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
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Günther Kirschbaum says:
October 18, 2010 at 3:30 pm
I’m guessing if it was averaging the first and last dates of the month then he was doing the equivalent to adding a comma in Excel instead of a colon.
-Scott
eadler says:
October 18, 2010 at 6:53 pm
But aren’t we discussing the effect of warming here and not cause? I couldn’t care less if the decreasing Sept minimum is a positive feedback to warming if the warming isn’t AGW. And if the reduction in the minimum is caused by AGW, why isn’t it affecting April too?
-Scott
eadler says:
October 18, 2010 at 6:31 pm
The important thing to remember is that nobody told the Antarctic and Arctic they had to both come to work at the same time.
i.e. – there is no global warming CO2 forcing.
Just for those who can’t see the forest for the trees, I put both graphs together… like this:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/seaice.anomaly.Ant_arctic.jpg
This latest incarnation is a bit more ‘unadjusted’, because CT ‘adjusted’ Arctic Sea Ice Anomaly down 1M km^2 in 2007, going back to 2000. So, being the maverick that I am, I just slid that puppy back up there. Ye-Haw!!
Whoa, lookee there: Those Polar Cowboys are flying up & down like a bull ride at the rodeo.
“It makes no sense to add the sea ice extents forseptember in the Arctic to december in the Antarctic and claim the sum represents some kind of Global Sea ice phenomen.”
Why sure it does: If you bothered to look at the Global Sea Ice Anomaly graphs, you’d see that there is an average point in that graph right smack on 20M km^2…. mid way between the 2 times. It’s a moving target all the time. Ya got to lead the target if you want to hit it. Take 1979, around Sept/Oct. See that? 20M km^2. Great. Now we look at Sep/Oct 2010. Once again ……
20M km^2.
The point isn’t about analysis paralysis.
Point is that there ain’t a whole lot of difference between 1979 and 2010 as far as Global Sea Ice is concerned.
Slice & Dice any which way, and still the answer is the same because there’s no warming boogey man in this image:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
See The Sea Ice record of Newfoundland from 1810.
http://www.socc.ca/CMS%20FTP%20Data/seaIce/images/nfld_ice2.jpg
rbateman says:
October 18, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Why sure it does: If you bothered to look at the Global Sea Ice Anomaly graphs, you’d see that there is an average point in that graph right smack on 20M km^2…. mid way between the 2 times. It’s a moving target all the time. Ya got to lead the target if you want to hit it. Take 1979, around Sept/Oct. See that? 20M km^2. Great. Now we look at Sep/Oct 2010. Once again …… 20M km^2.
That is so funny! What a nice cherry pick! What I see is that, generally, the blue line (daily area) is at or above the gray line (mean area) in 1979, and on until about 1997 or 98 after which it is at or below the gray line.
eadler says:
October 18, 2010 at 7:02 pm
eadler says:
October 18, 2010 at 6:53 pm
“Cherry picking 4 isolated years, 1769, 1866, 1966 and 1995 is not a valid way to determine the existence of a 60 year cyclic behavior.
For some reason, the Climate4you website has plotted the April ice extent.
The April maximum in Arctic sea ice extent is not an important climate driver and has varied very little in recent years, compared to the September minimum.”
If you read my post again, you will see that I comment on the graph in the linked site, and do not “cherry pick” any years other than what the graph shows. And I do not “determine” the existence of a 60 year cycle. Some people have argued that such a cycle may exist, and I say “IF there is a 60 year cycle…” then the referenced graph seem to support that idea.
If you cared to looked closer, you would also see the other graphs containing the other areas of the Arctic Seas as well:
“Figure 2 in Vinje (2001), showing the reduction in April sea ice extent in the Nordic Seas since 1864. Nordic Seas (NS), eastern area (E), and western area (W) time series given by 2-yr running mean and regression lines. Linear year-to-year interpolations of the ice extent have been made for the western area for 1940 and 1944–46, and for the eastern area for 1868–70, 1874–78, 1880, 1892, 1894, 1940–41, 1943–48, and 1961. The blue area to the right shows the time extent of the satellite-era shown in the figure higher up in this paragraph. Apparently, much of the sea ice reduction in this region occurs in concert with the termination of the Little Ice Age and the following warming during the 20th century.”
