UPDATE: Regular Sea Ice News now posted here:
Sea Ice News #25 – NSIDC says 2010 3rd lowest for Arctic sea ice
=======================================
Normally I have a Sea Ice News feature on Sundays.
I’m holding it a day, because I’m waiting for NSIDC to make an announcement, and I want to include it. Arctic Sea Ice is making a quick turnaround, the DMI 30% graph shows we are now at 2005 levels for 30% extent.
While waiting for NSIDC in the meantime, have a look at this interesting animation showing the quick turnaround in ice extent in September…
Steve Goddard writes:
Blink comparator showing ice growth over the past week. More than 5,000 Manhattans of new ice have formed – one new Manhattan of ice every two minutes.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.color.0.html
Also while waiting, don’t forget to check status at the WUWT Sea Ice Page.
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Thus, there are 350 Manhattans in a Wales.
Sure, but if we’re counting population, how many Hiroshimas?
Gareth: Don’t you just love SI units. Area = Manhattan or Wales. Volume: How many double-decker buses are there in an olympic swimming pool?
There are approx 18 double decker buses by volume to 1 olympic swimming pool.
2.5m wide, 13 m long, 4.25m high:
50 x 25 x 2 for the pool:
Then again there have been a few measures of shiraz at this point so the figures may need to be peer reviewed.
Hope this helps.
This is one area where I argue that we are being snookered.
The minimum is largely irrelevant. It makes good news right now because of the nice 15 year trend down, which is actually a 30 year trend down. The problem is that our satellite data for the sea ice extent started in 1979 (for the whole year at least). Prior to that nothing is known.
What was going on in 1979 was that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) was starting to trend upwards. I prefer to annualize the data and compare entire years. That is where the best results show up for this type of analysis.
My post on this from Sep 21st shows what the annual data for the AMO and the Arctic Sea Ice show. The AMO has been weaker the past few years and the sea ice has recovered. It is that simple.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/09/arctic-sea-ice-and-the-atlantic-oscillation/
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
> I’m waiting for NSIDC to make an announcement, and I want to include it.
I generally avoid snark, and I don’t pay too much attention to Arctic (there are plenty of people who do it better than I do), however, what should we expect the NSIDC to say?
Perhaps “The ice growth is remarkable, but keep in mind it’s thin first week ice and not the more important thick multiyear ice.”
Alan the Brit says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:22 am
“As a Devonian …….”
Devon – did you know that if you were to flatten that county and then mark the surface off into squares 1 metre x 1 metre, you could get the current population of the earth in there at the rate of 1 person per square metre?
If you did the same with Cornwall then, between the two Counties, you could accommodate more than 10 billion people at the rate of 1 person per square metre.
As we have seen the last of the outer planet induced surges of warm tropical air mass into the arctic until April, I would say the growth of ice should proceed at a fast pace, right up till mid April.
I had the thought earlier today “If the heat conductance through the ice is slower than that from exposed sea surface, as the heat radiates away into space, is the actual thickness of the ice as it builds up a negative feedback to the loss of heat?” then by extension is the total volume of ice produced over the winter an indicator of the SST heat removed from the global circulation, or is the relationship inverse, as less ice lets more heat per unit of time to escape.
Is there some tipping point(?) of the amount of heat available in the ambient temperature of the sea water entering the arctic therefore equaling less ice extent and volume an actual greater loss of total calories/btu’s over the winter, is then a positive feedback?
There exists room for the conjuncture of a bi-polar ice thermostat mechanism as well as a tropical cloud cover one. (As crazy as that sounds [pun intended];)
Would then a snowball earth, with deep snow covered ice allow a slowing of abysmal ocean cooling and gradual increase in geothermal heat loss cause an end to the snow ball phase due to the average SST increase from the “millions of degrees of crustal warmth” as the Goracle was so smart to mention?
The [dare I say back radiation?] temperature of the space above the poles is rather consistent, only the ice and overhead clouds slows down the heat loss transfer rate, with maybe some increase in insulation by deep snow?
Vuk etc. says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:58 am
“OT.
Prof . Robert Edwards wins Nobel medicine prize for his work on IVF, had to wait 25 years, while Gore&Co had instant recognition for their efforts. A bit of hypocrisy somewhere?”
No hypocrisy…remember that the Gore et al prize was NOT given for any achievement in science…
The recent melt will likely be due to weather and oceanic influences. I think NSIDC will say something similar. Along with the data glitch of course.
How about “cubits”? The we can talk in biblical proportions – even if they are not.
mrpkw says:
October 4, 2010 at 3:49 am
Mike Jowsey says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:16 am
It is still only marginally above 2007 and 2008.
