I missed doing a Sea Ice News last week due to being a bit discombobulated with family health issues which have now thankfully been resolved, so I’ll pick up here with a new report.
The news this week is that Arctic sea ice formation has slowed:
As you can see above, after making a very fast recovery during most of October, it is now pacing the 2007 rate. This isn’t terribly unusual, as you can see a “choke point” beginning in early November where the rates of formation start to converge. Right now the JAXA daily data report is passing the 8 million square kilometer mark a value of:
10,31,2010,8038906
Earlier this week, there was some concern that there may be a sensor issue of some sort, particularly when comparing and I asked NSIDC’s Dr. Walt Meier about it, see:
NSIDC -vs- Cryosphere Today – a visual discrepancy
Compare this NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice extent chart…
…with this from Cryosphere Today:
It certainly appears that there is more ice in 2010 than 2007 on the Cryosphere Today page. Dr. Meier seems to think that the 2007 map from CT is missing some ice, as NSIDC’s comparison between the dates doesn’t appear off as much as the CT images. Walt’s point is:
There is more ice in the central Arctic this year, but less in the Beaufort Sea, Canadian Archipelago, and Baffin Bay. These areas roughly balance each other out.
Reader Lee Kington provides this blink comparator version of NSIDC’s images:
In other news, Antarctic ice continues to be significantly above normal:
Antarctic Graphs: 
For more maps and graphs, see the WUWT Sea Ice Page
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I saw the same gray spots on the map a few days ago like Karen mentioned above. That is why I thought there was possible sensor/math issues. The smoothing may make the line not dip like it should. Hmmmmm.
Louise … it seems to me that there is often a definite bias on this site. Most commentaries from people are against any notion that planet is warming (whether or not this is the case). Any evidence of warming appear to be dismissed in favour of cooling. A good example is this post “Sea Ice News #28”. Where the author states:
“As you can see above, after making a very fast recovery during most of October, it is now pacing the 2007 rate. This isn’t terribly unusual, as you can see a “choke point” beginning in early November where the rates of formation start to converge”.
Suddenly the rate of sea ice formation starts to slow, so there is an automatic statement to say that this is not unusual … based on a very very limited time series of data.
It would seem that any arguments that favour signs of warming are frowned upon (even if it is natural). Geological evidence shows that the planet has been a lot warmer in the past but is that any excuse to ignore what is happening now? Science is about looking at data objectively and both sides of the climate change argument are guilty of not doing so!
Jon says:
November 1, 2010 at 9:13 am
Seems like the eastern Canadian Arctic is experiencing above average air temperatures again this autumn.
Thats for sure below Eureka,Ca, which has seen some temps down to 25 below (F) but while we wait for a cool down there, there is plenty of cold now on both the East & west side of the Arctic…The hole down to the mouth of the bering straits & along the AK coast should be filling in Rapidly.
This makes the Skier in me..HAPPY!…There will be winter after all…Bah Humbug to the Bugs on this thread..
http://moe.met.fsu.edu/snow/
>Go Ice Go!
>Posted on October 12, 2010 by Anthony Watts
>
>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.
It looks like Anthony jinxed the ice! The DMI 30% extent went from the highest on record (in a record that goes all the way back 6 years) to the 2nd lowest. Other measures seem to be following suit – putting the extent somewhere between 1st -3rd lowest ever.
Now I’ve probably jinxed the ice and it will start recovering. 🙂
Louise says:
November 1, 2010 at 6:45 am
Not all of these can be true – I’d like to know what the site host actually believes with respect to whether the planet is warming or not (regardless of cause) and whether that will have a positive or negative impact on our western society as it currently exists.
Louise,
Anthony can feel free to edit in and correct me, but since you have yet to be answered, I’m going to give you the Q&D. Having read almost all of the articles and most of the comments on this site since Mid 2009 (right before ClimateGate), the opinions of the site admins, as close as can be described is as follows.
1) The Earth is warming, in a cyclical nature, since the end of the LIA.
2) The temperature patterns, warming rates and climatic events seen during this warming event are NOT unprecedented and warmer periods have existed in both the near and distant past, with both higher and lower concentrations of CO2.
3) The warming that is occurring is not catastrophic, nor is there a strong likelihood of positive feedbacks which will turn minimal CO2 driven or natural warming into severe, deadly warming.
4) The records, data, hypotheses, predictions and warnings of the “in crowd” of climate science is highly questionable in many cases, especially many of the most well known and often cited cases. These cornerstones of Climatology (positive feedbacks, CO2 “control knob”, tropospheric hot spot, “unprecedented” *anything*) are poorly understood or blatantly unsupported by the ACTUAL real world data, which is subsequently ignored by the people who believe in these things.
