I’ve been remiss at posting regular entries of this feature, and there hasn’t been much happening on the way to peak Arctic Ice this year. The action seems mostly down south, and there’s a lot of news from NSIDC that you haven’t heard about.
Per the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Anomaly for November was a record high for their data set:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Nov/S_11_plot.png
November’s record high Antarctic Sea Ice Area of 16.90 Million Sq Km, exceeded the prior record of 16.76 Million Sq Km (Set in November 2005), by 140,000 Square Kilometers. See here:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Nov/S_11_area.txt
Oddly, they have a plot for extent, and a data file for area, but no plot for area or data for extent. I meant to say: Oddly, they have a plot for extent, and a data file for area, but no plot for area or data file for extent. They do have both data included in the file named “area.txt”. Seems backwards, doesn’t it?
The NSIDC plot certainly shows a lot of growth in November around the periphery of the sea ice pack in November:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Nov/S_11_trnd.png
I find it interesting that the (NSIDC) National Snow & Ice Data Center doesn’t find it newsworthy to mention this record high Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent Anomaly in their December 6th press release:
They certainly could have included this information, since their FTP folder had NH data posted three days prior to the December 6th press release:
And the SH data also, with the same time stamp:
But this comes as no surprise considering that they glossed over the other record highs that occurred this year in,
June:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jun/S_06_plot.png
Data: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jun/S_06_area.txt
July:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jul/S_07_plot.png
Data: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jul/S_07_area.txt
August:
Source: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Aug/S_08_plot.png
Data: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Aug/S_08_area.txt
It is apparent that Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is currently maintaining above average;
But, with such good news, I wonder why NSIDC and others aren’t providing more information to the public on this interesting phenomenon. I know these new record highs aren’t as interesting or as likely to generate news stories as “death spiral watch”, but perhaps in their next press NSIDC release they will at least recognize the Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice for the simple fact that it has hit record highs?
We are constantly told that NSIDC is all about the science, and we are just “breathtakingly ignorant” (to quote NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze), so I’m sure this press release reporting on only one half of the planet’s icecap’s is just an oversight on their part. I’m sure NSIDC will want to show that their mission truly is “global” and talk about the gains in Antarctica when they write up their year end review which will be seen by hundreds of journalists.
They seem to have interest in the minuscule (compared to the whole continent) Antarctic Peninsula ice loss, but not so much the main continent gains.
Antarctica is by far the largest mass of ice on Earth, containing approximately 90% of the world’s supply. By contrast, the Arctic and glaciers make up the remainder, yet they get all the facetime.
The fact that Sea Ice Extent around Antarctica is trending up and has been regularly hitting record highs in 2010 should give any rational person a moment’s pause. It might even provide the basis for some healthy skepticism of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Narrative.
Oh, and for the few worrywarts who frequent here, who will howl mercilessly that I didn’t show the Arctic Sea Ice trend, here’s your North and South trends together:
Cryosphere Today – extent 15% or greater – click to enlarge
Cryosphere Today – Antarctic Sea Ice anomaly – click to enlarge
Of course all the graphs and imagery that I didn’t cover here is available 24/7/365 on the WUWT sea ice page, which I recommend you visit.
h/t to WUWT reader “Just the facts” for pointing out the ftp data which has remained buried and out of view of NSIDC’s main public relations page.
November's record high Sea Ice Extent of 16.90 Million Sq Km, exceeded the prior record of 16.76 Million Sq Km (Set in November 2005), by 140,000 Square Kilometers:
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“I wonder why NSIDC and others aren’t providing more information to the public on this interesting phenomenon.”
Your final two plots answer this question rather neatly, in that there are two obvious differences between the two timeseries that make NH ice a bit more interesting than SH ice.
The first difference is that there is a clearly identifiable [downward] trend in the NH ice, to the extent that it looks as though it has been almost six years since there was a positive anomaly in NH sea ice. By contrast there is only a slight suggestion of an upward trend in SH sea.
