Now we start the slow slide into the Arctic Ice Minimum, likely sometime in September.
It is important to point out that there’s a lot of ice up there, and as illustrated by the images below, the losses at ICEmax are at the periphery, not at the core.
click to enlarge
What I find curious is the fact that NSDIC’s opening statement (below) in the press release has these words: “Arctic sea ice extent” but if you look at the NSIDC provided plot above, you’ll note that they include normal lines (in orange) for areas that are outside of the Arctic circle. While perhaps a small point, it does speak to accuracy in reporting. For example, I really don’t see how sea ice off the north coast of Newfoundland can be considered “Arctic” when it doesn’t even come close to being within the Arctic Circle.
[Update: Dr. Walt Meier of NSIDC in an email agrees that the orange boundaries are “somewhat arbitrary” and has agreed to explore a “what if” question for me. I hope to have a plot from him using Arctic circle as a boundary in a couple of weeks to see if there is any significant difference – Anthony]
It’s also important to note that this NSDIC claim only represents data from a 30 year satellite record, not the all time ice record, which is spotty and incomplete. From historical anecdotes, it appears the Arctic has gone through periods of reduced ice in the past. While NSIDC claims the maximum to be a tie with the 2006-2007 period on their plot (see their press release below), I’ll point out that NANSEN’s plot, using the same SSMI sensor platform, shows it nowhere near the 2007 value at present, though there was an intersection in the month of February:
In fact, NSIDC claims the maximum was reached on March 7th, but as we see in the NANSEN plot above, the ice continues to grow as late as 3/23 when that plot was produced. This discrepancy between two organizations that use the SSMI data is curious. However, the JAXA AMSRE data does seem to support NSIDC’s claim.
More live plots are available on the WUWT Sea Ice Page
======================================================================
Here’s NSIDC’s announcement:
Annual maximum ice extent reached
Arctic sea ice extent appeared to reach its maximum extent for the year on March 7, marking the beginning of the melt season. This year’s maximum tied for the lowest in the satellite record. NSIDC will release a detailed analysis of 2010 to 2011 winter sea ice conditions during the second week of April.
Figure 1. Arctic sea ice extent on March 7 was 14.64 million square kilometers (5.65 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Overview of conditions
On March 7, 2011, Arctic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.64 million square kilometers (5.65 million square miles). The maximum extent was 1.2 million square kilometers (471,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average of 15.86 million square kilometers (6.12 million square miles), and equal (within 0.1%) to 2006 for the lowest maximum extent in the satellite record.
Figure 2. The graph above shows daily Arctic sea ice extent as of March 22, 2011, along with daily ice extents for 2006, which had the previous lowest maximum extent, and 2007, the year with the lowest minimum extent in September. Light blue indicates 2011, green shows 2007, light green shows 2006, and dark gray shows the 1979 to 2000 average. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Conditions in context
As of March 22, ice extent has declined for five straight days. However there is still a chance that the ice extent could expand again. Sea ice extent in February and March tends to be quite variable, because ice near the edge is thin and often quite dispersed. The thin ice is highly sensitive to weather, moving or melting quickly in response to changing winds and temperatures, and it often oscillates near the maximum extent for several days or weeks, as it has done this year.
Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, the maximum Arctic sea ice extent has occurred as early as February 18 and as late as March 31, with an average date of March 6.
R. Gates says:
March 25, 2011 at 11:06 am
====
Please define “long-term”.
Then explain why it is a bad thing.
I always wonder why a little warmth is a bad thing, while walking through the terminal moraines of glaciers 30 miles northwest of Chicago, said moraines melted out of glaciers 10-15K years ago (a blink of the eye, in geologic time).
Pamela Gray,
Don’t know which “theory” of mine you are referring to, since I have exactly 0 theories to my credit. The warmest water in the Arctic in 2,000 years is simply data, and not a theory, and my question to you was which natural cycle were you ascribing this warmth too, since you seem to take no credence in the notion that CO2 can warm much of anything.