5) No one (reasonable) on this site says that it’s simply NOT warming. It hasn’t warmed for about 10 years, significantly, and we may be entering a solar driven cold snap/ice age, but no one (reasonable) argues that temperatures since the 1820s-1850s have risen significantly. It’s called coming out of an Ice Age, and it can be considered PERFECTLY normal, taken out of the context of CO2 driven hysteria.
6) In the past, warming has by and large HELPED human society, while cold has hindered progress and injured health. Any medical professional can tell you that extreme cold provides more stress to the body than extreme heat. By viewing through this lens and looking back at periods like the Roman Warm Period (a period of cultural and societal growth and prosperity) and the Medival Warm Period (when we dragged our collective butts out of the cold driven Dark Ages) we can see that 1-2 deg celsius of warming is MORE LIKELY to benefit humanity than hinder it.
7) The Global Warming markers we were told to watch for (glacial melting, sea level rise, intense weather anomalies) have not occurred at abnormally high or unusual rates for after a glacial event (LIA) with the exception of soot (BLACK CARBON) driven melt. This is an effect of having a directly absorbant material, caused by incomplete burning of fossil fuels and isn’t directly related to CO2 (new cars and clean factories produce no soot).
I’ve only been reading this site for a few years now, did I miss anything important? I didn’t see a comment by Anthony or I would have left this alone. But anyone with a 10th grade reading level who regularly visits this site should be able to figure out Anthony’s stance. We’re not unreasonable here, that’s EXACTLY why we don’t by into the scare hysteria of “OMG, IT’S NEVER BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE, WE’RE GOING TO DROWN/BURN/SUFFOCATE/MELT IN ACID… ALL AT THE SAME TIME!”
Louise says:
November 1, 2010 at 6:45 am
“…I’d like to know what the site host actually believes with respect to whether the planet is warming or not (regardless of cause) and whether that will have a positive or negative impact on our western society as it currently exists.”
Good questions Louise, but impossible for anyone to answer – WUWT!
Our climate is driven by many, many interlinked mechanisms which have the effect of acting together to keep the climate oscillating around the comfort zone of the biosphere over long, long periods. These mechanisms produce turbulence and deterministic chaos, which means they are non-linear at looking at trends to predict the future climate regime is useless. It does not behave as a global system, rather it operates as a conglomerate of many small regions and it is possible for some to be warming and some cooling at the same time.
Over the last 15y there has been no statistically significant change to our averaged global mean surface temperature, despite a large increase in CO2 over this period. So it looks like GHGs are at best a minor player in climate – the hydrological cycle has a much bigger effect.
Regarding Arctic sea ice, Arctic-ROOS are showing that 2010 has been closely tracking 2009 since October – seems that climate science doesn’t have a consistent and accurate Arctic data-set yet (see link below).
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Thanks to NovaReason & Tenuc for trying to answer Louise’s question.
Part of the point is that if there WERE such a summary in some prominent place, we wouldn’t have to guess and/or read between the lines thru years worth of posts to know the general views on specific topics. People who different significantly from WUWT (in any aspect) could be directed to a clear summary as a starting point for discussion. As it is, the same discussions keep popping up in many various threads.
For instance, it was stated “No one (reasonable) on this site says that it’s simply NOT warming.” But you DO hear that claim here – sometimes it refers to the last decade; sometimes the last century; sometimes the last millennium. It would seem perfectly reasonable to have a summary of the “official” views of WUWT on key basic issues.
Over at Skeptical Science they may be a bit over-zealous in the other direction. Many posts are greeted with a simple message from the mods to the effect “Read this other thread to see what we think and THEN comment on specific issues you have.” That might stifle some discussion, but it also prevents rehashing the same issues over and over again.
NovaReason says:
November 2, 2010 at 1:00 am
Nice summary. I would like to add to that…there ARE in fact several commentors on here who claim no warming over measurable periods, no GHG effect, etc. Reading comments on other sites (e.g. Tamino’s) might lead one to believe that this is the majority belief (as well as Anthony’s) on WUWT. From my experience, that’s not the case. Yes, there are those people here, but there are also CAGW believers here too.
-Scott
I’m now a fan of Novareason..with kudos to Kenuc… & u always da man Scott….Anybody watching the ice grow??
Thinking of putting the Barrow webcam on the Sea Ice page? I was having a look at it just now and noticed that one of the other recent visitors was based in Chico, CA 😉
fishnski says November 2, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Anybody watching the ice grow??
Plug in the hole … http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/2640/13day20101101.png
Thanks AJB For giving me a small , though pretty much insignificant …whats the word?….never mind…Does anyone notice how cold it has to get to get ice to grow over at Svalbard,norway??…Been cold enough since the 23rd of Oct & some periods before that but….NADA!…Gotta be that Gulf Stream.
Question: What is going on under here?