What is the 30-yr trend?
========================
Better yet, what’s the 100 year trend?
………thats the billion dollar question, which nobody know the answer to. That’s why the AGW cult has taken hold, dimply because for 30 years (with a mostly positive AMO) they can show us a decline.
It means jack.
Ric Werme says:
October 4, 2010 at 4:43 am
Make sure to store your snowmobile and blower close to the garage door, and they are tuned up and ready to go this winter, you might be needing them all the way to spring in New England.
Okay, I have a question: I was wondering if the Ice meets it’s land borders by the end of October, would it be wise to assume that it would start to grow thicker, since it’s the only thing it can do after it reaches the land borders.
(I know there are a couple of places where it can continue to accumulate extent, but that depends on how cold the water is in those areas are. And who knows? With a negative PDO and a Negative AMO it could reach and surpass the average Ice Area near Svalbard and Ice Land again. Maybe this year? Or in the next couple of years? All I’m betting on for that is that it will happen in my life time and I wonder what the CAGW people will say about that? )
~Karen
You northern hemisphere types so often forget the metrics south of the Equator. A common one for volume is “The Sydney Harbour” as in “This new dam will be X Sydharbs.” Less quantifiable is a height measure, “Lower than a snake’s belly” which beats corn as high as an elephant’s eye. There are quizzical ones, such as housing land being “A good sized quarter acre,” sometimes hosting a “penthouse style apartment on the ground level.” In the conversion to decimal in 1966, we had the velocity unit “furlong per fortnight” but that has declined. We calculate that Oz uses toilet paper at about 1,600 mph, or about twice the speed of sound at C level. There are indeterminate measures such as “the spooky long drop”, being an earth toilet so deep that no noise can be heard when the velocity stops. With climate, we also have reports of winds so strong that they blew over trees that had never been blown over before.
Strangely, the decimal currency values since 1966 have not taken on names like “dime ” or “quarter” in the USA or “quid” for the old pound sterling. Strange, because there are 6 coin values and 5 paper values, but not one has a colloquial name.
Oops I meant “Iceland”
Mike Jowsey says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:16 am
“It is still only marginally above 2007 and 2008.
What is the 30-yr trend?”
30 years is wheather, not climate.
Therefore, your question, like the Arctic ice data, is irrevelant.
Sorry.
Gareth Phillips says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:04 am
Just so that I can get my calculations right, how many “Manhattans”” are there in a “Wales”? ( Here in the UK large areas are spoken of as “the size of Wales”)
Using Manhattan for size started with news reports about pieces of ice “the size of Manhattan” breaking off Antarctica. They used Manhattan when talking about the glacier in Greenland too.
Mike Jowsey says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:16 am
It is still only marginally above 2007 and 2008.
What is the 30-yr trend?
It depends on which 30 years you use. If you use 1947 to 1977 there was a growing trend. If you use 1977 to 2007 the was a decreasing trend. Arctic ice always goes through increasing and decreasing trends. It’s normal. If it didn’t change that is what would be unusual.
Chris Wright says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:49 am
what really matters is the long-term trend.
I agree. Here’s the long term trend:
Peer reviewed study says current Arctic sea ice is more extensive than most of the past 9000 years….Arctic sea ice extent at the end of the 20th century was more extensive than most of the past 9000 years. The paper also finds that Arctic sea ice extent was on a declining trend over the past 9000 years, but recovered beginning sometime over the past 1000 years and has been relatively stable and extensive since.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/23/surprise-peer-reviewed-study-says-current-arctic-sea-ice-is-more-extensive-than-most-of-the-past-9000-years/
Geoff Sherrington,
lol! 🙂
Devon – did you know that if you were to flatten that county and then mark the surface off into squares 1 metre x 1 metre, you could get the current population of the earth in there at the rate of 1 person per square metre?
———————————————————————————————
Last Bank holiday I was there I thought the process had already happened!
My hat’s off to Joe Bastardi. He was right about where decrease in JAXA would end up. And he was right about a rapid increase occurring after minimum was reached.
Any news about the sailors, trying the NW passage this year?
How about checking the instruments accuracy? We’ve been seeing ice spotted almost everywere and suddenly disappeared last summer. May be what is now growing never decreased, at least part of it.
gg
Is that Wales before or after Henry II?
On the Sea Ice page there is a picture of the “Amundsen Scott South Pole station”.
Can you see that black smoke coming up there? What is it? Scientists polluting the South Pole Ice? What about living green? hmmmm?