Julienne,
I think you need to come to terms with the fact that PIOMAS is wrong. PIOMASS evidently incorporates the positive NAO scenario in its calculations.
current NAO:
http://ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/state_of_the_ocean/atm/nao.php
Goddard is right with PIPS2. Arctic ocean heat content is declining and sea ice volume is increasing. Sea ice extent is not a meaningful metric for climate change – volume is.
Julienne,
Nice to see the PhD credentialed experts returning to this site for another exciting Arctic Ice melt season. It speaks well of Anthony and WUWT that he could bring both you and Walt to post here, and we are all better off for it.
In regard to the negative AO. While not directly related, I’m wondering what relationship there might be between the negative AO and the dipole anomaly, especially in light of the notion that the character of the AO may be changing. What I noticed just as a casual observer this winter was there seem to be some higher than chance correlation between the times the AO was extremely negative and presence of the arctic dipole. I ask this because it seems I often read that the “freezer door is open” so to speak when we are seeing an extreme negative AO, but at the same time, it seems we’re also seeing the existence of the DA, which tends to force the cold air across and out of the Arctic. Your expert comment of a connection between the potential changing nature of the negative AO and the DA would be most interesting to me…
Richar that 1225, I don’t think you understand my posting. It is incorrect to link the NAO or AO or NAM, or whatever index you want and say a negative phase of these indices gives you an increase in ice volume. It is not that straightforward. These indices are not telling the location of the SLP anomalies, which can have a significant impact on ice transport and hence ice volume. 2010 was a perfect example of that. And note, that while statistically a negative NAO phase gives you less export out of Fram Strait, that didn’t happen last winter (export was normal). Nor was any thick ice sequestered in the central Arctic basin.
BTW..Walt Meier did a posting last year on why the PIPS2 model data are not very accurate. But I welcome to hear your reasoning for why you believe the PIPS2 model is more accurate than PIOMASS.
R. Gates, I recently received an update of the DA index from Jim Overland (the index used in his 2010 Tellus paper).
Here are the last few years of the DJF DA Index and the AO index
Year DA AO
2011: -0.360 -0.913
2010: -0.340 -3.419
2009: -0.5196 0.259
2008: 0.1664 0.859
2007: 0.1890 1.003
2006: -2.700 -0.81
2005: -1.8171 0.105
Nothing much jumps out here in terms of a relationship between the two. And if I look at the entire record (1951-2011), there is little relationship between the two (r=-0.15). But there are times when they were more strongly linked (inversely), such as from 1990 to 2000 of r=-0.4. This last decade though there is been a weak positive relationship between the two indices, which may be a reflection of how the character of the AO is changing.
However, the DA isn’t a perfect index either. For example, it looks like a negative DA is one where there’s low pressure over Canada (for example, as in 2006, and/or high pressure over Siberia). In general though, when I look at the pressure fields I’m not finding that this DA index is doing a particularly good job at finding a clear DA pattern. For example, 2004 has a value of 1.84 so should show a pretty strong positive DA, but the SLPs look more like a pattern with strong high pressure over the Canada Basin rather than over Canadian Archipelago. 2005 (-1.82) looks a bit more like a negative DA pattern, but not particularly clear cut.
Julienne,
Do you have any insight into when we will see Cryosat-2 data for Arctic sea ice volumes so we can put the whole PIPS vs. PIOMASS debate to rest?
Julienne,
The folllowing link to the Polar Ice Center Rhetro page used PIOMAS to hindcast the arctic sea ice volume back to 1950.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/IDAO/retro.html
Note the plot of NAO vs sea ice volume thickness. The model predicted that from 1962 until 1977 when negative NAO dominated the northern Hemisphere, sea ice volume was estimated to grow by almost 20×10^12 cubic meters. The decline since 1979 has been dominated by positive NAO. AGW models have predicted that positive NAO will persist. It has now changed to negative and will likely in my opinion be predominantly negative for the next twenty to thirty years which I believe the model should then predict sea ice volume growth.
