masses, and I would assume that it is part of the formation process of rotten sea ice, that allows the hardness of the crystal structure to loosen.
With Earl’s out wash that swept up the East side of Greenland I watched the ice cover of the area along the Russian coast melt as the satellite photos showed the air mass cross the area then head back South across Western Canada. Both times there was whiteout snow conditions on the floating North pole camera, but more of it for Earl than Igor.
The ratio of Antarctic to Arctic ice may be due to the polarity of the solar wind due to the solar system declinational positions of the outer planets relative to the ecliptic plane as we pass them heliocentrically, giving rise to the long term oscillations as the planetary declinations go above and below the ecliptic plane.
The polar ice trends may have this extra terrestrial drive to their patterns of increase and decrease, with annual drives due to the 13 month period of heliocentric conjunctions with Jupiter and Saturn interactions, more work needs to be done looking for resultant patterns due to the compounding of the many separate periods.
So as a test maybe next year we will see these same dips in ice area occur a month later? Were they seen a month later last year?
You took the words right out of my mouth Mr. Holle…I need a Beer…
At this point it is 100% pure subjective conjecture on your part.
All Sea Ice Extents and Areas are subjective processes which can go very wrong without someone keeping an eye on the results as compared to the images they are taken from.
Part of the deal is keeping an eye on things, that’s what we do in here.
We don’t accept spoon feeding, we look for ourselves, and we ask questions.
rbateman says:
September 26, 2010 at 2:57 pm
At this point it is 100% pure subjective conjecture on your part.
All Sea Ice Extents and Areas are subjective processes which can go very wrong without someone keeping an eye on the results as compared to the images they are taken from.
Part of the deal is keeping an eye on things, that’s what we do in here.
We don’t accept spoon feeding, we look for ourselves, and we ask questions.
_____________________________________________________________
You can lead a horse to water …
At least I know I’m not the horse in this merry-go-round.
At least get a clue on “subjective” versus “objective” where your own eyes are incapable of making “objective” measurements, and there is DAQ (data acquisition) for making “objective” measurements.
If you have issues with the data contact the seven organizations directly firsthand YOURSELF, since you would appear to be one of those people from THE AUDIT TEAM.
Joe Romm had declared victory. Must have been premature. How many boats made the NW passage this year?
rbatemen writes,
“We don’t accept spoon feeding, we look for ourselves, and we ask questions.”
Nothing could be less apt as a description of this site. Any post attacking climate scientists wins immediate praise from many posters who ask no questions so long as it fits their preconceptions.
A few voices might come in later, expressing actual skepticism, but most often these are not from the self-professed “skeptics.” They might point out that the radical new claims about Venus involve a misapplication of the ideal gas law, or those calculations for the volume of a pyramid contain an elementary mistake, or you can’t interpret a regression line fit to a sine wave like that, or those two Hansen graphs really involve two different datasets, or that “temperature anomalies” mean something different than “temperature,” or the paper was written only about one proxy from one core in the Chukchi Sea, or what Schmidt et al. wrote about unreliable tree rings was relevant and true … and so on.
And when such actually skeptical posts are actually made here, many regulars attack the writers for asking asking questions.
The passive microwave-derived sea ice “maps” are not “images” only because microwaves are not light….Darnit why are we BLIND to so much of the electromagnetic spectrum?
Gneiss says:
September 26, 2010 at 4:41 pm
rbatemen writes,
“We don’t accept spoon feeding, we look for ourselves, and we ask questions.”
Nothing could be less apt as a description of this site. Any post attacking climate scientists wins immediate praise from many posters who ask no questions so long as it fits their preconceptions.
_____________________________________________________________
Exactly!
A de facto pattern emerges. especially at the start of the first few dozen replies to a poster article.
The Yes People all line up and throw off their best one liners.
I get the distince impression that The Yes People are truly blinded by real science as opposed to WUWT science.
Go figure.
Gneiss says:
September 26, 2010 at 4:41 pm
“And when such actually skeptical posts are actually made here, many regulars attack the writers for asking asking questions.”
=====================
Freedom reigns!
Sorry.
“Though, we may see some temperature rebound in the first and second week of October, as the Arctic Oscillation ensemble forecast calls for the AO to go positive then”…
================================
I thought that in a positive AO during fall and winter, it is typically very cold in the Arctic.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
EFS_Junior says:
September 26, 2010 at 5:14 pm
I get the distince impression that The Yes People are truly blinded by real science as opposed to WUWT science.