“Time series showing the August ice-extent anomalies (x 1000 km2) in the Arctic Ocean along the coast of Russia, Siberia and Alaska: The Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea, the East Siberian Sea, and Chuckchi Sea (Polyakov et al. 2003). The composite record show large sea ice variations around a small negative trend since 1900, although the trend from a statistical point of view is not significant (Polyakov et al. 2003).”
What’s interesting is that all these graphs show that the annual and decadal variability is very large for all areas of the Arctic for all times back to the 1860’s at least. This is also confirmed by Jakers latest record from Newfoundland area:
http://www.socc.ca/CMS%20FTP%20Data/seaIce/images/nfld_ice2.jpg
There certainly doesn’t seem to be any stasis anywhere before 1950, and certainly not “accelerated” reduction of ice during the past decades. Quite the contrary.
As to your statement: “The April maximum in Arctic sea ice extent is not an important climate driver and has varied very little in recent years, compared to the September minimum.” – Do you have any evidence supporting that the September sea ice minimum is an important climate driver?
….Meanwhile..The arctic has turned Less cold & from what I can tell will stay that way for a few. I was surprised to see the gain we had yesterday & I hope i’m surprised again tomorrow & the next but i’m thinking not. Any thoughts??
rbateman:
If only it was as simple as looking at the global ice extent average for the answer to whether climate change is occurring due to increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Why are you suggesting that we could get any insight into climate by adding arctic ice to antarctic ice when they are so fundamentally different and are affected by different forces? (see: http://nsidc.org/seaice/characteristics/difference.html ).
The antarctic sea ice consists primarily of first year ice that melts back every year to approximately the same point. Antarctic ice surrounds the edge of a deeply frozen continent and is influenced by a circumpolar ocean current. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current
The conditions resulting in the current minimal expansion of Antarctic sea ice (minimal as a percentage of total antarctic ice extent, which is considerably larger than arctic ice extent) are different from the forces acting upon the arctic. The reliance upon antarctic ice may prove unwise as the recent expansion in the antarctic may not continue for much longer and may be explained by other factors. (See: Resolving the Paradox of the Antarctic Sea Ice at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100816154958.htm which discusses the paper: “Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice” by Jiping Liu and Judith A. Curry and http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-is-Antarctic-sea-ice-increasing.html
By contrast to Antarctic sea ice, Arctic sea ice consists of perennial ice (or at least half or more of it used to consist of ice that is more than 2 years old see: http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20101004_Figure6.jpg for a chart showing the decline in perennial arctic ice) and first year ice that floats at the pole and is generally surrounded by continents.
The ocean currents influencing the Arctic ocean (see map at: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Arc1.gif and http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/ocean_currents_and_sea_ice_extent ) come primarily from relatively warm ocean waters from the Atlantic flowing through the Nordic Seas into the Arctic Ocean via the Barents Sea while to a lesser extent, the warm Pacific waters flow across the Bering Sea and enter the arctic through the Bering Strait. These currents, particularly the Pacific current, flow under the arctic ice cap and becomes part of the transpolar current that exits the arctic at several points, including the Fram Strait . http://www.eoearth.org/article/General_features_of_Arctic_marine_systems and http://psc.apl.washington.edu/HLD/
Given the geographic differences and the different manner in which ocean currents influence the ice at the two poles, it does not make sense to attempt to hide changes at one pole with changes at the other. Instead, the two should be examined separately to determine what is influencing them.
Additionally, expecting the signature of warming to show up in all places at the same time and to the same extent is not part of the AGW theory, thus showing that a clear signature of warming does not show up in a specific instance such as antarctic maximum ice extent does not accomplish much, (particularly when there are other indicators that warming is occurring in the antarctic). Applying a skeptical approach to the more extreme AGW predictions and the politically motivated voices supporting AGW is clearly necessary, however, this does not excuse denying that there has been any physical change to arctic ice or using unsupportable positions to imply that the change is meaningless. Claims that a change is meaningless need to be backed with the same scientific rigor as claims made that AGW is responsible for the change.
