Sea Ice News – delayed a day – but still something interesting

I think your comeback is on thin ice! September 2010 had the third lowest Arctic ice extent ever and the trend is still markedly downward. The northern cryosphere is in decline and dumping CO2 into the atmosphere is simply not helping.

The warmists are now in denial, or should that be deartic?

eadler says:
October 4, 2010 at 9:50 am
Your graph is out of date, does not compare with the S. Hemisphere, and contains proxy points which do not display the degree of uncertaintly. Since conditions not too far removed from 2007-2010 have been documented around the turn of the 18th and 20th Century, I’d say your convincing argument is a sleight of hand.
You do remember what sank the Titanic, don’t you? And let’s not forget where those shiny white things were in relationship to the Sea Ice from whence they came.

Eadler says:

It shows a convincing declining trend in the summer sea ice over the past 30 years after the first part of the 20th century, during which it varied in a narrow statistical band of about 1/- 1.5MKm2, and that the winter ice, as would be expected has been stable for a longer period of time and has declined very little.

If you look at temperatures over the last 100 years you would notice that they have been rising in fact since the little ice age. You can actually see a downward trend from the 1950’s, but warming from CO2 only kicked in in 1980 (according to the “scientists”).
Professor Easterbrook has published a few papers on variations in temperature, glaciation and polar ice, and how these variations are caused by the 60 year pacific decadal oscillation cycles.
We are now entering not only a cool PDO cycle but also a solar minimum. You can expect the ice to recover to at least those levels of the 1970’s.
Professor Easterbrook has made a prediction justified by scientific evidence from the past.

After the next two NH winters, hot coffe is going to be mighty tasty…
“Two steps forward, one back.” -Joe Bastardi on the Arctic ice melt..

To me, this is somewhat the flip side to what happened in March-June. Then, a late increase in growth season got wiped out in a hurry by a early melt of young ice.
Now, a late surge in melt season (the false bottom and then subsequent drop) is being wiped out by an apparent surge in creation of new ice.
Really, both go to the difference between extent and volume, and both suggest weakness in thickness.
I wrote the lead investigator for Cyrosat-2 on Friday. Dunno if he’ll write back, of course, but I’m curious when we’re going to start seeing some data from them. It’s almost six months now.
Yes, I know they need to do calibration work. But I’m hoping we’ll start seeing some data from them.

When N. Sea ice, (and even global sea ice for that matter) get above the long term average, let me know. Then we might have something interesting to talk about. As it stand, N. Sea ice has not been above the longer (30+ year) average since 2004…quite in line with what would be expected from GCM’s taking AGW into account. This really upsets AGW skeptics, but those are the facts…now let’s hear the whining.

Geo says:
“Really, both go to the difference between extent and volume, and both suggest weakness in thickness.”
____
Bingo.

The total sea ice volume is easy to compile but but is uninformative by itself. Arctic ice is not melting uniformly but from two sides of the ocean where warm currents enter it. It is not the greenhouse effect but warm currents that have been active for more than a century that are the cause of this arctic warming. From the Atlantic side the Gulf Stream’s warm water penetrates as far as Novaya Zemlya and even beyond to keep the Russian Arctic ice free in the summer. From the west side warm water enters through the Bering Strait and normally keeps the Chuckchi Sea ice free in the summer. Both sources of warm water are independently variable and jointly they account for the observed summer melt. That is why it is important to see the geography of ice loss, not just the total volume as is done today. The big melt of 2007 is an example. That year more than the usual amount of warm water entered through the Bering Strait and melted a large chunk of sea ice on that side of the ocean while the Gulf Stream side hardly changed from previous year. Comparing the maps from 2006 and 2007 is the only thing you need to understand that. But all we heard was about a catastrophic ice loss and predictions of the North Pole being ice free by 2020. These geniuses who compile the data undoubtedly did have the maps but were too stupid to see what the maps had to say. Apparently the strong poleward winds in 2007 were responsible for pulling an extra amount of warm water through the strait. The Gulf Stream side also can vary if you check the extent to which it penetrates along the Siberian coast. The Arctic is warming and if you really want to track it you should include the geography of melting along with ice volume in your blog.

R. Gates,
“This really upsets AGW skeptics, but those are the facts…now let’s hear the whining.”
Skeptics are never upset by facts.

Luckily for those agonising over the exact size of Wales – or Belgium but not, sadly, Manhattan – there is a handy online calculator:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html
This page will also allow you to easily visualise other standard units such as the double decker bus, the olympic sized swimming pool and Bulgarian airbag (in two sizes).

Smokey says October 4, 2010 at 12:19 pm

“Skeptics are never upset by facts.”
That’s something the scare-mongers can never understand.
And talking about a 30 year average is meaningless. Anyone who looks at the big picture immediately sees natural variability at work.

Ahhh, but Smokey, surely you understand that if we return to conditions of 2MYA or so all the children will explode, or something.