This week we continue to see strong gains in Arctic Sea Ice. JAXA’s extent paused briefly, but has resumed a strong upwards climb, now exceeding 2005 for this date.
JAXA AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent -15% or greater – click to enlarge
In other news, NSIDC released an interesting video using Google Earth.
Here’s the NSIDC animation showing the entire satellite Arctic sea ice record.
According to the Google Earth Blog:
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They’ve recently updated their files to show data from 2010, and the results are quite stunning:
According to their site, the 2010 low (reached on September 19) was the third lowest on satellite record:
Average ice extent for September 2010 was 4.90 million square kilometers (1.89 million square miles), 2.14 million square kilometers (830,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average, but 600,000 square kilometers (230,00 square miles) above the average for September 2007, the lowest monthly extent in the satellite record. Ice extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average everywhere except in the East Greenland Sea near Svalbard.
The U.S. National Ice Center declared both the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route open for a period during September. Stephen Howell of Environment Canada reported a record early melt-out and low extent in the western Parry Channel region of the Northwest Passage, based on analyses of the Canadian Ice Service. Two sailing expeditions, one Norwegian and one Russian, successfully navigated both passages and are nearing their goal of circumnavigating the Arctic.
You can check it out for yourself using this KMZ file
. Or, if you’d prefer, you can simply watch the video below that shows all of the data in the KMZ.
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In following the link from The Google Earth blog to the NSIDC page link they cite, I noted the September Average extent graph, which is different than the usual annual minimum extent graphs we see.
And of course, it looks like a “death spiral” to paraphrase Dr. Mark Serreze, but it is only 30 years of data, so who’s to say it isn’t part of a longer cycle? One thing that has always bugged me about NSIDC is that they don’t provide data to go with their plots, and of course none was listed with this one, so I decided to use the large size of that plot to hand digitize the values.
Here’s the manually digitized data I got from that NSIDC September average extent graph. Values are year, and average September extent in million square kilometers:
1979 7.20 1980 7.80 1981 7.25 1982 7.45 1983 7.55 1984 7.20 1985 6.90 1986 7.60 1987 7.50 1988 7.50 1989 7.10 1990 6.25 1991 6.60 1992 7.55 1993 6.50 1994 7.20 1995 6.20 1996 7.90 1997 6.75 1998 6.60 1999 6.25 2000 6.35 2001 6.80 2002 5.95 2003 6.20 2004 6.10 2005 5.60 2006 5.90 2007 4.30 2008 4.70 2009 5.40 2010 4.90
I wondered what JAXA would show for September averages. Fortunately since JAXA provides the daily data here, it was easy to bring it into a spreadsheet and calculate the average. Here’s the values I got from my spreadsheet. Values are year, and average September extent in million square kilometers, rounded to nearest hundredths:
2002 6.11 2003 6.28 2004 6.16 2005 5.70 2006 5.98 2007 4.60 2008 5.08 2009 5.53 2010 5.45
Note that 2002 didn’t have a full month of valid daily data, but it appeared to have enough since JAXA plots September extent on their own graph. I plotted them both, using Dplot, and here’s the output:
Feel free to check my work, the output of the spreadsheet I used to calculate the JAXA averages is here: JAXA_2002-2010_SeptAvg
…as a PDF file of values (WordPress.com won’t let me upload XLS files)
It seems that the differences between NSIDC and JAXA average September extent are getting larger since 2007, and that JAXA is always showing more extent than NSIDC. In September 2010 there’s a whole half million square kilometer difference between the two averages. It’s curious.
Speaking of NSIDC, Dr. Walt Meier has asked to do a guest post here, and I’ve approved a slot for him, so I’m going to hold much of my weekly discussion in deference to him. In the meantime, the WUWT Sea Ice Page has a wide collection of images and graphs from both hemispheres to brief you.
Also, if you have not seen it yet, this book review from WUWT contributor Verity Jones on what the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute thinks about the Arctic Ice loss (they predict a rebound) is well worth a read.
Update: the JAXA average calcs might be in error, an artifact of how the spreadsheet cells return, unfortunately I won’t be able to check again and replot until late tonight, see upcoming announcement. – Anthony
The climate of the Earth is driven predominately by natural forces, not human forces.
Is there any way to retrieve the 1979/80/81/82/83/84 satellite images of the Polar sea ice min/max area and extent?