=====================================
Ahhh…. by “real science” do you mean the CAGW orthodoxy?
Or by “real science” do you mean “Real Climate”?
Talk about Yes Men.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Gneiss says:
September 26, 2010 at 4:41 pm
“Nothing could be less apt as a description of this site.”
==============================
Then go find a site that suits your needs, Gneiss.
The worlds a big place….and if you don’t like it here, then leave.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
savethesharks writes,
“Ahhh…. by “real science” do you mean the CAGW orthodoxy?”
I’m going to take a guess here that by “real science,” EFS meant not the “CAGW orthodoxy” bogeyman but rather, science done by actual scientists in their area of expertise, written up and published in journals after review by other actual scientists who also are experts in that area.
“Or by “real science” do you mean “Real Climate”?”
All of the writers for Realclimate are real scientists, aren’t they?
“Talk about Yes Men.”
Yes! I have noticed they predominate here. Frequently angry, adding their own accusations and invective against whoever the WUWT writer has invited them to jeer at. Often, it seems that even the original writer has not read what he’s attacking, and the Yes Men feel no need to, they jeer on cue.
EFS_Junior says: “At least I know I’m not the horse in this merry-go-round.”
But Junior, you are the horse. Be objective for once. (sorry, two-liner there)
EFS_Junior says:
September 26, 2010 at 3:42 pm
What AUDIT team are you talking about?
I get the distinct impression that a nerve has been hit.
Galileo-“But sirs, the Earth orbits the sun I have proof!”
Vatican Scientists-“It is clear all who believe the
Ptolemaic Universe, that quite obviously,the Earth is the
center of all things, and that the sun and stars are fixed to
their individual spheres!”
“That is clearly the scientific consensus!! ”
“Heretic!”
Sound familiar?
Gneiss says:
September 26, 2010 at 6:15 pm
============================
They are getting desperate….
The computer output is sacrosanct, it is beyond questioning. The Concensus is the Law. No, not really.
There is a a human interactive program called Galaxy Zoo. It came into being because the computer program is not able to make judgement calls in picking out important structure in distant galaxies. Sloan Digital Sky Survey initiated Galaxy Zoo to get thousands of amatuer astronomers to contribute to classifying millions of distant galaxies that the computer program balked on. They found it to be a smashing success, and I recommend it to anyone.
You see, a computer program is only as good as the instructions given to it. When it comes to the edges of resolution, the human eye is much better because it is attached to a brain.
I also encourage folks to watch the Sea Ice Images. No, not the pretty colored ones, the ones that are direct off the satellites.
Great stuff.
Sorry, my last post was not clear.
The “they” I was referring to were the individuals who deliberately try to hijack this thread hurling insults.
As I said before, if this is not the site for you, then move along to another one that is.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
One question I had about the original post above:
The Arctic Oscillation is forecast to go positive in the coming weeks. Shouldn’t this signify colder temperatures for the pole region, and not a rebound?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
REPLY: Yeah, that was poorly worded, fixed. Thanks -A
If as we suspect it’s the warm currents that cause the ice to melt, then it makes sense that these warmer waters SHOULD freeze faster due to the Mpemba effect.
i.e. The faster the ice melts (due to warmer than usual waters), the faster it should rebound once the air T’s drop below freezing.
Gneiss says:
September 26, 2010 at 6:15 pm
savethesharks writes,
“Ahhh…. by “real science” do you mean the CAGW orthodoxy?”
I’m going to take a guess here that by “real science,” EFS meant not the “CAGW orthodoxy” bogeyman but rather, science done by actual scientists in their area of expertise, written up and published in journals after review by other actual scientists who also are experts in that area.
Do you have any idea how archaically snobbish you sound? As I enter the third decade of a scientific career I dont feel in the slightest shocked and awed by mention of peer reviewed publication. We all know full well – as the ClimateGate emails have revealed for all time – the sordid reality of chums rubber-stamping eachothers “scientific” offerings and lynching and silencing dissenters, outsiders and others whose bottoms dont smell right. The principal “expertise” you will find in the corridors of government funded climate temples is expertise in byzantine mafiosa-politicing and media posturing.
Peer-reviewed CAGW sermons from godfather-reviewed tracts such as Nature will continue to get the contempt they deserve from this site.