By WUWT regular “Just The Facts”
A June 16th article in the Economist “The vanishing north” states that;
“Between now and early September, when the polar pack ice shrivels to its summer minimum, they will pore over the daily sea ice reports of America’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre. Its satellite data will show that the ice has shrunk far below the long-term average. This is no anomaly: since the 1970s the sea ice has retreated by around 12% each decade. Last year the summer minimum was 4.33m square km (1.67m square miles)—almost half the average for the 1960s.
The Arctic’s glaciers, including those of Greenland’s vast ice cap, are retreating. The land is thawing: the area covered by snow in June is roughly a fifth less than in the 1960s. The permafrost is shrinking. Alien plants, birds, fish and animals are creeping north: Atlantic mackerel, haddock and cod are coming up in Arctic nets. Some Arctic species will probably die out.
Perhaps not since the 19th-century clearance of America’s forests has the world seen such a spectacular environmental change. It is a stunning illustration of global warming, the cause of the melt. It also contains grave warnings of its dangers. The world would be mad to ignore them.”
However, the Economist’s assertion that “global warming” is “the cause of the melt” is demonstrably false.
There is ample evidence that the Arctic has warmed over the last several decades, e.g.; the RSS Northern Polar Temperature Lower Troposphere(TLT) Brightness Temperature Anomaly;
shows a .337 K/C per decade increase.
However, atmospheric temperatures are just one of numerous variables that are the “cause of the melt”. In fact, the largest influences on Arctic Sea Ice appear to be wind and Atmospheric Oscillations, i.e.:
In this 2007 NASA article “NASA Examines Arctic Sea Ice Changes Leading to Record Low in 2007“;
“Son V. Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that “the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. “Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic,” he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.”
“The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century,” Nghiem said.”
This 2007 paper “Rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice” by Nghiem, Rigor, Perovich, Clemente-Colo, Weatherly and Neumann, found that;
“Perennial-ice extent loss in March within the DM domain was noticeable after the 1960s, and the loss became more rapid in the 2000s when QSCAT observations were available to verify the model results. QSCAT data also revealed mechanisms contributing to the perennial-ice extent loss: ice compression toward the western Arctic, ice loading into the Transpolar Drift (TD) together with an acceleration of the TD carrying excessive ice out of Fram Strait, and ice export to Baffin Bay.”
This 2010 Guardian article “Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds” states that;
“Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region’s swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals.”
This 2011 paper “Recent wind driven high sea ice export in the Fram Strait contributes to Arctic sea ice decline” by L. H. Smedsrud, et al.;
“used “geostrophic winds derived from reanalysis data to calculate the Fram Strait ice area export back to 1957, finding that the sea ice area export recently is about 25% larger than during the 1960’s.”
This 2004 Science Daily article, ”Winds, Ice Motion Root Cause Of Decline In Sea Ice, Not Warmer Temperatures” states that,
“extreme changes in the Arctic Oscillation in the early 1990s — and not warmer temperatures of recent years — are largely responsible for declines in how much sea ice covers the Arctic Ocean, with near record lows having been observed during the last three years, University of Washington researchers say.”
“It may have happened more than a decade ago, but the sea ice appears to still “remember” those Arctic Oscillation conditions, according to Ignatius Rigor, a mathematician with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”
This 2004 paper “Variations in the Age of Arctic Sea-ice and Summer Sea-ice Extent” by Ignatius G. Rigor & John M. Wallace, found that;
“The winter AO-index explains as much as 64% of the variance in summer sea-ice extent in the Eurasian sector, but the winter and summer AO-indices combined explain less than 20% of the variance along the Alaskan coast, where the age of sea-ice explains over 50% of the year-to year variability. If this interpretation is correct, low summer sea-ice extents are likely to persist for at least a few years. However, it is conceivable that, given an extended interval of low-index AO conditions, ice thickness and summertime sea-ice extent could gradually return to the levels characteristic of the 1980′s.”