The second difference is that the variability in the SH sea ice is much greater than in the NH sea ice. I think this makes record anomalies in sea ice a bit more likely from a purely statistical point of view, where there is no trend.
This second difference is mostly due to the nature of the sea ice at the two poles. The Arctic sea ice is mainly in the Arctic Ocean itself, surrounded by land, whereas the Antarctic sea ice is further towards the equator, surrounding the Antarctic continent and consequently being moved about by winds a lot at the edge. This probably helps to explain the greater variability in Antarctic sea ice, and also possibly explains the curious little kink in Arctic seaice extent, which has dipped slightly in recent days [but if anyone knows more about that I’d be interested to hear it].
To continue this discussion of atmospheric oscillation affects on polar ice, here is a good 2002 article on the AO and its affects on Arctic ice. Nary a word about CO2.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%282002%29015%3C2648%3AROSITT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
I’m going to try one more time, then I’ll forget about it….
The Cryosphere graphs of N and S Hemisphere both have exactly the same layout, only the Arctic one has “15% extent” in the description. The Antarctica one has neither extent nor area indicated, so it’s very easy to assume that it, too, is extent, especially when they’re paired together, as above and on the Sea Ice Page. (By paired, I mean they show up in the same order in the presentations.)
Also, on the Total Global Sea Ice graph, also by Cryosphere, the global anomaly has looked to me like it has tracked very closely to what you would get from summing the two graphs and this has been true for several months now. (It’s hard to tell exactly because for some odd reason there’s no link to the data on any of these graphs, links that would remove all of this confusion, incidentally.)
Anthony, doesn’t a graph for extent for the S. Hemisphere exist? If it does, wouldn’t it be more consistent to use that instead of the current one, which people in here are saying is for area? And Cryosphere, why all the obfuscation? Label the damned graphs better and provide links to the data and all this would be unnecessary.
But perhaps then we’d learn that the negative anomaly in Antarctica is fictitious, especially with NSIDC’s measurement of extent running better than 2 SD’s above the 1979-2000 average for months now? But then Cryosphere is using a 1979-2008 mean, so maybe that’s the answer? Hard to tell without a link to the data.
Given the links provided regarding the AAO and the AO influence on sea ice gain and loss, I can deduce that these atmospheric oscillations (which have great amounts of energy in them) appear to be the driver of sea ice behavior in its growth, movement, and loss at both poles. Without longer term data on these atmospheric indices, it is difficult to tell whether or not each has a medium term and longer term oscillation, as well as short term noisy trends.
I propose that it is probable that they both have all three kinds of trends and are quite able to bury in noise the fraction of an influence global changes in CO2 has. I also propose that to reduce the short term noise, it would be helpful to statistically apply a 3 month overlapping running average to the data, similar to that done to ENSO data in determining El Nino and La Nina events and conditions.
I’m guessing NSIDC didn’t make a big deal about Antarctic ice extent because the ice area (last column in their source data) shows November only had the 8th highest extent. That does not point to the Antarctic being colder than normal or having significantly more ice than normal…again, the sea ice area was only 8th highest…rather, it implies that the wind was spreading out the thin ice more than normal. If you look at CT’s daily map of sea ice area, that’s essentially what you see: large swaths of widely spread low concentration ice.
NSIDC source data:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Nov/S_11_area.txt
CT map of Antarctic sea ice area:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/antarctic.seaice.color.000.png
@Tony Hansen
“Are you sure? The caption with the CT graph says….
Cryosphere Today – extent 15% or greater – click to enlarge”
I think the caption on the WUWT ice page is incorrect.