At the top of the rhetro page are maps of multi age ice thickness distribution for 1979 and 2003 based on the model. Goddards pip2s map looks a lot closer to 1979 than 2003.
The real test will be the thickness map we expect to see from cryosat 2.
Incidently it has also been observed the the Labador/Bermuda transport index (gulf stream) declines during negative NAO.
The appearence of the strong NAO and declining arctic ocean heat content should severly test GCM models in the future.
Jeff, I hope to see some Cryosat-2 data published soon. I thought we would see some data released this winter, but it hasn’t happened yet. But, there was a talk by the cryosat folks at the December AGU meeting but I don’t know if they showed any actual results since I wasn’t at the meeting this year. Here is what their abstract said:
1730h
AN: C44A-07
TI: CryoSat Measurements of Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Trends (Invited)
AU: *Laxon, S
EM: s.laxon@ucl.ac.uk
AF: Earth Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
AU: Ridout, A
EM: alr@cpom.ucl.ac.uk
AF: Earth Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
AU: Giles, K
EM: k.giles@cpom.ucl.ac.uk
AF: Earth Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
AB: Arctic sea ice has undergone major changes in recent years but there remains much uncertainty about its ultimate fate. Although measurements of ice extent are well established measurements of thickness are also now key to understanding the causes and consequences of these changes. A primary objective of the CryoSat mission is to determine trends in Arctic winter-time sea ice thickness. This is achieved by making direct measurements of sea ice freeboard from which sea ice thickness can be calculated. We review the current state of the art in sea ice thickness retrieval, and discuss the strategy for quantifying the uncertainties in these measurements, through the CryoSat calibration and validation activities. Finally we plan to provide an update of the current CryoSat performance over sea ice and to present initial results from the commissioning period.
DE: [0750] CRYOSPHERE / Sea ice
DE: [1240] GEODESY AND GRAVITY / Satellite geodesy: results
SC: Cryosphere (C)
MN: 2010 Fall Meeting
Richar, like I said previously, just because you have a negative NAO phase that doesn’t necessarily mean you will have thicker sea ice. It depends on the location of the SLP anomalies. You can have a negative NAO phase and still see a decline in ice volume such as we observed last year. Remember, these indices only explain at most 50% of the SLP variations so other processes are going on. And you are also neglecting other changes such as ocean temperatures, background warming signal in the air temperatures, changes in the ice age, etc.
I would like to know why you believe the NAO will now stay in a negative phase for the next 20-30 years.
Just so you know, not every GCM predicts a positive NAO state in the future. In fact SLP is one of the least robust signals in the climate models (unlike air temperatures or Arctic sea ice decline) – there is a paper being published on that subject, and I’ll post the reference once its published. Many models predict a negative phase of the winter NAO as the Arctic Ocean becomes more ice free during summer.
“”””” Julienne Stroeve says:
March 25, 2011 at 1:17 pm
I find it curious that there is so much discussion about what defines the Arctic. “””””
So just let everybody choose whatever terminology they like to use; after all, we wouldn’t want to ruffle anyone’s sense of self esteem by expecting them to use a common language. Seems like the Tower of Babel, was all about everyone use their own definition of what anything is; that way every individual can be correct; while still being the only one with that point of view.
So Mt Kilimanjaro has ice that comes and goes seasonally; does that make it a part of the Arctic ?
@Smokey says:
March 25, 2011 at 12:23 pm
” @Mike:
Your Skeptical Pseudo-Science link claims that the official land temperatures are accurate, and that satellite temperatures are showing too much cooling. Doesn’t the fact that the official temperature record is always “adjusted” to show greater warming tell you what the record keepers are doing?? ”
Read: “The problems with Stratospheric cool biasing were recognised early and in 1992, Spencer & Christy at UAH introduced a new temperature product to remove the Stratospheric bias and focus more on the lower Troposphere. This removed most of the bias by mathematically combining readings from multiple view angles on the same scan to produce a reading weighted more strongly to the lower Troposphere.”
