There was a lot of controversy leading up to this moment, as we covered previously on WUWT where NSIDC put a new trailing average algorithm online with no notice, and bungled the climatology in the process, needing a fix. As has been the case before when NSIDC data goes wonky it was those bloggers of “breathtaking ignorance” who spotted the issue before NSIDC did and brought it to their attention.
Here’s today’s graph: (NSIDC publishes a day behind)
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Now, it should be pointed out that it hasn’t crossed the normal line, and it only touches it because of the line width, it is still ever so slightly below normal according to Cryosphere Today.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
I noted yesterday that the difference was -0.070, so it has nudged away from the normal line a bit. This is supported by the NORSEX data, enlarged here:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Clearly though, by the NORSEX data, Artic Sea Ice was briefly above the 1979-2006 monthly average, but is now headed back down. NSIDC’s trailing average will filter out this short above normal excursion, and I predict that it will turn slightly away from the normal line tomorrow or the next day.
Overall though, we have a pretty full north polar ice cap, especially in the Bering Sea, which has seen record high extents this year. This is encouraging:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_extent_hires.png
All of this bears watching at the WUWT Sea Ice Reference Page but we’ll soon be into the ho-hum period when all of the years data converge on the way to the minimum sometime in September. While we have near normal extent now, that doesn’t always translate into near normal minimums.
> [off topic, old news ~mod]
Ha ha. So “Rewriting The History Of The Arctic…” was on topic. And Dennis Ray Wingo replying, above, was on topic. But me presenting a highly relevant blog article (not mine) that actually explains the basis of the IPCC ’90 figure in question is suddenly off topic. Or is there some reason why you don’t want people to actually know what is in that figure?
REPLY: FYI I didn’t see the other replies above,[but I do now – the moderation tool only shows what is pending, I have to go back to the thread to see all replies] the moderation is such that I don’t see an approve every comment. No, I don’t care if people see the figure, there’s a note on the original post where they can see it, but I do care when you try to hijack a current thread about what’s happening now with historical stuff Mr. Connolley. I have a lower tolerance for you because of your attitude and baggage, and because you really spend a lot of your time here now trying to disrupt the discussions. Mr. Wingo adds to conversation without telling all the other posters they are idiots and act condescending as you do. I don’t invade your living room with rudeness and snark, so you can take a lump once in awhile here. You have this strange idea that after you write insulting posts about myself and the people here, that somehow we should treat you with respect. This trait is probably why you keep falling further from grace in your other endeavors. Be as upset as you wish. – Anthony Watts
PS. Here’s the link Connolley posted http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/tempest-in-ice-pot.html
Had I seen the upstream comments, I probably would not have cared…but it looked just like another attempt for WMC to launch a snark tirade as he does – A
If you look at the cryosphere today’s comparison between 2007 and 2012 you will see that the concentration is greater now than then. ( more area with 100% coverage). This would indicate that the area loss will be slower this year than then, which is what has happened so far.
Meanwhile the BBC have a whole article about global warming in the Arctic and not a word about this “good news”.
The simple truth is the BBC are now little more than a propaganda machine.
Wilt
Good question but unfortunately NO. I started watching it last year. Would need to get data for the past 32 years and analyze. I realize the black curve represents the average temp from the ’79-2000 data but the actual temps vary greatly. Last year we stayed above and right of the black line most of the months of Mar, Apr & May and the summer months of Jun, Jul & Aug were all bouncing around the top of the warmest part of the average line. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 3-4 months and then maybe we can validate my prediction.
I’ll make my ’12 minimum public based on this temperature chart and we can see how well I do. Was significantly high in my miminum predition last year, hope I can do better this year.
Bill
wmconnolley says:
April 26, 2012 at 2:19 pm
No-one much cares about the winter ice. Its the summer min that is always the exciting bit.
So, who wants to bet that the summer minimum won’t be substantially below “normal” this summer?…
—————————————————————————-
We just had a summer minimum down South.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
Above normal all year as the chart shows.
Not shabby for a warming planet with oceans forecast to boil…
Billy Connolley says:
“So, who wants to bet that the summer minimum won’t be substantially below “normal” this summer? I mean, with real money, not just empty words.”
I’ll fade you. But since you used the weasel word “substantially”, I get to define it. And I define it as below 2007 for the Summer months. Loser pays a hundred bucks to the WUWT “Donate” button. Real money.