This 2010 paper, “Influence of winter and summer surface wind anomalies on summer Arctic sea ice extent” by Masayo Ogi, Koji Yamazaki and John M. Wallace, published in Geophysical Research Letters states that;
“We have shown results indicating that wind‐induced, year‐to‐year differences in the rate of flow of ice toward and through Fram Strait play an important role in modulating September SIE on a year‐to‐year basis and that a trend toward an increased wind‐induced rate of flow has contributed to the decline in the areal coverage of Arctic summer sea ice.”
This 2001 paper, “Fram Strait Ice Fluxes and Atmospheric Circulation: 1950–2000” by Torgny Vinje found that:
“Observations reveal a strong correlation between the ice fluxes through the Fram Strait and the cross-strait air pressure difference.”
“Although the 1950s and 1990s stand out as the two decades with maximum flux variability, significant variations seem more to be the rule than the exception over the whole period considered.”
“A noticeable fall in the winter air pressure of 7 hPa is observed in the Fram Strait and the Barents Sea during the last five decades.”
“The corresponding decadal maximum change in the Arctic Ocean ice thickness is of the order of 0.8 m. These temporal wind-induced variations may help explain observed changes in portions of the Arctic Ocean ice cover over the last decades. Due to an increasing rate in the ice drainage through the Fram Strait during the 1990s, this decade is characterized by a state of decreasing ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean.”
This 2003 paper “Arctic climate change: observed and modelled temperature and sea-ice variability“, by By OLA M. JOHANNESSEN, LENNART BENGTSSON, MARTIN W. MILES, SVETLANA I . KUZMINA, VLADIMIR A. SEMENOV, GENRIKH V. ALEKSEEV, ANDREI P. NAGURNYI, VICTOR F. ZAKHAROV, LEONID P. BOBYLEV, LASSE H. PETTERSSON, KLAUS HASSELMANN and HOWARD P. CATTLE states that;
“The decreases in recent decades, which are also partially due to circulation-driven ice export through the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard (Vinje, 2001), have coincided with a positive trend in the NAO, with unusually high index values in the late 1980s and 1990s. During this period, the variability of ice motion and ice export through the Fram Strait was correlated strongly with the NAO; r∼ 0.86 for the ice area flux (Kwok and Rothrock, 1999) and r∼ 0.7 for the ice volume flux (Hilmer and Jung, 2000), although the relationship was insignificant (r∼ 0.1) before the mid 1970s (Hilmer and Jung, 2000). Deser et al. (2000) analysed a 40-yr gridded data set (1958–97) to determine the association between arctic sea ice, SAT and SLP, concluding that the multidecadal trends in the NAO/AO in the past three decades have been ‘imprinted upon the distribution of Arctic sea ice’, with the first principal component of sea-ice concentration significantly correlated (r∼−0.63) with the NAO index, recently cause-and-effect modelled by Hu et al. (2002). None the less, our calculations and those of Deser et al. (2000) indicate that, even in recent decades, only about one third of the variability in arctic total ice extent and MY ice area (Johannessen et al., 1999) is explained by the NAO index,”
This 2002 paper “Response of Sea Ice to the Arctic Oscillation” by IGNATIUS G. RIGOR, JOHN M. WALLACE and ROGER L. COLONY found that
“Hilmer and Jung (2000) note a secular change in the relationship between the Fram Strait ice flux and the NAO; the high correlation noted by Kwok and Rothrock (1999) from 1978 to 1996 was not found in data prior to 1978. We expect our overall results to be more robust given the strong relationship between the AO and SIM over the Arctic, as compared to the weaker relationship between the north–south flow through Fram Strait and the AO. Even if one ignored the effect of the AO on the flux of ice through Fram Strait, the divergence of ice in the eastern Arctic would be still be ;50% greater under high-index conditions than under low-index conditions, and the heat flux would be ;25% greater.”