So now you think Spencer & Christy are in on the “lie”? How bizarre.
Julienne, if you see a correlation in the 60’s between ice-related atmospheric conditions and solar SSN, all you have to do is match historical SSN and their proxies along with historical Arctic atmospheric conditions and ice extent/area proxies to see if there is also a match. Granted, it would be mostly proxies but I’m betting you won’t find a solid correlation. But then I always go with the null hypothesis. Habit.
gaya hap says:
March 24, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Whose predictions? Time and Newsweek?
No. Not just the press. Apparently the CIA was fooled as well (along with all the “western world’s leading climatologists”).
A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems
United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Office of Research and Development
Washington, 1974
Library of Congress: QC981.8.C5 U513 1974
Open Library: OL5015750M
LC Control Number: 76603473
“The western world’s leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climatic change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth’s climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (1600-1850) – an era of drought, famine, and political unrest in the western world.”
Julienne,
Here is the entire series of NAO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winter-NAO-Index.svg
Here is Lockwoods recent paper on top down solar influence on NAO.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/3/034008/fulltext
Here is a paper that correlates auroral observations for the past 1500 years with Nile water levels and clearly demonstrates high solar activity tied to positive NAO and vice versa.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/3/034008/fulltext
The authors suggest a 88 year period alternating NAM phases. In otherwords 44 years postive NAO followed by 44 years of negative NAO.
If the NAO controls arctic ocean heat content and sea ice volume and is driven by the sun then clearly we have a much bigger solar influence than simple bottom up TSI variations.
Its good to see all the traffic that Arctic Sea ice is getting.
Its only March and already the ‘alarmists’ are out in full force,
doing their spin on the sea ice subject.
I spend a great deal more time now visiting the ‘other’ side and tackling
the true denialists.
Everyone should try and get out a bit and see the ugliness, which is the Pro-AGW movement.
It makes it refreshing to come back to the most professional blog site on the internet.
If I have anything to add, it would only be my distrust of those that are employed by NASA and work at the NSIDC that support AGW. If Hansen can manipulate global temperatures with erroneous, fill in the blank type science, what is to stop the guys at NSIDC from attempting the same.
While I’m at it, I think the joint venture office in Fairbanks, between NASA and JAXA has also become suspect, though I wish I was wrong.
The data from JAXA was quite different from the NSIDC up until about this time last year. After that time, the progression to Arctic minimum looked quite different than previous years. Almost as if the graph was done with a human touch. There is something wrong with the loss of sea ice between March and September of 2010. It just doesn’t look natural.
What I mean is, is this, looking at the previous annual anomalies from JAXA and comparing them with 2010, the decline of sea ice seems different than the others. The March-September ’10 sea ice is almost a straight line, with a few step progressions. Not at all familiar with the previous annual anomalies, which showed some gradient curve towards arctic minimum. It just doesn’t look natural like the previous years.
Make me wonder if JAXA got some huge grant that gave them to opportunity to add a human touch to their data.
“George E. Smith says:
March 25, 2011 at 11:44 am
The “Kelvin” Temperature scale is an absolute Temperature scale. xyz Kelvins is a specific Temperature; not how much hotter or colder than your coffee something is.
Would I not be equally correct to say this is either 2 K below boiling or 2 deg C below boiling?
So the brief answer to your bottom line question is “no”.
The original writer obviously looked at the graph at
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It shows the freezing point of water as 273.15K. It also shows the present temperature at around 252 K. I am pretty sure there was no confusion in anyone’s mind as to what he meant when he said it was 21 K below freezing. That person rightly expressed the difference based on the units in that graph. Or was it then wrong to express the difference in temperatures in K in this case? Should the graph people have used oC instead?
Looking at the plots whether it is NANSEN or NSIDC, one sees that the sea ice extent anomaly has pretty much remained below the mean -2sigma since 2005, especially in the summer time. Whether 2011 is a tie or close to 2007 is not important.