Compare these two plots and you’ll see that the Cryoshpere Today anomaly plot is area, not extent.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
@barry
“Antarctic summer trend is smaller than the uncertainty ”
and @Anthony
“Is utter BS. They make similar observations (saying there is a significant long-term trend) about the Arctic using the same satellite data set.”
barry is right. See my earlier comment, which gives trends and uncertainties (for each month) for both poles. The data are from
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
In the Antarctic summer, the Antarctic trends are less than twice their standard deviations. Therefore, the trends are not statistically significant at the 95% level. Over much of the year (including summer) the Arctic trends are six to ten times their standards deviations. Thus, they are definitely statistically significant. The satellites are indeed the same, but the data tell different stories for the two poles.
REPLY: Well I disagree, my point has been about reporting (or lack thereof) of record highs. Record highs are trumpeted far and wide for temperature, rainfall, etc. They are also trumpeted far and wide (usually starting at NSIDC) about Sea Ice. These records sometimes aren’t “statistically significant”; in many cases new records are reported for high/low temperature in the media when they exceed a by single degree, hardly statistically significant, but they are often used to underscore talking points. NSIDC uses record lows to underscore their talking points. My point that record highs should be discussed, on both poles, by an organization that covers both poles, is just as valid.
The real problem with sea ice is that nobody really knows what the true “standard deviation” for the Arctic (or Antarctic) extent is, since we have only a mere pittance of data, 30 years worth, since late 1979. The standard deviation computed for such a short data set may very well turn out to be statistically insignificant in the long terms scheme of things. – Anthony
You’re quite wrong. This is a statistical point. The error bars are wider than the anomaly. The trend is smaller than the margin of error. This is true for November and March (summertime) extents. The current value for November, which you posted, is 0.6 (+/-0.7%) per decade. This means that there is potentially no trend (or that the trend is 1.3% per decade). This is why they – correctly – describe the trend as insignificant. Both statistically and literally, it is.
This is different for the Arctic, where the summertime trend is 11.5 (+/-2.9)% per decade. In this case, the trend is 4 times greater than the margin of error. There is no doubting the trend, and it is highly significant, both statistically and literally.
Because the briefing would be, “Sea ice in the Antarctic shows a statistically insignificant positive trend. We’re not sure that summertime sea ice has grown over the last 30 years, but it is more likely than not that it has. The Antarctic is relatively thermally isolated from the rest of the globe, and changes there are slow and not well-tracked. However, short-term predictions indicate that some sea ice growth may occur, with depleted ozone potentially playing a role, while the projection for the long-term is a decrease in sea ice cover. Unlike the Arctic, if the summertime ice disappears completely, this will have no impact on the region or the globe, except, perhaps as confirmation of the long-term projections – summertime sea ice in the Antarctic almost completely melts away in any case, so the change would not be profound. November sea ice was a record high, but again, the margin of error means the value is statistically insignificant. We can’t say much with confidence about observed SH sea ice trends.”
Not much happening, and that which is, is uncertain, and no impact on weather/climate. Why should that make a press release?
Ha ha ha. I’m not that attached to the outcome of an argument at the bottom of a thread. How many people make it this far anyway? I think you’re running (counter) propaganda, and it is a semi-idle pastime to respond to it.
I think you’re ‘having a cow’ over a non-event. Your paradigm is that positive Antarctic sea ice trends mean something WRT global warming. It’s the tired old argument that if one part of the world exhibits non-warming behaviour, this injures AGW theory, as if anyone ever posited that global warming means not just the average, but every single location on the globe as well. The premise is wrong, but even if we run with it, let’s look at ‘truly global’ sea ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
The NH/SH combined trend is…. negative.
You’ll notice that NSIDC don’t report the global average, either, in their monthly/annual press releases. As it’s a nice, warmist result against the skeptical memes on Antarctic sea ice, they’re pretty poor salesmen, don’t you think?