”We have shown that sea ice provides memory for the Arctic climate system so that changes in SIM driven by the AO during winter can be felt during the ensuing seasons; that is, the AO drives dynamic thinning of the sea ice in the eastern Arctic during winter, allowing more heat to be released from the ocean through the thinner ice during spring, and resulting in lower SIC during summer and the liberation of more heat by the freezing of the ice in autumn. The correlations between the wintertime AO and SIC and SAT during the subsequent seasons offers the hope of some predictability, which may be useful for navigation along the Northern Sea route.”
This 2000 paper, “Arctic decadal and interdecadal variability” by Igor V. Polyakov and Mark A. Johnson, found that;
”The decadal-scale mode associated with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and a low-frequency oscillation (LFO) with an approximate time scale of 60-80 years, dominate. Both modes were positive in the 1990s, signifying a prolonged phase of anomalously low atmospheric sea level pressure and above normal surface air temperature in the central Arctic. Consistent with an enhanced cyclonic component, the arctic anticyclone was weakened and vorticity of winds became positive. The rapid reduction of arctic ice thickness in the 1990s may be one manifestation of the intense atmosphere and ice cyclonic circulation regime due to the synchronous actions of the AO and LFO. Our results suggest that the decadal AO and multidecadal LFO drive large amplitude natural variability in the Arctic making detection of possible long-term trends induced by greenhouse gas warming most difficult.
And lastly, in this June 16th, 2012 Economist article “Uncovering an ocean“, which is part of their “Cold comfort” Arctic Special Report, it states that;
“A simultaneous thinning of the sea ice is also speeding up the shrinkage, because thinner ice is more liable to melt. According to Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, the average thickness of the pack ice has fallen by roughly half since the 1970s, probably for two main reasons. One is a rise in sea temperatures: in the summer of 2007 coastal parts of the Arctic Ocean measured 7°C—bracingly swimmable. The other was a prolonged eastward shift in the early 1990s in the Arctic’s prevailing winds, known as the Arctic Oscillation. This moved a lot of ice from the Beaufort Gyre, a revolving current in the western Arctic, to the ocean’s other main current, the Transpolar Drift Stream, which runs down the side of Siberia. A lot of thick, multi-year ice was flushed into the Atlantic and has not been replaced.”
As such, there is ample evidence that “global warming” is not “the cause of the melt” as the Economist erroneously infers in its article “The vanishing north”. The Economist’s over simplifications, poor reporting and overt alarmism are indicative of the sad state of formerly respected information source.
acckkkkkk;
More of your persistent nonsense. Warming doesn’t produce more winds, it flattens the energy gradient from tropics to poles and reduces heat exchange and winds and storms and extreme weather.
Someday, you’ll get something right. But not today.
Brian H says:
June 18, 2012 at 4:06 am
________________________
And more of your persistent Vilification.
Read the quoted parts carefully. You are incapable to do it properly.
I made it easy for you…1-2-3-4-5
Brian H says:
June 18, 2012 at 4:06 am
____________________________
lesson 1- THE SUN IS WARMING THE EARTH.
lesson 2- Globally, the two major driving factors of large-scale winds (the atmospheric circulation) are the differential heating between the equator and the poles.
lesson 3- forget about global warming. Just take the warming as heat- whatever you like. Or assume it as Brian Hot.
Julienne Stroeve says: June 17, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Justthefacts, I think it would be interesting to do a study on the impacts of ships on Arctic sea ice.
Yes, I’ve seen evidence that particulates;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
especially Soot/Black Carbon;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon
may have a significant influence on Sea Ice:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100728092617.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/27/MN5H1EK6BV.DTL
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/25/soot-ahoy-ship-traffic-in-the-arctic/
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-20.shtml
Per the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report; http://www.pame.is/images/stories/PDF_Files/AMSA_2009_Report_2nd_print.pdf
There are also the non-Black Carbon/Soot based impact of Ship Traffic including Supply/Bulk Shipping, Fishing, Passenger/Cruise Ships and Icebreakers:
Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report Page 4;
Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report Pages 141 – 142;
Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report on Page 79;
In 2008, approximately 375 cruise ship port calls were scheduled for Greenland ports and harbors, more than double the number of port calls seen in 2006.”
Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report Page 137;
Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report Page 84;
Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report Page 84;
and Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report Page 160;
http://www.pame.is/images/stories/PDF_Files/AMSA_2009_Report_2nd_print.pdf
Particular to Icebreaking, this site recently put on password protection;
http://www.rabt.se/Offshoreicebreaking/Reference-list/
but prior I found this quote quote interesting:
Other information of interest:
http://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/atlantic/east-greenland.html
Per this Coast Guard Compass article;
http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/index.php/2009/06/coast-guard-and-the-arctic-part-2/
If you look at the icebreaker Healy’s Cruise Track for 2006;
http://www.icefloe.net/images/HLY-06annot.pdf
2007;
http://www.icefloe.net/docs/HLY-07track.pdf
and 2008;
http://www.icefloe.net/docs/healy2008.pdf
it is easy to see how effective a single Icebreaker can be at breaking up the ice.
Per this report from Baltic Ice Management (BIM) on their 2008 – 2009 season;
http://portal.fma.fi/sivu/www/baltice/BIM_Joint_Annual_2008_2009.pdf
the chart on page 10 it seems to indicate that they had 23 icebreakers in use in just the Baltic Sea at the peak of their icebreaking season. Much of it is about opening and maintaining shipping lanes, cruise ship routes and fishing grounds.
Brian H says:
June 18, 2012 at 4:06 am
More of your persistent nonsense. Warming doesn’t produce more winds, it flattens the energy gradient from tropics to poles and reduces heat exchange and winds and storms and extreme weather.
Someday, you’ll get something right. But not today.
______________________________________________
More of your persistent nonsense.
Warming produces winds. It takes place 24/7. If you are living in a place or a desert nearby a sea you’ll SEE it. Do not be afraid of the word “WARMING”, it’s not always “GLOBAL WARMING”.
Justthefacts, how much of the total sea ice melt in one melting season can be attributed to ships breaking the ice? And how much to particles emitted by ships in the Arctic? I know there aren’t any numbers, but how high a percentage would you guess? 5%? 10%? 20%?
The link between rapid warming of temperatures and melting ice is just a correlation, which does not prove causation. For example, can we really be sure that the record high temperatures in Greenland of 76 oF in May will really cause ice to melt? Similary, the notion that recent temperatures in the 90’s (oF) in Siberia will cause melting of the “permafrost” is just an untested hypothesis. In my view, all of the ice melting can be attributed to ships and wind.
In my comment on June 17, 2012 at 7:50 pm I answered Julienne Strove’s question to me regarding my post of June 17, 2012 at 5:28 pm. I then asked her to explain, using verifiable science [not her computer model “hindcast simulations”], if she thinks that human CO2 emissions are the cause of declining Arctic sea ice?
Ms Scientist has posted here since I answered her question and asked my question, but she has ignored my question to her. I think the reason is that she is incapable of giving a credible answer.
As one of the ‘humans are the cause’ climate clique scientists riding the grant gravy train, I enjoy seeing Stroeve post here, because it gives us ordinary folks a chance to ask her some uncomfortable questions. But it is hardly fair for Ms Scientist to ask us questions, have them answered, and then ignore our own questions to her, the putative expert. She seems to have a character very similar to BEST’s Richard Muller.
Perhaps Ms Stroeve can revisit my post above, and make an attempt [again, per the scientific method; testable and verifiable] to show that human CO2 emissions have any effect on the current ice decline in the Arctic. Quantify it please, Miss Stroeve: show us that X amount of emissions cause Y amount of Arctic ice decline, and show us your methodology. Explain why CO2 is partial to the Arctic, while completely ignoring the Antarctic. A real scientist ought to be able to either give credible answers, or admit that she is just winging it.
About a month or two ago I made a prediction right here on WUWT. I noted that while the winds had been favorable for Arctic ice this winter, they changed in mid-March. I commented that if those winds kept up the ice would start to decrease. Well, the winds did not change. They have been consistent and sure enough the ice has been melting.