While various prognosticators that have predicted a recovery of arctic ice
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/09/prediction-arctic-ice-will-continue-to-recover-this-summer/ , or its near complete disappearence at the summer minimum by 2016 (or 2019 at the outside), the arctic ice has so far not responded in a convincing fashion to either of these projections. What changes have been observed appear to support a diminished ice cover by 2050 compared to pre-2000 levels, but even this is not guaranteed.
The recent focus on the speed of the formation of first year ice in October of 2010 would appear to be irrelevant to any long term projection. Based on the experience in projecting trends in 2010, it may not have much influence on the maximum arctic ice extent which will occur in 2011, as this appears to be constrained by geography. Additionally, it will be of little consequence to the state of arctic ice if it melts away by next September. (Generally, the arctic maximum has shown a smaller rate of decrease in extent than the summer months. A recent paper finds, unsurprisingly, that the geographic patterns in the arctic act as a constraint on the maximum arctic ice extent. The paper proposes that instead of looking to maximum ice extent for determining the impact of warming in the Arctic, that the latitude of the arctic ice edge, averaged zonally over locations where it is free to migrate, should be used to describe sea ice cover. Based on this method, the paper concludes that the location of the sea edge has been receding just as rapidly during wintertime as other seasons. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/13/study-landmass-shape-affects-extent-of-arctic-sea-ice/ http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~ian/reprints/Eisenman-2010.pdf )
Based on observations, the current state of arctic ice is significantly below recent historical averages from the period of satellite records. The annual average arctic ice extent for 2009, a so called “recovery” year by some, was 11.18 million square kilometers (4.32 million square miles), 970,000 square kilometers (375,000 square miles) or 8.0% below 1979 to 2000 average and 740,000 square kilometers (286,000 square miles) or 6.2% below the 1979 to 2008 average. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2010/010510.html
At the end of the summer 2010 the ice levels declined from 2009, with under 15% of the ice remaining the Arctic being more than two years old, compared to 50 to 60% during the 1980s. There is virtually none of the oldest (at least five years old) ice remaining in the Arctic (less than 60,000 square kilometers [23,000 square miles] compared to 2 million square kilometers [722,000 square miles] during the 1980s).
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews for October 4, 2010
The year 2010 appears headed for an annual average ice extent that is well below the 1979 to 2000 average and the 1979 to 2009 average in spite of the melt season having the latest start date in the satellite record and having a start that almost touched the average line http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/02/artic-sea-ice-extent-update-still-growing/
Even with the fortutitious looking late start to the 2010 melt season, the average arctic ice extent for the month of June 2010 was the lowest for the period of satellite records. Even though June was a minimum, September was “only” the third lowest extent in the satellite record.
Based on the 2010 example, which defied all prognosticators, the only “recovery” that can be relied upon is that the arctic ice extent expands after September until March of the following year, after which it will decline. One winter season of “recovery” of arctic sea ice extent will not constitute a recovery. Maybe the state of arctic ice will change, but any recovery of arctic ice conditions to a pattern similar to the conditions that existed in the 1990’s will take several years (after all it took several years of melt and ice transport to get into the current situation). Until there is a significant recovery of perennial arctic ice at the summer minimum, any recovery of ice extent at the winter maximum will be meaningless.
Instead of trying to hide the change that has occurred in the arctic by adding in the unrelated antarctic ice extent or treating first-year ice as the equivalent of perennial ice or sweeping the change away as a matter of “natural variability” we should try to understand the various forces that are creating the current situation. There is more than melting of ice due to surface air temperature change driving the state of arctic ice. The flow of warmer water from the Atlantic and Pacific may be causing the ice to melt from the bottom up. Additionally, there appears to be a change in air circulation patterns and the amount of ice being transported out of the arctic through primarily the Fram Strait and to a lesser extent the Nares Strait that is affecting the amount of perennial ice. There could also be changes in cloud cover or water vapor content in the arctic air. These may be part of a longer term cycle or they may contain the fingerprint of human induced causes, but we need to understand the physics that drives these cycles before we can say what impact human activities are having or not having. While there are strong indications that the changes to arctic ice may be the result of human induced influences, additional research is clearly needed to prove or disprove the impact of this influence. Attempting to hide the change in artic ice with antarctic ice is not the answer to discovering why there has been a significant decline in arctic ice or determining if there is a possibility that arctic ice will return to pre-2000 conditions.