Some posters have said that they would like to see longer term data, and not just what we have on the satellite record. The best that we have is the study by Chapman et. al. which used ship log data to reconstruct the long term sea ice extent, based on the way ship logs correlated with the satellite data.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/images/ice_extent.gif
It is seen that the seasonal averages have all declined since 1970, especially in spring and summer.
The question of whether the maximum value for 2011 is slightly higher or equal to
2007 is not really relevant, when looked at on that scale. The decline is clear, despite the year to year noise fluctuations.
Of course if one looks at the Arctic circle, it is probable that the percentage decline would be less. After all, one would expect that loss of ice would occur first at lower latitudes. If one desires to claim that the loss of sea ice is small, and not a problem,
it may help relieve the cognitive dissonance by redefinition of the Arctic region from what the experts in the Arctic have chosen.
Mike,
You keep linking to the same old debunked Skeptical Pseudo-Science post. You’re starting to sound just like Winston Smith, Orwell’s protagonist, who wonders if the State might declare “two plus two equals five” as a fact; he ponders whether, if everybody believes in it, does that make it true?
The models confidently predicted the tropospheric hot spot: the “Fingerprint of Anthropogenic Global Warming.” Even though the models have since been debunked in Prof McKittrick’s peer reviewed paper… maybe they’re really true anyway, because everybody believes in them. Right, Winston?☺
How bizarre.
Pamela Gray says:
March 25, 2011 at 9:20 am
We see the orange line around the Arctic and get our knickers in a twist because the ice isn’t snuggled up to, or even better, beyond that orange line.
Hubris. Plain and simple hubris.
=======================
Beyond hubris, Pamela.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
ClimateForAll says:
March 25, 2011 at 5:38 pm
“Make me wonder if JAXA got some huge grant that gave them to opportunity to add a human touch to their data.”
___
This statement is nonsense.
R. Gates says:
March 25, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Pamela Gray,
Don’t know which “theory” of mine you are referring to, since I have exactly 0 theories to my credit. The warmest water in the Arctic in 2,000 years is simply data, and not a theory, and my question to you was which natural cycle were you ascribing this warmth too, since you seem to take no credence in the notion that CO2 can warm much of anything.
========================
None to your credit MOST DEFINITELY and less than none that are actually believable…..regardless, your de facto implied “theory” is that of CO2.
And my question to you, R Gates, is to which “unnatural cycle” are you ascribing this warmth? Wow….let me guess….
Here is a nice classic circular reasoning quote from your “study.”
“Higher temperatures ‘are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming’, the study concluded, adding that global warming ‘is most likely another key element in the transition to a future ice-free Arctic Ocean’.”
Ya…yeah right….and monkeys will fly out of my _____.
‘Presumably linked’…lol.
That’s not good enough. You have to establish a link….not presume one!
Meanwhile actual scientific research that could benefit humanity….like tsunami hazard study….is sidelined…to the peril of millions…by a supposedly evil [according to the EPA] poison, horrible trace gas that kills us all, CO2.
This is reprehensible, complete and utter, unevolved, unscientific, backwards, stupid, criminal nonsense.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
// Now we start the slow slide into the Arctic Ice Minimum //
So are you going to make another prediction?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/09/prediction-arctic-ice-will-continue-to-recover-this-summer/
Anthony, I would be very careful about the pedantic use of “arctic” and what if senarios.
What if using an arbitrary (from a climatic point of view), geographical cut-off shows more dramatic ice loss in recent years. How will this be used?
If you want to critisise the use of the *word* fine. Maybe they should call it N. hemisphere sea-ice extent (area …).
What matters in terms of the physics and heat capacity is clearly the total amount of ice , not whether is creeps over some magic circle draw by man.
ohn Marshall says:
March 25, 2011 at 3:13 am
Arctic ice cover is in a roughly 80 year cycle. As was pointed out above, records have covered 30 years for the top of the cycle so 10 years to go to the bottom of the cycle then ice should increase. Only time will tell, not some half baked model.
Actually the ‘roughly 80 year cycle’ concept is a ‘half baked model’.