Notice I said nothing about temperatures which were warmer this winter while the ice was building but have since been much closer to average this spring. So, the melt correlates only with wind this year. We have at least one example where temperature appears to be a non-factor while wind is a big factor.
Smokey, I recently submitted a paper to GRL that provides my estimate of the % of the sea ice decline attributable to external forcing. I will pass that along once it’s accepted for publication. In the meantime, you can go to
http://pcmdi3.llnl.gov/esgcet/home.htm;jsessionid=7AA360F4764E06F5915ACF1356EDF178
and download all the CMIP5 sea ice concentration data files for the historical and the RCP4.5 simulations and process them so that you obtain total ice extent. You’ll need that to verify my method.
Julienne Stroeve,
Thank you for that link. However, when I click on the link, and then on “CMIP5”, I get the message: “Error: Search text contains invalid characters – please use only letters and numbers” Since I simply clicked on their “CMIP5” link, I think I only used letters and numbers.
However, my central question [and the central question in the entire debate], is still: “Do you think human CO2 emissions are the cause of declining Arctic sea ice?” Third time I’ve asked.
The Null Hypothesis [in which Kevin Trenberth is so anxious to put the onus onto skeptics, to make them try to prove a negative] shows unequivocally that past climate parameters, including Arctic sea ice, have repeatedly [and greatly] exceeded current parameters, both more and less. Therefore, the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified regarding Arctic ice.
The climate Null Hypothesis is absolutely essential in determining if human activity has any global effect on the climate. So far, the answer is an unequivocal No. There has been no acceleration in global temperatures, despite a 40% rise in CO2. The gentle temperature rise since the LIA continues along the very same trend line for hundreds of years, with no acceleration, and without exceeding its long term parameters – which would certainly be expected due to the ≈40% rise in CO2 – if CO2 had the claimed effect. Quite obviously, CO2 has no measurable effect.
And ocean currents, winds, and the various ocean and atmospheric oscillations are entirely sufficient to explain current Arctic ice observations, and to make predictions within a reasonable margin of error without invoking an extraneous CO2 variable. But that is still not the question.
In one of your interviews that I watched on YouTube last year, you stated that human activity was the cause of climate change. That conjecture has no supporting evidence. It is an opinion. If I am wrong, please provide verifiable, testable, empirical evidence supporting that conjecture, keeping the Null Hypothesis in mind.
So once again I ask: Do you think human CO2 emissions are the cause of declining Arctic sea ice?
Let me pose one question- what causes the wind?
Surely a glorified TV weatherman can answer this. Wind is caused by pressure differentials and the movement of atmospheric mass from high pressure to low pressure.
And what causes pressure differences? Differential heating- warming up one area more than another, leading to lower pressure in that area.
Now, you’ve shown two facts in your post- 1. that the Arctic has warmed, and 2. that the wind patterns have changed. And yet, you fail to see the painfully obvious connection between the two, that many authors of the studies you quoted say directly: a warming Arctic, triggered by anthropogenic greenhouse emissions, has led to changes in the dominant wind patterns which have exacerbated sea ice loss. Different mechanism, same root cause.
How does it work? A positive mode of the Arctic Oscillation (AO) is characterized by increased flux of ice out the Fram Strait and increased inflow of warmer Atlantic water. Atmospherically, a positive AO is denoted by lower pressure over the central Arctic, which directly relates to summertime heating, which, as you can probably guess, has become more extreme in recent decades.
There’s no need to cite any more papers here, as you got the correct references with your above discussion. But it may be useful to look to the paleo record- see de Vernal et al. (2005) Paleoceanography, Ledu et al. (2008) Can. J. Earth Sci. and Farmer et al. (2011) Geophysical Research Letters for records showing tight coupling between records of past Arctic temperatures and sea ice extent- the warmer the temperatures, the less ice. Now, if you can just combine your quoting skills with actual understanding of the papers you cite, you might just have a future as a scientist!
