We all need a break from the Gore-a-thon, so here’s some cheering news. As I reported on Sept 13th, Sea Ice News: Arctic sea ice “may” have turned the corner sea ice appeared then to have turned the corner for the melt season. It looks even more certain now (especially with NSIDC announcing it).
Source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png
Here’s the data, looks like the minimum was reached on 9/9/2011
09,01,2011,4734063
09,02,2011,4720781
09,03,2011,4683594
09,04,2011,4655156
09,05,2011,4617188
09,06,2011,4587969
09,07,2011,4561719
09,08,2011,4545000
09,09,2011,4526875 <
09,10,2011,4527813
09,11,2011,4537188
09,12,2011,4542656
09,13,2011,4589844
09,14,2011,4655000
And, by the JAXA data, there was no new record low.
Even NSIDC’s 5 day average is looking up. Way up.
From NSIDC just a few minutes ago: (it showed up while editing my first pass, thus I’ve edited this story within a few minutes of the original posting to reflect it).
Arctic sea ice at minimum extent
Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its lowest extent for the year. The minimum ice extent was the second lowest in the satellite record, after 2007, and continues the decadal trend of rapidly decreasing summer sea ice.
Overview of conditions
On September 9, 2011 sea ice extent dropped to 4.33 million square kilometers (1.67 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest extent of the year, and may mark the point when sea ice begins its cold-season cycle of growth. However, a shift in wind patterns or late season melt could still push the ice extent lower.
This year’s minimum was 160,000 square kilometers (61,800 square miles) above the 2007 record minimum extent, and 2.38 million square kilometers (919,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum.
And NSIDC has avoided a new record low…yet in Gore’s CRP panel last night, the obscure University of Bremen dataset, never before touted by warmists, was trotted out as proof of another record low. Told ya so:
The answer to why such language might be used, perhaps prematurely in the face of other datasets which presently disagree, may be found in the proximity of the upcoming Climate Reality Project (aka the Gore-a-thon) on September 14-15. Al needs something to hold up as an example of gloom, since sea ice didn’t repeat the 2007 low in 2008, 2009, or 2010, and the Antarctic has not been cooperative with the melt meme at all, remaining boringly “normal” and even above normal last year.
We’ll know the answer when we see if this Bremen missive is included in Al’s upcoming presentation.
Last night in hour 1 of the CRP I noted:
Anthony Watts says:
I suspect the “views” counter now over 170K shows the number of attempted/completed connections, but doesn’t show the number of dropped.
Ah there’s the Arctic Sea Ice HITS A NEW RECORD – I was right in my recent sea ice news
This use of the Bremen press release is the worst example of alarmist cherry picking ever. For years, NSIDC is the authority they tout, now they were thrown under the bus before they could even announce whether they had a record low or not so that Gore could have a talking point.
As always, keep up to date on the WUWT sea ice page
Caught some Canadian news (CTV) which was very slippery about this. Their news ticker said the ice extent was ‘just about’ as low as it has ever been.
So, meaningless but still scary for the clueless… but technically ‘just about’ true.
It is just about as warm now as it was in 1880 too.
Here’s an update to the data above. The *INTERIM* data for the 15th is as follows.
09,15,2011,4692656
That’s a rise of 37,656 km^2 above the number for the 14th. A few notes…
1) Interim IARC JAXA daily numbers are released just after 03Z (11 PM EDT)
2) Final IARC JAXA daily numbers are released just after 14Z (10 AM EDT)
3) For the past while, the final number has generally been higher than the interim number, so it’s possible that the 15th may end up above 4.7 million
@ur momisugly Lady Life, Dave and David………..
Don’t let them take that from you. Cheer for the warming and laugh at their silly fears. Their unadulterated doltish positions cause us to naturally be repulsed by their thoughts. The idiocy from the people that embrace the CAGW hypothesis won’t change even if it does cool…… it has been cooling for a decade and hasn’t changed their view other than to say, “see! It’s snowing more! That’s a sign of climate change!”
If there is anything that would change these imbecilic Malthusian minds, it would be the inescapable truth that warmth is beneficial to mankind. The negative will not prove it to them.