I am interested because the alarmists do have a habit of manipulating the temperature record to suit their agenda, lowering early temperature records to exaggerate warming.
Is it possible they over estimated the early sea ice maximums and minimums to show a greater decline over the 30yrs than is the actual case? Going by JAXA numbers the decline isnt that great and does not qualify as a death spiral.
From what I’ve learned at WUWT, these data are nice, but kind of meaningless without the commensurate wind data to go with it. Floating ice is driven hard before a prevailing wind, no matter the thickness of whatever is floating.
I think of “death spiral” as intended to convey the idea of accelerating change and not merely a linear decline. But that idea is based on just a few years of data, not 30 years.
SSam says:
October 17, 2010 at 9:44 pm
“… I plotted them both, using Dplot… ”
I’ve been meaning to mention that. I found out about Dplot from WUWT, and after looking over the capabilities that it has, I purchased it. I am 100% pleased with it. That thing can wizz through 3D quake plots with ease. I’ve mentioned my satisfaction with it to the program author, but you are the one who first pointed me at it.
Thank You.
_____________________________________________________________
Well I happen to know who wrote the Dplot software, he works for the USACE ERDC GSL, they blow things up over there, at really high sampling rates, and I do mean really high sampling rates.
” Roger Carr says:
October 17, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Rest in peace, Benoit Mandelbrot; Earth is a more wonderful place because of you.
”
This is certainly true 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91yxk_pT_A
We all welome and look forward to Dr. Walt Meier.
Can he please bring some of his data with him. We previously asked about Arctic-Antarctic sea ice correlation, when a suitable time shift has been applied to align the patterns (correlation analysis doesn’t naturally handle that sort of manipulation and the mis-aligned data undoubtably gives erroneously low correlation measurements).
Or, at very least, could Dr Meier tell us where we can pick up Antarctic sea ice data in a commonly used and convenient format.
I completely disagree with this evaluation that fact is that since 2007 NH ice has been increasing, Even the 2010 AREA UNDER THE CURVE for the past 3 months IS GREATER than 2009 look at the DMI ice extent. Just wait for 2011 to complete knock NSIDC off their pedestal. Also again we seem to forget about SH ice which is consistently ABOVE!
Is it possible to create an approximation of the sea ice extent by some other means, from as far back as possible, up to and including the present date? The satellite data could then be plotted on this approximation to give some idea of just how the last 30 odd years measured fits in with the bigger picture. This might give some justification for fitting straight line trends to small samples of data. Or then again it might not.
Extrapolation of the straight line plot would indicate (roughly) that in September 1933 the arctic sea ice extent was 12 million square kilometres (I think not, based on historical accounts described on WUWT), illustrating both the risks of extrapolating data trends and the limitations of attributing linear trends to segments of (potentially) cyclically varying data.
AndyW says:
October 17, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Well done on the two yachts traversing the NW and Northern passages in one year therefore circumnavigating the globe via the Arctic ocean.
A great feat considering some posters on this blog insisted the NW passage wasn’t open 😉
Andy
Go read the article again and remember where the NW passage is.
Waiting for Meier to explain Serreze’s Hansening the data.
[This is something I’ve already posted on an Aussie site today. It’s not relevant to sea-ice, but may be relevant to how climate is recorded, and, just possibly, how it’s misrecorded. I certainly feel it’s worth noting, but if you feel it’s too far off-topic, I’ll understand if I’m snipped. Please keep in mind I’m talking about the southern spring, not far from the ocean, at about 31 degrees latitude.]
The discrepancy I’m about to mention may have been due to a simple misread by me or by someone at the other end.
The last two mornings here in the hills south of Kempsey have been freezing. I know that there was frost in some places on Sunday morning.
When I checked the data yesterday, the minimum for Sunday was 3.0. I’m almost certain that’s what I saw on the Elders website. The coldest minimum on record, 2.8, occurred on the first day of October in 1992, so 3.0 on the 17th is freakish. I sat up and noticed, so it’s unlikely I misread.
This morning, yesterday’s minimum had been amended on the Elders website to 3.5.
It’s been in my mind for some time that we should all be making copies of published weather records of our respective localities. I know in my locality there is some very interesting data, particularly the monthly mean temp records, which show all the highest maxima occurring between 1910 and 1920, except for august, which had it’s hottest average maximum in 1946.