Jesse Farmer
acckkii says: June 18, 2012 at 3:01 am
“Global Warming” not as an ideology, but under the scientific definition, which means “heat”, may be the fact for more “WINDS”. It’s the throttling pedal for the above dynamic model.
“differential heating” is a fact. Increasing the potential of this “differential heating” means more
I am not really sure where you are going with this. Global Warming is label that has been used to refer to the influence of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions on “Earth’s Temperature”. Thus far I’ve seen compelling evidence to support the possibility that some portion of the warming that occurred during the second half of the 20th century, was associated with Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions. Beyond this, have seen now compelling evidence to support changes in wind, differential heating, or otherwise as a result of increased Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions. If you have such evidence, please present it.
Question:
Is this planet independent from “WARMING”, if any “WARMING” happens?
In fact, it is constantly being done, but for now, this is about the capacity of the planet and the creatures.
I am not sure what you’re asking here. I compiled a summary many current measures of “Earth’s Temperature” last week;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/10/a-big-picture-look-at-earths-temperature-peter-gleick-edition/
Please take a look through and tell us if you see any indications of the particular “WARMING” you are referring to.
Günther Kirschbaum says: June 18, 2012 at 5:36 am
Justthefacts, how much of the total sea ice melt in one melting season can be attributed to ships breaking the ice?
Extremely complex question with no simple answer. Firstly, against a total melting season is hard, because much of the ice is going to melt one way or another, thus if it melts one day earlier, because a ship broke it up, does it count? In terms of attribution, as has been discussed in this thread, the variables are all intertwined, thus it is very difficult, if not impossible, to isolate them. For example, if a ship breaks up the ice and the wind and currents carry the ice towards the ice pack, then the effect of the ship is likely minimal. If a ship breaks up the ice and the wind and currents carry the ice away from the ice pack to warmer waters, then the effect of the ship might be substantial. Conceptually, icebreakers are used to break up and clear ice. If you look at Healy’s first cruise track for 2006 (in green);
http://www.icefloe.net/images/HLY-06annot.pdf
if there is a Southern wind and/or current, it is conceivable that a single icebreaker could have a significant impact on the rate of ice melt in the Bering Sea. However, would this melt be attributable to the icebreaker, the wind, the current, the warmer water the ice floated into, the warmer atmosphere above it, how cloudy it was, whether the ice had soot on it, a combination thereof, etc.?
And how much to particles emitted by ships in the Arctic?
Not sure, and am especially not sure of how one could isolate the effect of the ship particles versus those from other sources of combustion, but referencing a few of the sources I cited above:
I know there aren’t any numbers, but how high a percentage would you guess? 5%? 10%? 20%?
I won’t venture a guess, as it would be nothing more than that, i.e. it’s not even an educated guess at this point, and I am not even sure what appropriate parameters would be, e.g. how much greater we would expect ice extent or area to be today if there were no ships, no icebreaking, no soot, no effluence, or are we trying to isolate variables and average it over an entire melt season? Regardless, it is a fruitless point, as Julienne said, “it would be interesting to do a study on the impacts of ships on Arctic sea ice.”
Julienne Stroeve says: June 17, 2012 at 9:47 pm
The Beaufort/Chukchi seas have become a region of significant multiyear ice loss in recent years. You may have missed our 2011 paper on the impacts of the 2010/2011 negative AO on the sea ice cover. While some of the papers you referenced above discuss that during a negative winter AO phase, more sea ice is tends to be retained in summer, whereas the reverse is true during a positive AO phase, that wasn’t true during the extremely negative AO of winter 2010/2011. The old, thick ice that was transported into the Beaufort and Chukchi seas during that anomalously negative AO phase all melted out the following summer. The energy balance of the Beaufort/Chukchi seas has changed in the last several years, resulting in significant melt.