Watch the DMI SST loop here: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php
What monitoring of the heat coming from these has been done since July 2004?
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2005/nsf0539/nsf0539_13.pdf
fishnski says:
November 2, 2010 at 5:57 pm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1760271.stm
fishnski says:
November 2, 2010 at 5:57 pm
http://epic.awi.de/Publications/Sch2005v.pdf
fishnski says:
November 2, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Yes. My question now is – can we avoid reaching recorded lows for the upcoming days?
2007 is coming up fast in both extent and area, and we’re currently close to 2009, which has poorer performance soon. We just “got passed” by 2009 in area, but it has weak days Nov 4 & 5. 2007 then passes 2009’s area on Nov 5, so we’ll need to be ahead (and stay ahead) of 2009 by then. This will be tough b/c 2009 exhibits good area growth Nov 6-11, after that it goes to the crapper for 5 days.
With extent, we’ve been trailing 2009 for about a week now. 2007 passes 2009 in extent on Nov 5 and passes it “permanently” on Nov 7. We’ll need to average additions of 118438 km^2 the next two days to not be the lowest extent on Nov 5. For reference, 2010 has picked it up recently, averaging 140625 km^2/day the last 4 days. Before that, however, was some pitiful growth that got us into this problem in the first place. If we can stay ahead of 2009 until Nov 7, I expect to stay ahead of it in extent for quite some time…probably long enough to reach the section where 2006 is the poorest on record.
For those of you who believe in short term trends, Nov 19 is the day to watch. The Nov 19 JAXA extent has an R^2 of 0.9982 for predicting the next year’s minimum. However, JAXA only has data on that date for 2007, 2008, and 2009, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in the three-point trend. 😉
Also, for those interested in monthly averages, 2010 was the third-lowest (above 2007/2009) in both the JAXA extent and CT area records. I haven’t pulled the NSIDC numbers yet, but it typically agrees with CT.
-Scott
John F. Hultquist
Re: Petermann Glacier
The calving at Petermann Glacier is not necessarily an indication of warming. In reviewing the history of the glacier, Andreas Muenchow from the University of Delaware stated that: “We went back to 1876 to find all glacier positions that have ever been reported. From this analysis, we found that this indeed was the largest event that has been observed at Petermann, but that the trend of area lost by this glacier over the last 140 years is indistinguishable from zero.”
The 2010 calving broke off much further back than a 1991 calving. The pre-calving front in 1991 appears to have been approximately 5 to 8 kms further down the fjord than the pre-calving front of the 2010 calving. There is an August 19, 1991 radar image that shows the Petermann glacier just before the calving that indicates the location of the calving line at:
http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMYXY4OJCG_index_1.html
The Petermann glacier advanced 4.5 kms down the fjord from 2003 to 2007 after a calving event in 2001 and there is no reason to believe that it will not extend back down the fjord after the next calving which may occur in 2011 due to the significant crack in this image:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/images/MODIS/Kennedy/201010211543.ASAR.jpg
The Petermann Ice Islands are on the move again.
Current position: http://sailwx.info/shiptrack/shipposition.phtml?call=47557
Recent radar image of ice islands:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?lang=En&n=D32C361E-1&wsdoc=09…
Scott says:
November 3, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Yes. My question now is – can we avoid reaching recorded lows for the upcoming days?
2007 is coming up fast in both extent and area, and we’re currently close to 2009, which has poorer performance soon. We just “got passed” by 2009 in area, but it has weak days Nov 4 & 5. 2007 then passes 2009′s area on Nov 5, so we’ll need to be ahead (and stay ahead) of 2009 by then. This will be tough b/c 2009 exhibits good area growth Nov 6-11, after that it goes to the crapper for 5 days.
With extent, we’ve been trailing 2009 for about a week now. 2007 passes 2009 in extent on Nov 5 and passes it “permanently” on Nov 7. We’ll need to average additions of 118438 km^2 the next two days to not be the lowest extent on Nov 5. For reference, 2010 has picked it up recently, averaging 140625 km^2/day the last 4 days. Before that, however, was some pitiful growth that got us into this problem in the first place. If we can stay ahead of 2009 until Nov 7, I expect to stay ahead of it in extent for quite some time…probably long enough to reach the section where 2006 is the poorest on record.
As of this morning on JAXA the extent is now lower than 2007 (I find ‘ahead’ and ‘trailing’ etc. confusing since they appear to depend on the viewpoint of the poster).
Phil. says:
November 4, 2010 at 6:33 am
You looked at the preliminary number, which is nearly 100% of the time lower than the final number this time of year (from my observations, often by around 30-60k km^2). 2010 ended up higher than 2007 for 11/3. To be higher for 11/4, it’ll need a single-day gain of 87969 km^2. To avoid being last (above 2009) for 11/5, it’ll need to avg 83828 km^2/day for two days, and to avoid being last for 11/6, it’ll need to avg 78855 km^2/day for three days.
