While not hugely significant by itself, it is interesting to note that the DMI 30% Arctic extent has reached its highest number for this date, exceeding 2006. The refreeze has been very fast:
Here’s the zoom:
The JAXA 15% plot show it equal with 2006, and a steepening slope:
JAXA AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent -15% or greater – click to enlarge
Steven Mosher says:
October 12, 2010 at 11:08
“I’ll repeat what I said there : the annual pattern is clear in the data as Willis showed. That pattern challenges the Null, as willis agreed. The only defense is to challenge the intrument or the instruments algorithms. No answer there.”
The CT graph for Arctic sea ice area for today shows 4.65 Mkm2, The Nansen ArticROOS graph, which AFAIK uses similar data, shows +5.9Mkm2 as their value
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
To me that would indicate a certain reticence about ascribing confidence to any of this is more than justified. Something may definitely be happening with the ice, or not, but what it is and why it is happening are still very much open questions in my book.
Joanaroo says: at 5:46 pm 20-teens??
Really cold? Maybe, but those folks are just guessing. The main idea floating around is the less active sun. Search on things as the “Dalton Minimum” or the “Maunder Minimum”, “Sun Spots” and go from there. As there is no proven mechanism for the apparent correlation you, and everyone else, awaits the 20-teens with bated breath.
For a closer-to-now time period, go here:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
SE PENNA is showing very normal temps (p. 39) and slightly below average precip (p. 38); these are for La Niña during Dec.-Feb.
At the bottom left is a note that these departures and frequency maps are based on 20 cases of La Niña events.
Douglas DC says:
October 12, 2010 at 9:52 am
A sea story about a Polar Bear attack:
http://www.jpattitude.com/101011.php
I agree a large caliber weapon would be my preferred
way of dealing with the Bear.
Something on the order of a .458 win…
may have to go around with a sore arm and shoulder for
a few days but better than getting eaten..
The two Royal Marines sailing on the Arctic Mariner through the NW Passage last year found a shotgun to be effective.
In polar climates, interseason variability is significant. Interseason for me is defined as ice peak and ice trough. The steep and narrow slopes of ice build-up and ice melt is predictable and squeezed into a narrow standard deviation slide. Why? Because of axial drivers related to solar irradiation. The months in-between are highly correlated to weather systems, including those driven by SST changes related to pools of warm or cool water circulating to the polar regions from the equatorial regions. This explains the larger standard deviation during these periods. Again, I see nothing but standard fare: weather pattern variation during the months of interseason variability.
This website, its sponsor, and the majority of those commenting are an embarassment and offsense to moral thought.
James Sexton says:
October 12, 2010 at 8:59 am
Poor dumb arctic ice, doesn’t know that its supposed to be disappeared.
That’s fine. That’s its personal choice. No pressure…….
;o)
doug says: October 12, 2010 at 7:26 pm
“This website, its sponsor, and the majority of those commenting are an embarassment and offsense to moral thought.”
Doug;
I tried to cut and paste your comment into klepticalscilence but it did not get posted?
Hmm…. “offsense to moral thought.”
PS. BBC did not take it either.
You may generalize to the level of you own intelect, no pressure here.
doug says:
October 12, 2010 at 7:26 pm
This website, its sponsor, and the majority of those commenting are an embarassment and offsense to moral thought.
Speaking of morals:
doug says:
October 12, 2010 at 7:26 pm
This website, its sponsor, and the majority of those commenting are an embarassment and offsense to moral thought.
What really is morality in this issue?
doug says:
October 12, 2010 at 7:26 pm
This website, its sponsor, and the majority of those commenting are an embarassment and offsense to moral thought.
Morals? By all means morals! The morals of using coal:
garhighway says:
October 12, 2010 at 9:42 am
It might be helpful for context if you added the longer-term average ice extent to the chart so we could see deviation from longer-term levels. Also, some commentary on sea ice age and thickness might lead to a richer discussion, too.
Ok, here’s some context on long term trend:
…..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/
Ben M says: “…if it’s worse than the previous two winters (,) the MSM and alarmist blogs will jump on you for being insensitive to the suffering of the vulnerable.”
The MSM haven’t the balls to report three bad winters in a row. The game would be up. They must continue to maintain absolute silence, lest their Socialist workers’ paradise evaporate.
Latimer Alder says:
October 12, 2010 at 9:10 am
@frank K
Re ‘cuddly wuddly polar bears’
I am British. We do sarcasm/irony. And understatement.
—
I know you were being sarcastic :^) My point is that our popular media now use the image of the snow white polar as a gentle creature whose habitat is being destroyed by you and I using incandescent light bulbs and not driving a Prius.