Yes, the first time I’ve read this paper, I assume that you meant 2009/2010 above?:
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_4271_f11/readings/week_6_7_Arctic_Oscillation_2010GL045662.pdf
These findings are particularly interesting:
however I find no evidence in the paper to support this conclusion:
Tangentially related, I’ve been keeping an eye on the large melt area in the Beaufort Sea and if you zoom in on the area on this satellite image;
http://www.arctic.io/observations/
you’ll see some odd greenish areas, which don’t seem to appear anywhere else in the Arctic.
The green is also visible in this satellite image, even though it is mostly obscured with clouds;
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r05c02.2011212.terra
which is a zoom from this Arctic satellite image;
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2011212.terra.4km
The 3-6-7 band shows the ice more clearly;
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.2011212.terra.367.4km
but the zoom doesn’t indicate anything unusual:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r05c02.2011212.terra.367
Any thoughts on what the greenish areas are, i.e. is that runoff carrying silt into the sea? Recently “a group of U.S. scientists has discovered enormous blooms of algae growing in an area of the Arctic Ocean that they never thought could support the phytoplankton: below the sea ice.”;
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/06/07/sci-phytoplankton-blooms-arctic.html
but algae blooms seem like quite a stretch.
Jesse Farmer says: June 18, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Let me pose one question- what causes the wind?
Let me pose one question back, did you actually read this thread? If you had, you’d realize that we covered your question here;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/16/the-economist-provides-readers-with-erroneous-information-about-arctic-sea-ice/#comment-1011002
here;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/16/the-economist-provides-readers-with-erroneous-information-about-arctic-sea-ice/#comment-1011103
and here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/16/the-economist-provides-readers-with-erroneous-information-about-arctic-sea-ice/#comment-1011535
Once you’ve caught up, let me know if you have any more questions.
Justthefactswuwt, you are sticking your head so far in the sand in search of “natural causes” that you are completely blinded to the very simple explanation for the data you provide.
Two incontrovertible facts:
1. The Arctic has warmed (surface T, sea surface T) over the past decades
2. Arctic sea ice has significantly declined in both volume and aerial extent over the past decades
Moreover, both these trends (particularly sea ice) have been observed for long enough (1979-present, for satellite monitoring of sea ice) that the AO has gone through both positive and negative phases, with sea-ice declining through both (as Julianne mentioned she observed in 2010-2011 during the strongly negative AO).
Therefore, while there is a coupling between AO and sea-ice decline year-to-year, in the longer term, AO phase cannot explain the 30+ year record of continuous decline. You need to reconcile the near continuous loss of sea-ice in the Arctic with some other factor.
You mention katabatic winds and the Coriolis force in your comments on winds. How have these changed in the Arctic over the past 30 years? (Answer: there is no reason to expect they have changed).
Your search through the literature is commendable, but do not forget the notion of parsimony. The simplest explanation with the fewest number of logical leaps-of-faith is considered the most correct. If you can explain decadal-scale Arctic warming and sea-ice loss simply, and without invoking major anthropogenic changes to the carbon cycle, may I suggest you submit to Nature or Science immediately.
Jesse Farmer
stogy says: June 17, 2012 at 11:48 pm
So yes, winds, ice export play a major part in the decline in sea ice. The debate seems to be more about the extent to the contribution of the various forcings, rather than that one forcing is the cause of it all.
I could go on but, I think there is enough here to indicate that your conclusion,
“As such, there is ample evidence that “global warming” is not “the cause of the melt” as the Economist erroneously infers in its article “The vanishing north”.”
also really mischaracterises the scientific debate, as your own cited sources show.
You’re late to the bandwagon, granted, I am impressed that you took the time to read some of the papers, but I already addressed your misstatement approach here;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/16/the-economist-provides-readers-with-erroneous-information-about-arctic-sea-ice/#comment-1011051
and here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/16/the-economist-provides-readers-with-erroneous-information-about-arctic-sea-ice/#comment-1011535
@justthefactswuwt
“You’re late to the bandwagon, granted, I am impressed that you took the time to read some of the papers, but I already addressed your misstatement approach here”
———–
I didn’t want to be influenced by the comments. I am trying to take a skeptical approach to all the information I read on any “science” blog, looking at the claims people make and whether they are backed up by evidence. On this thread, based on the author comments alone, I found that the claims fall a long way short of what I would describe as “skeptical”.