REPLY: Well Dr. Meier just went on record about more openness and engaging skeptics concerns over at EE, so we’ll see if they think the issue worth mentioning. My issue with lack of reporting new records still stands. – Anthony
Tried putting this over on the Tips page but no Leave a Reply available. For the past few days I have been noticing “necklaces” on the cyrosphere images of Arctic Ice. The one there today looks like two antenni coming out of the top of a smashed beetle’s head.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
R. Gates says:
Thanks for that handy link,
You are most welcome. I’ve updated it today with “live images” so folks can see the “before” and the “after”.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/california-weather-now/
Of particular interest is the way the low off the N. California coast has made a nice cold front running down toward LA and busting up the stationary front that was on the Mexican border. You can also see the large cloud mass that was off the N. Cal coast and is now moved inland and is sitting on top of my head. All of it moving from the Gulf of Alaska down and left into California. That’s how it works out here.
brought all the rain and snow to CA over this previous weekend when it (the subtropical jet) was directly over southern CA.
Oh, I get it. You’re one of those folks who think California ends at Pasadena! Now it all makes sense. The 3/4 of the state north of there with the bits that are covered in snow just don’t matter because it doesn’t exist in that world view. The Hollywood Centric “If it’s not in LA then it isn’t REAL” folks.
Ok….
One Small Problem: We get snow from cold fronts. Not warm fronts. Warm fronts deliver snow melting rains as high as 8000 feet. We’ve got a load of snow. Work it out.
BTW, all the folks in frozen and snowy [ Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, …] aren’t in L.A. either and they kind of care about those Cold Alaskan’s we’re getting…
And, like I said, good luck with that “hot water driving it” thesis as the whole pacific rapidly is approaching a ‘below normal” anomaly.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
Back On Antarctic Ice
OK, the reason they won’t talk about the Antarctic Ice is because it’s an inconvenient frozen meat locker. It only gets talked about when the ice shelves are calving. We’ve lost what, 400% of the ice shelf? And it’s still there…
These folks:
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/10195/1/02-2280.pdf
say it’s due to the dynamics of the ice itself as it develops rifts.
And this fine old paper from the “New Little Ice Age” scare era has the proper multiple thousand year perspective:
http://iahs.info/redbooks/a086/086040.pdf
I find it interesting that they clearly recognized a warmer past when the ice margin was retreating fast, but had since stopped. They also note that we had a bit “POP” in warming out of the Ice Age Glacial and into the Interglacial, but that it’s been a bit of a slow (very very slow) downhill cooling since then….
OK, I know it’s only been a few years since the Chicken Little Warmers (CLW?) news makers were busy shoving the ice shelf breakup into our faces… and the ‘decadal’ time scales says we likely need a few more years to get them fully back, BUT:
Anthony? Is it maybe time for an article showing the change of the ice shelves since that major “catastrophe”? Have they stabilized? Added mass? Is it worth pointing out any kind of cyclical pattern with, oh, I don’t know, a 30 year period with shelf break up and non-breakup intervals plotted?
I’ve found it to be VERY handy to look at the “negative space” of what someone says or does. The “what’s missing in this picture”. And right now what’s missing is any talk about ice loss and ice shelf loss in Antarctica. That implies to me that it’s a productive spot for a “Dig Here!” sign…
The Wilkins’ Ice Watch at http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMYBBSTGOF_index_0.html is currently disabled for maintenance.
vukcevic says:
December 22, 2010 at 3:35 am
R. Gates says:
December 21, 2010 at 5:50 pm
………………
Graph you refer to confirms the point I made. Less ice created in the winter (and it is not only the area but depth of the ice has to be taken into account), ice free area will increase not linearly but exponentially.
Further matter you should know is that proportion of ice reaching Denmark Strait last summer was created some 10 years ago in the Beaufort Sea
_____
I would seriously doubt there is any 10 year old ice from the Beaufort Sea reaching the Denmark Strait. The existence of such old multi-year ice would surprise me. I’m not saying it is impossible, but I would love to see the data on this. Also, I guess I’m just not getting your point about the winter and sea ice growth. Are are talking about the actual period from Dec. 21 to March. 21 (Calendar winter)? The fastest rate of growth for sea ice actually occurs during the fall from Sept. 21 to Dec. 21. But perhaps I just missed your point entirely (most likely).