While we all know it makes no difference to Nature how we feel about it, it gives me some comfort to know that on a warm day, a small minority of batshit crazy people went foaming-at-the-mouth insane and likely prohibited them from reproducing. On warm days like that, I bask. It is like a Christian, such as myself, finding an appreciation for Darwin.
James
If this is for real, it’s great news, but before you get too excited, take another look at 2010. This is very early for the turn and there is a lot of low concentration ice. A change in the weather could cause another dip downwards.
Steven Mosher says:
September 15, 2011 at 1:02 pm
not a death spiral, more like a bumpy road.. and it aint going up.
So what? Even if Arctic sea ice continues to not trend upwards, what are you suggesting the response should be? If the entire western world could completely eliminate the generation of CO2, which the Kyoto debacle clearly proved it can’t and won’t, what difference would it make? I think the answer is obviously no statistically measurable difference whatsoever. While CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and warmists (or lukewarmists) like to beat the drum that human generated CO2 causes global warming, the reality is that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas and that there is insufficient understanding of just how big the effect of CO2 is relative to other phenomena. The AGW scientific community is aggressively denying that there could be an explanation other than human-generated CO2 for climate change, which makes me wonder just who the real climate deniers are. Billions could be spent on pet projects like Solyndra and it would not make a bit of difference, except pad the pockets of the recipients of the subsidies. Money should not be thrown at any large-scale projects involving such technologies unless they can first be proven to be economically viable over their entire life cycle. Other than that, humanity should adapt to the climate however it changes, rather than suffer delusions that climate or can even should be changed by our behaviour.
Professor Murry Salby of Macquarie Uni by study of Carbon dioxide isotopes has shown that the modest rise in CO2 in the past century is NOT from human activity and more probably parallels the 6-800 year delayed rise after an ice age-this time maybe the Little Ice Age. So while Arctic Sea Ice is a lot of fun and confirms that Al Gore is an ex-politician with no comprehension of science it is not required to confirm that a rise in CO2 is NOT ANTHROPOGENIC. Thank you ballboys! Geoff Broadbent
Geoffrey Donald Broadbent says:
September 15, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Professor Murry Salby of Macquarie Uni by study of Carbon dioxide isotopes has shown that the modest rise in CO2 in the past century is NOT from human activity
=====================================================
Geoffrey, it is traditional to provide links when making such assertions. Oddly, the warmista won’t take us at our word that this is true!
GDB;
So the CO2 rise really may be the delayed bump from the MWP? I’ve joked about that from time to time. If true, it’s both ironically hilarious and hilariously ironic.
I luv it.
If it turns out that this years minimum extent did occur on the 9th, it is not unusual both 2002 and 2008 minimums were on the 9th:-
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv
>>> tallbloke says: September 15, 2011 at 12:04 pm
>>>4.33 million square kilometers
>>>Less than I expected, but more than 2007 by a good margin.
Not according to the Daily Mail which has a wonderful article on this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2036757/The-great-thaw-Arctic-ice-levels-record-low.html
The title of the article is:
“The Great Thaw: Arctic sea ice levels shrink to lowest since records began”
And goes on to say:
“It fell below 4.6 million sq km last week with two weeks of the melt season still to go, compared with the record low of 4.13 million sq km in 2007.”
Yeah ! – well done Daily Mail – makes a whole load of sense.
.
Yawn. Wake me up when the Viking graveyards in Greenland aren’t permafrost. Until graves can be hand-dug again, anyone who uses the word “unprecidented” is
A.) A fool
B.) Deluded
C.) A con-artist
D.) All of the above
I wonder if anyone can explain why http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png shows Antarctic sea ice extent above the 1979-2000 average whereas http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png shows Southern Hemisphere sea ice anomaly -0.389 below 1979-2008 mean. Even if there is a perceptible difference between the average and mean I would have thought that both charts would show a state of sea ice extent above the average/mean.
Perhaps NSIDC ought to compose a third graph showing combined N/S sea ice extent compared with 1979-2000 average and/or maybe they ought to actually re-compute the average to 1979-2010 to get a proper 30 year stretch. Same for Arctic. Perhaps they don’t want to do this as the graphs would not so clearly show a “death march towards the inevitable ice free Arctic summer”.