I think the probability of achieving all three of those is a toss up, maybe 50/50.
Yesterday’s CT area number showed a 142k km^2 increase, putting 2010 in a good position. It’s already above 2009 for two days ahead of it, so as long 2010 shows even average gains the next two days, it’ll be in good position to hold off 2009 during the four days after it (and even the 3 days after that), where 2009 shows very good gains.
Heck, the only way to inject excitement into the ice at this time of year is to look at the daily races!!! 🙂
-Scott
NAO is going Neg…The Arctic Temp is a little above Ave….But we still have some easy real estate to grab while we tackle the hard spots that require extreme cold. Hudson Bay will be the new hunting grounds as we wait for the bering straits to fill in….its all good & the west va alpps have just entered into the Northern hem snow extent..
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_usa.gif?session-id=0b80eb435d423e1655296157e8912f34…See the little White dots?
Scott says:
November 4, 2010 at 7:39 am
Heck, the only way to inject excitement into the ice at this time of year is to look at the daily races!!! 🙂
Yes but it’s really hard to follow when the commentator doesn’t appear to be sure which way the race is going!
. To avoid being last (above 2009) for 11/5, it’ll need to avg 83828 km^2/day for two days, and to avoid being last for 11/6, it’ll need to avg 78855 km^2/day for three days.
So last is ‘above 2009’.
putting 2010 in a good position. It’s already above 2009 for two days ahead of it, so as long 2010 shows even average gains the next two days, it’ll be in good position to hold off 2009 during the four days after it (and even the 3 days after that), where 2009 shows very good gains.
Now ‘above’ is leading?
By the way today’s revised numbers on JAXA show 2010 lower than 2007 but slightly behind 2009 (statistically more like a dead heat for all three).
Phil. says:
November 6, 2010 at 9:59 am
No, avoiding being last is what is what requires being above 2009. There have been multiple comments and discussions on being clear when discussing the sea ice, particularly in avoiding words like “ahead” or “behind”, because perspective changes depending on if one is watching the ice from the view of melting to death or from the view of trying to survive. You yourself said that here:
Phil. says:
November 4, 2010 at 6:33 am
In fact, I used your advice in that comment in my next one, thus adding the word “above”. Now, I freely admit that my sentence was ambiguous with the word “last”, and if I was reviewing a paper I would probably request that sentence be reworded to remove the ambiguity, though I probably would not imply that the writer “doesn’t appear to be sure” when they obviously exhibited clear quantitative numbers (which you could easily verify) showing that they knew what they were talking about! However, despite the ambiguity in my sentence, I feel that the word “above” cleared it up fairly readily, as it is unambiguous.
My favorite part of your latest comment is this:
“Behind” is a pretty ambiguous word. When taken in context of your previous comment…
…it appears that it’s pretty easy to make this error. Indeed typing “ahead” (apparently off limits) into Microsoft Word (2008) and using its thesaurus feature provides the recommended antonym of “behind”, so I don’t understand how one is acceptable and the other isn’t.
So is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, or is it simply just very easy to make this sort of mistake? I’ll go ahead and assume the latter for now, even though this courtesy didn’t appear to be given to me.
—
All that said, I hope several people read this and get the take-home message, which has been discussed on and off in these threads for months:
Words such as ahead/behind/leading/trailing are ambiguous in the present context and should be avoided. Instead, words such as above/below/higher/lower/greater than/less than are much clearer and should be preferred.
-Scott
So I had been worried about 2010’s area (from CT) becoming the lowest on record (for any specific day) this week. However, 2010 showed well above average gains in area the last several days, placing it well above 2009, and somewhat higher than 2007. 2009 shows large gains the next week, while 2007 shows a large gain for 11/06, then several days of lower gains. It looks like 2010 is positioned well to stay above both for at least the next several days…and it won’t be long before all three years catch 2006 and should stay well above it after 11/21 or so.
15% Extent (JAXA) is a bit of a different story. Yesterday’s gain in JAXA was very low, and an equal day today will put 11/06/2010 as the lowest on record. 2010 will need to gain at least 64063 km^2 today to avoid taking that title from 2007, and it will need to increase by 58047 km^2/day for the next two days to avoid going below 2009 in two days, after which the pressure decreases for a couple days. If 2010 can stay above 2009 through Nov 10, then it is likely it will avoid setting a record low for another week and a half.
-Scott
Has anyone cked out the plume of Heat/Moisture streaming up from Hurricane tomas?..This heat will delay some ice growth in the sea between Greenland & Canada (& probably affect Hudson Bay)….All this heat will go Bye bye & even though the Ice extent might dip below 07 …(Or Might not)… in the long run we be sittin pretty!..Word!