As evidence I give you (courtesy of my energy provider, and much to my chagrin): Floe
It would be interesting to find the natural weather pattern that has caused the summer ice extent to reduce more than the winter.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
Andy
I believe that the refreezing – probably due to limited exchange of heat with warmer places on Earth – has a flip side: it allows the other (warmer) places on Earth to get warmer. That may be partly why the current temperatures are warmer than expected for a La Nina that is underway.
It may be that a combination of the sea ice area and the global mean temperature could behave in more stable ways than the two terms in separation.
Meh,
So I did a 7-day moving average than a 7-day linear fit to the 7-day moving average (to get km^2/day) and extracted the maximum growth day;
Maximum Growth Date, Growth (km^2/day))
10/3/2002,116
10/17/2003,134
10/9/2004,96
10/21/2005,159
10/14/2006,139
10/23/2007,171
10/12/2008,145
10/13/2009,93
Conclusions?
Maximum growth always occurs in the October time frame.
If 2010 follows 2005/2007/2008 (three highest growth years) I’d expect ~160K km^2/day maximum (using same smoothing).
Go, Arctic sea ice extent, go!
AndyW says: October 12, 2010 at 10:01 pm
………………….
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
Could you please teach me on the following two?
1. Why aren’t the 2008 & 2009 data plotted? Even the spring data for 2010 can be plotted now.
2. How reliable are the pre-satellite (before 1979) data?
Correction to my last post;
Maximum Growth Date, Growth (km^2/day))
should be;
Maximum Growth Date, Growth (10^3 km^2/day))
Great posts. Enjoyable thread. Good early morning read. One suggestion: shouldn’t we be talking about blueberry-picking instead of cherry-picking nowadays?
Re local weather: thermom stuck on the outside of my kitchen window is showing lower maximum readings that those used at the nearest airport by weather predicters. Yesterday it was 4 degrees C lower than predicted max. Shall keep a tally and see what happens over the winter. Window is double glazed, house walls are two feet thick built of stone, aspect is north-west; no sunshine directly as there’s a hill in the way even when sun is over there in mid summer.
Was looking at this http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_s.png before knocking in here. I have not read any of the comments and I do not know if anyone has mention what’s up with the south pole, but according to this, the sea-ice cover down south is refusing to commence the annual melt. It has been static since mid-September. So its not that the global energy has shifted from the northern hemisphere to the southern one, but that it has been globally reduced, so it seems. Warmists are always looking at the N Pole during summer, while refusing to comment on what’s happening down south all year round.
Steven Mosher says:
October 12, 2010 at 11:08 am
“1. The ice is cycling like never before in the recorded era”
This is exactly what you would expect with thinner ice. If you take 2 plates out of your freezer, one with 1 cm and another with 2 cm thick ice, the thinner ice melts much quicker, but if you put them back into the freezer they will refreeze at much closer speed.
Ice thickness is depending on previous years leftover and thus the September minimum is a lagging parameter and overestimated, refreezing depends on current temperatures.
We don’t have satellite measurements before 1978, but in the middle of the last century, a 50% decrease in ice volume was reported, and what has happened now may have happened as well 60 years ago or so.
Additionally, temepratures in the 40s may have been much warmer than currently thought. The bucket to inlet ocean temperature correction is proven false. This is probably the most influentual error in climate science and nobody cares. The size of this error is about the size the total assumed warming since the 1940s.
Re. oldseadog and his rattling tin. Yes people have tried it —- and were eaten.
A Franchi Spas with Breneck shells works as well.
Manfred says:
October 13, 2010 at 2:01 am
If you take 2 plates out of your freezer, one with 1 cm and another with 2 cm thick ice, the thinner ice melts much quicker, but if you put them back into the freezer they will refreeze at much closer speed.”
Surely you mean it melts SOONER and NOT FASTER when it is thinner? Whether ice is 1cm or 1m thick, in the same environment temperature and pressure etc, ice melts at the same rate. So yes, thicker ice will still be melting after the thinner ice has melted.
Luboš Motl says:
October 12, 2010 at 10:36 pm
If the S. Hem. Winter is any indication, watch out when the Arctic lets loose some of it’s air in the coming months.
Alex the skeptic says:
October 13, 2010 at 1:54 am
The Antarctic is an embarassment for the warmists, and has been so for quite some time.
It does not go unnoticed that the Antarctic Sea Ice is growing over time.
The warmists like to pick on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is the warmest place on the miserable continent, and project it all the way to the South Pole. A favorite GISS trick.
It’s worse than that, though. The Southern Oceans Sea Temps have very poor coverage and exist mostly as the subject of computer model output.