John Peter,
Between 2000-2008, the antarctic ice was relatively large, so the average from 1979-2008 is higher than the average from just 1979-2000. If you added the average from 1979-2008 to the plot, it would be higher than the current “average line” drawn on the plot. Presumably the current ice extend is between those two lines, so it is above the 1979-2000 average, but below the 1979-2008 average.
And now we should see the results of the “catastrophic” low 2011 sea-ice levels, just like in 2007.
Eco-fascists should be racing northward to document the slaughter — Arctic beaches littered w/carcasses of polar bears, seals, fish, whales — there’s no hiding from the open water. Scorched tundra along the now ice-free shores.
Do I really need a /sarc tag?
Could it be that the ice is rebounding because the Gulf Stream is no longer functioning….thus the warm water and air that traveled with this current is no longer being delivered to northern areas?
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/ofs/viewer.shtml?-natl-cur-0-large-rundate=latest
Pat says:
September 16, 2011 at 7:41 am
Could it be that the ice is rebounding because the Gulf Stream is no longer functioning….thus the warm water and air that traveled with this current is no longer being delivered to northern areas?
In a word, no. If the gulf stream was no longer functioning, it would be widely reported and there would be lots of other obvious evidence.
Lady Life Grows says:
September 15, 2011 at 12:30 pm
As a Biologist and Life-Advocate, I am a little sad that poorer weather for living things has to be celebrated as “good news.”
And better weather is celebrated as “bad news”.
Could it be that the ice is rebounding because the Gulf Stream is no longer functioning….thus the warm water and air that traveled with this current is no longer being delivered to northern areas?
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/ofs/viewer.shtml?-natl-cur-0-large-rundate=latest
Eh! I don’t think this years melt season can be described as a rebound.
With the dramatic recovery in the past few days in both area and extent, it makes me wonder if there wasn’t a whole lot of area that was at ~14% ice concentration and now that has frozen up enough to bump back into the picture on the graphs. Regardless, it is shooting up quickly which bodes well for next year.
Caleb says on September 16, 2011 at 4:39 am
E.) A poor speller
Fixed that for you.
Given the recent sharp upward turn in sea ice, it was quite ironic to hear NPR’s rush this morning to get the news out about the low ice numbers, similar to 2007. -RS
Looks like the remaining pole cam may have gone kaput for the year. Still shows 14-SEP and the view has not changed since the 14th. Based on that view the snow pack was within inches of the cam at the time, so it would not be a surprise if it is done for. One more good dump would have done it.
RE: Richard Sharpe says:
September 16, 2011 at 9:51 am
Thanks. I freely admit I am a poor speller. During spelling classes I studied cloudz. Also during all other classes. That is why I’m such a meetiorojikal expirt.
In the Cryosphere today images the yellow has mostly turned to red except at a thin outer margin. Nearly all the data sources here at WUWT show sharp uptick in both extent and area (including Bremen, with the exception of only extent from Nansen Roos). Thus it seems we are past minimum, and the ice recovery already has momentum.
Geoffrey Broadbent @ur momisugly here,
The LIA began about 500 years ago and peaked a couple of times after that. If it had the same impact that the major ice ages did, that would lower CO2 levels. CO2 rose in response to warming, and some have posited that he modern rise in CO2 is due to the Medieval Warm Period.
But that comparison is hopelessly flawed anyway. Atmospheric CO2 increased by 100ppm over 5000 years during the warming out of the last ice age, and the temperature of the planet increased by ~6 degrees C. In the modern era we’ve had a 100ppm increase in CO2 over 150 years – that’s 30 times faster than natural CO2 accumulation out of the last great ice age. Furthermore, the Medieval Warm Period was, at most, a 3C rise (but probably no more warm than today – a 1C rise), and it was not sustained like the last rise to interglacial – a tenth of the time, and less than half the temperature rise. No matter how you look at it, the modern CO2 rise simply doesn’t compare to the natural accumulation from the last ice age. The modern rise is extremely rapid in comparison, and has a much smaller natural ‘trigger’.
Salby is woefully wrong about CO2 accumulation. He has neglected to explain where all the anthropogenic CO2 went. We’ve burned more than enough fossil fuel to account for the rise of the last 150 years. An increase of 2ppm (the current average rate of accumulation per year) requires 15 billion tonnes of CO2. We release about 30 billion tonnes per annum (on average). It’s us putting it there, even while the biosphere.absorbs half of it.