I’d hate it if that data were to be mysteriously amended. That’s all I’m saying for now. Like I said, it may have been a simple error. The problem is, twenty years ago it could only have been a simple error. Now we wonder.
Well I think I have the end all-be all comparison of JAXA vs NSIDC;
http://picasaweb.google.com/117077348819630829996/ArcticSeaIce#
Graphs 4-6.
Graph 4: Time series of monthly means for JAXA and NSIDC.
Graph 5: Monthly time series of the ratio of JAXA/NSIDC.
Graph 6: JAXA/NSIDC ratios for the same months combined for all years for overall monthly average (each month shown as it’s numerical order in a year).
If there is any interest, I’ll post the same three graphs for UIUC vs NSIDC monthly sea ice areas (which also has some similar seasonal and longer term trends as the JAXA vs NSIDC monthly extents do).
AndyW says: “Well done on the two yachts traversing the NW and Northern passages in one year therefore circumnavigating the globe via the Arctic ocean.”
Yes I agree it can’t be an easy trip…
But will you agree the top gear team’s expedition to the “North Pole” to prove the ice was still there and it wasn’t open water was equally marvellous?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear:_Polar_Special
Only 60 years? Some cycles are 140,000 years long. There may be longer ones for all we know.
Stefan of Perth says:
October 17, 2010 at 8:20 pm
A very valid point. At which time does the accepted chosen average period of anything, become an irrelevance? 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years? Is it not all a piece of chartmanship?
Anthiony
For the sake of our friend Tamino shouldn’t all the text and all the links in this article be in at least 20 point type and highlighted? He has difficulty in seeing things it appears.
tonyb
Thanks for also showing the monthly extent over the years in the blog posts, it does IMO give a better idea of what’s going on. It’s a great idea to show it in the Sea Ice News posts, this should be a recurring graph in your Sea Ice News each month. With the usual sea ice graphs you normally show in the blog posts it can be difficult to get a feel for the overall trend over the years.
Thanks for a great site.
Cryosat2 data should be public in a month or so?
On a seperate note, Richard Black at the Beeb states in an article today:
“Within the last few years, the world has seen the cooling influence of La Nina restrain the rise in global temperatures, before a switch to El Nino conditions put 2010 on course to be one of the warmest few years – perhaps the warmest of all – in recent times.”
Forgive me, but has the predominant ENSO cycle not been El Nino over the past 20 years????
The interesting thing about this data is that the trend from ’79 to ’97 is stable. It’s only following the big ’98 El Nino and subsequent heat input into the oceans that the trend went down rapidly. So AGW’ers are basing their entire polar death spiral theory on 12 years of data following an unusual and largely unexplained El Nino event. Based on this logic I can say that there is a large increasing trend since 2007 !
There are some sea ice graphs going back to 1860 here – http://www.climate4you.com/index.htm got to sea ice and keep scrolling down!
For those interested in the discrepancies between various databases, I suggest listening to EFS_Junior when he comes around. He’s put a lot of work into comparing them and figuring out the intricacies of each (such as their dating method and the running average used by each for smoothing). I’ve done a bit of comparison myself and may also add to the discussion once a get a bit of time to pull up my spreadsheet and summarize some stuff.
-Scott
“899 says:
October 17, 2010 at 9:10 pm
All of this prompts me to inquire: Has anyone ever done a ‘rate of change’ evaluation of the matter before us?”
This is the approach that Tamino has used. He shows an accelerating decline in the minimal Sept sea ice extent, by fitting the data with a polynomial regression. This regression allowed him to make a very accurate forecast of this year’s ice minium, although he attributes the accuracy of his estimate to luck. Anyway, if you look at the whole data set from 1979, you can see that the lose of arctic sea ice has accelerated, especially over the last 10 years.
mosomoso says:
October 18, 2010 at 1:13 am
Yes, you should make archived copies of your local weather data, and keep it safe.
You never know when someone in another country might borrow it, then claim to have misplaced it.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
October 17, 2010 at 7:23 pm
As I posted some months ago, multi-year sailing in the Arctic is the norm for traversing passages over 1,000 miles long that are open but very breifly. The people who do this make no pretense of single-season journeys. One does not go up there in a carefree manner and sail the NW passage, let alone circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean.
They go about it in Amundsen style, and in that sense, not much has changed in 100 years.
The Arctic is deadly serious, even in the best of years… like 2007.