Anthony said: “there’s a note on the original post where they can see it”
===================
excellent…missed that post…..thank you!
Joe Bastardi -mour casual blog forecast for the weather in the UK over April has been too close for comfort…why not bring us some sunshine, you meanie?
So the NSIDC change the “normal”, doesn’t note it in the graphic to tell what version it is,doesn’t show the old version for reference… they have no shame.
Intrade’s current bid/asked spread on whether 2012 will have a lower minimum ice extent than 2007 is $3.20 / $3.90. That’s where WMC should go to get the best bang for the buck. (Put down $35.50 (the midpoint, where a buy bid should be placed) to win $64.50.) Here’s the link:
https://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=758776
Truthfully, we have NO idea what “normal” is – that grey line is an ill-educated guess – which is why any worry or fear about how much ice is or isn’t melting is like worrying about an invisible animal’s weight – who cares about how much weight is lost when you don’t even know if the darn thing is a mouse or an elephant!
Is the Arctic a mouse? Do ounces matter? Is the Arctic an elephant? Does 100 pounds mean anything?
But the weird thing is, we DO know that the Arctic has been BOTH mouse and elephant, many times, over the millennia… Myself, I have no fear of mice, but elephants, well, even the gentle ones are deadly when they sit on you…
It was more windy than usual in the arctic last winter, which I imagine created more leads, in areas where winds diverged, and more pressure ridges, where winds converged.
When leads form it can create an abrupt area of open water as much as a mile wide. Because the water is at 28F while the air is between minus 30F and minus 50F, the water “smokes” briefly, as heat is lost up into the midday darkness. Then very swiftly the lead freezes over. Because the air is so cold the new ice can be a foot thick in a day, but because it is thinner than surrounding ice the lead tends to be the weakest area, and when winds shift and converge the lead’s ice cracks and buckles, as the area which was a mile wind closes back together, forming a pressure ridge, which is basically a jumble of plates of ice loosely glued together with starchy snow and frozen spray.
Pressure ridges retain their integrity as long as it remains cold. As with icebergs, nine tenths of them are underwater. Therefore a small one only two feet high sticks downwards eighteen feet. The largest can stick up two stories, and thrust downwards eighteen stories. (These downward keels were big enough for subs to hide behind, back in the days when US and USSR subs used to play hide-and-seek up there.)
Once the weather warms up and the sun shines for twenty-four hours a day, the “glue” holding the plates of ice together tends to get slushy, and the pressure ridges disintegrate back into the plate of ice they were made of.
Pause and think for a moment what this means.
If a pressure ridge was made of a lead which was a mile wide, it will fall apart into many small plates of ice that will cover an area a mile wide. Considering the pressure ridge may have been only ten feet wide, if it was only two feet tall, this falling-apart creates a baffling expansion of ice to those who see all in terms of “area” and “extent.” After all, how can melting increase the extent? However, when a pressure ridge falls apart, this is exactly what occurs.
I think this is what occurred in 2006. Extent was lower than most recent years, during the winter, because the winds were crunching the ice together into a web-like system of pressure ridges. It was as the hands of the North were packing the ice together like a child packs a snowball. Then, as melting occurred, all the pressure ridges fell apart, and the packed-together ice spread apart, making the extent of 2006’s ice higher than most recent years, by September.
I think we will see the same thing this year. The winter was windy, and more pressure ridges were formed. They hold a great deal of ice-plates which can spread out and cover a large area.
When Alarmists are frustrated by “area” and extent” of ice refusing to behave like a “death spiral,” they always revert to talking about “volume.” The problem is, attempts to measure volume use a radar beam bounced down from outer space, and I fear the radar does a poor job of picking up the narrow pressure ridges. And the pressure ridges hide much volume under water.
Smokey says:
April 26, 2012 at 3:40 pm
Smokey – don’t feed the troll. He just wants his ego stroked…and he hasn’t come to grips with the big mistakes climate science has made about global ice loss…
This must be the first generation EVER to celebrate increased ice coverage. Our ancestors must be shaking their heads in amazement. GK
http://www.athropolis.com/map.htm
^that site is partly how i get a guess about where the line might be in the next day.
you click on the various weather station sites, and pay attention to wind speed and cloud cover.
i thought today/yesterday the lines would cross, since clouds were not that heavy overall, and wind was not great. now/recently, it is overcast and windy on the russian side, but not very windy and not very cloudy, and clear in some places, on the euro side and american side.
so, i predict the lines will have crossed for 04-26-2012.
to me, scientifically, i agree that ‘normal’ is unknown, but we are looking at a key piece of rhetoric for the warmers is about to fall, or not. the provided baseline of ‘normal’ serves that purpose. you cannot claim that arctic ice will be gone by 2012 when it is having something of an upswing. it is not yet time to hand over the keys of global energy expenditure (which can only be done by controlling most govt and industry) to al gore.