OMG that Tiny Tim song is such a hoot and a half!
This site (that has an embed of it) says it’s from the 1968 album (just about the time we turned to a New Ice Age Scare) so given the lead time to write, create, and publish I’m thinkin’ TT was getting the idea in about 1962? So was there an “Ice Caps Melting” scare in the ’40s and ’50s? I think we need a historical search…
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2009/11/ice-caps-are-melting-oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.html
But it does raise the interesting question: Has AlGore listened to Tiny Tim when he was a child? Was there a subtile influence upon him? Has he secretly wanted to be a fish?… 😉
As funny as that song is, it does raise the interesting technical point that there was some kind of cyclical paranoia cycle here, with an “Ice Caps Melting” meme turning into “New Little Ice Age” then back to “Ice Caps Melting”. The presumption would be that the next 30 years of the cycle will see “New New Little Ice Age” return…
Is there a PDO driver to our culture? That could take a while to sort out…
R. Gates says:
December 22, 2010 at 1:50 pm
…………….
Ice melt in the early autumn is usually due to rain (low insulation), which month or two later turns into snow and ice built up. Surface ice growth on the Siberian banks, where there is huge inflow of fresh water, occurs later in the year, when the water surface temperatures drops below -2C.
Ice is on the move for the greater part of the year due to (Arctic Ocean is Bering to Fram strait) currents.
There are number of papers with reference to the time ice takes to reach either Fram or Denmark straits. Here are two:
On the average, it takes ice more than 6 years to drift from the Beaufort Sea to the Fram Strait and one year from the North Pole. During high AO years, ice drift from the Beaufort Sea to the Fram Strait takes more than a year longer, but ice travels faster from the North Pole to the Fram Strait. This condition leads to increased divergence of sea ice, which in turn promotes increased production of more thin sea-ice over the Eurasia Basin.
http://www.greenice.org/Publications/JEODI%20wkshop%20paper.pdf
Transpolar Drift Stream collects ice from the Eurasian shelves and transports it across the Pole and towards the Fram Strait within about three years.
http://web.gfi.uib.no/publikasjoner/pdf/Kvingedal.pdf
There is more to the Arctic ice understanding than just annual or seasonal surface coverage graphs.
vukcevic says:
December 22, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Ice is on the move for the greater part of the year due to (Arctic Ocean is Bering to Fram strait) currents.
There are number of papers with reference to the time ice takes to reach either Fram or Denmark straits. Here are two:
On the average, it takes ice more than 6 years to drift from the Beaufort Sea to the Fram Strait and one year from the North Pole.
Recent events have made this obselete, over the last few years it has only taken about 6 months to drift from the pole to the Fram (see NPole webcam progress and Russian research bases). This year’s MY ice melted in situ in the Chukchi sea without ever entering the Trans Polar drift.
During high AO years, ice drift from the Beaufort Sea to the Fram Strait takes more than a year longer, but ice travels faster from the North Pole to the Fram Strait. This condition leads to increased divergence of sea ice, which in turn promotes increased production of more thin sea-ice over the Eurasia Basin.
http://www.greenice.org/Publications/JEODI%20wkshop%20paper.pdf
Transpolar Drift Stream collects ice from the Eurasian shelves and transports it across the Pole and towards the Fram Strait within about three years.
http://web.gfi.uib.no/publikasjoner/pdf/Kvingedal.pdf
Recently the ice from the Eurasian shelves has also been melting in situ. The thinner ice is now drifting faster and fragmenting more, the ice bridge at the entrance to the Nares strait either doesn’t form now or opens much earlier.
There is more to the Arctic ice understanding than just annual or seasonal surface coverage graphs.
Yes and it’s changing as we watch it!