Really people. It should not be left to me to do math.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
Current Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area sq km
(ave) 12,961,000 – (current) 12,877,000 = -84,000
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Current Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area sq km
(current) 6,238.000 – (ave) 5,558,000 = + 680,000
12,961,000 + 5,558,000 = 18,519,000 Total World Sea Ice (Average)
680,000 – 84,000 = 596,000 Total Sea Ice above World Average
596,000 / 18,519,000 = .0321831 of 1% above average
Not much but a win is a win.
Caleb says:
April 26, 2012 at 7:33 pm
It was more windy than usual in the arctic last winter, which I imagine created more leads, in areas where winds diverged, and more pressure ridges, where winds converged.
==============
Yep, next year will be different.
Beware that climate change stuff.
wmconnolley says:
April 26, 2012 at 2:19 pm
No-one much cares about the winter ice. Its the summer min that is always the exciting bit.
So, who wants to bet that the summer minimum won’t be substantially below “normal” this summer? I mean, with real money, not just empty words.
=====================
Define “substantially”, Vegas probably has a line.
Why is the graph at this link above.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Now, it should be pointed out that it hasn’t crossed the normal line, and it only touches it because of the line width, it is still ever so slightly below normal according to Cryosphere Today.
Labelled the way it is, and goes to a local file, when the actual NSIDC link provides a different graph with a lower extent – am I missing something here?
If I am correct, and the 2012 September ice extent follows a pattern like 2006’s, I’ll be expecting an odd reaction to occur in 2013, which may give the Alarmists hope.
If the sun remains “quiet,” I’ll expect an unexplained cooling to effect the planet. (Some have interesting ideas of what the reasons may be, but then Leif always appears and shoots the reasons down.)
However one odd side-effect of cooling is a brief period of arctic warming.
For example, consider the huge explosion of Tamboro in 1815, which led to the coldest summer in New England’s written history. “Eighteen hundred and froze to death.”
I know a lot about that summer, because my grandfather, (born in 1888,) talked to me about things his father, (born in 1850,) told him. Besides hearing second hand what it was like to be a teenager in the Civil War, I also heard a bit about my grandfather’s father’s grandfather, (born in 1808,) who actually lived through the summer of Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death. He apparently was very grouchy in his old age about the farms of New England being abandoned and growing over with brush. A primary reason for abandoning the farms was that the summer of Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death was so nasty no one wanted to risk ever going through a similar summer ever again. There were frosts in June, July and August, and hunger in the harvest.
Because that summer was such a big deal in my family-lore, I tend to get irate by suggestions that Tamboro did not have a cooling effect. However it apparently had a warming effect in the arctic. I first became aware of this when I first visited John Daly’s site, back when he was still with us, and read the quote near and dear to many Skeptics:
“It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has been during the last two years greatly abated.”
That quote dates from 1819, and Tamboro blew in 1815, and the summer of Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death was 1816.
Apparently cooling at lower latitudes may cause warming in the “circumpolar regions.” Things are not as simple as they seem.
And if the cooling caused by Tamboro, (which was much larger than Pinetubo or even Krakatoa, ) could have such an effect, might not the cooling caused by a “quiet sun” produce a similar effect?
I myself will be nervous if we see increased melting the summer of 2013, though I’m sure the Alarmists will be skipping for joy, and insisting they were right all along. Of course, no one will listen, if our farmlands at lower latitudes see frosts in July.
Marlow Metcalf says:
April 26, 2012 at 8:21 pm
You’re right, it shouldn’t be left to you. It’s 3.2%, not 0.032 of 1%.
-Scott
It would be well above normal for the whole of the satellite period.
Oops. Thanks Scott.
Willem De Rode says:
April 26, 2012 at 8:45 am
In context, Willem, yes this is dramatic. In the context of a death spiral, a tipping point, an ice-free Arctic, yes, definitely dramatic. In the context of Post-Normal, I guess not…