Jesse Farmer says:
June 18, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Let me pose one question- what causes the wind?
_________________________________________________
acckkii says:
June 16, 2012 at 12:47 pm
“……The main stream is the “WIND”.
Questions:
What is the CAUSE of this “WIND” ?
Is this Global Warming behind the curtain of the “WIND”?”
acckkii says:
June 18, 2012 at 3:01 am
justthefactswuwt says:
June 16, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“……I haven’t seen any evidence to support Global Warming’s Wizard of Oz-esque effect on wind. Can you provide any?”
Brian H says:
June 18, 2012 at 4:06 am
___________________________
Brian Hot The Troll:
Jesse Farmer says:
June 18, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Let me pose one question- what causes the wind?
Surely a glorified TV weatherman can answer this. Wind is caused by pressure differentials and the movement of atmospheric mass from high pressure to low pressure.
And what causes pressure differences? Differential heating- warming up one area more than another, leading to lower pressure in that area.
Julienne Stroeve says:
June 17, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Read my lips: “Cannot model traffic flow” and “Modellers are the only ones that are saying the models work”. Get it?
Jesse Farmer,
If I read your comments correctly, it seems that you believe that anthropogenic “carbon” is the cause of Arctic ice decline: “If you can explain decadal-scale Arctic warming and sea-ice loss simply, and without invoking major anthropogenic changes to the carbon cycle, may I suggest you submit to Nature or Science immediately.”.
Then explain how CO2 [“carbon”] decides to reduce Arctic ice, while leaving the Antarctic unaffected.
Blaming CO2 is preposterous. There are various reasons for the current decline in Arctic ice, including currents and winds, atmospheric and ocean cycles, etc. One thing that is clearly not a cause of Arctic ice decline is CO2.
And contrary to the incessant and ongoing anti-science indoctrination in the media and in the journal industry, at current and projected levels CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. There is no downside; more CO2 is better. That is a testable hypothesis. I invite you to try and falsify it, using the scientific method.
Smokey, your statement “One thing that is clearly not a cause of Arctic ice decline is CO2” is incorrect and directly contradicts published scientific literature. As several commenters have pointed out, Notz and Marotzke in Geophysical Research Letters this year showed that atmospheric CO2 is the only variable that can possibly account for the trend of Arctic sea-ice loss. Emphasis on trend- we are talking about the loss of sea ice over decades here, not just the year-to-year variability. Here’s the link: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL051094.shtml.
CO2 does not decide to do anything, as it has no free will. But it is quite efficient at absorbing infrared emissions. Regarding the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic sea-ice extent, Günther’s comment is spot on (another hint: compare the specific heat of water to the specific heat of land).
I can’t comment on whether there’s an upside or a downside for increased atmospheric CO2 from a biological perspective, as that’s not within scope of my research. However, atmospheric CO2 equilibrates with the ocean, so increasing CO2 will increase the the ocean’s hydrogen ion concentration. Several studies (Feely et al., 2004; Doney et al., 2009) suggest this is not good news for marine calcifying organisms. As scientists are doubters by nature, I return the question to you and invite you to try to prove your statement that there is no downside for more CO2, using the scientific method.
Jesse Farmer
Smokey, I’ve said it many times before, I believe the sea ice decline is a result of both natural and externally forced climate change. You can read my 2011 paper that provided a synthesis of the factors contributing towards the decline: Stroeve, J.C., M.C. Serreze, J.E. Kay, M.M. Holland, W.N. Meier and A.P. Barrett, 2011. The Arctic’s rapidly shrinking sea ice cover: A research synthesis, Climatic Change, doi: 10.1007/s10584-011-0101-1.
JTFW: you write: however I find no evidence in the paper to support this conclusion:
In our view, events of 2009/2010 did little to delay the Arctic Ocean’s ongoing transition to a seasonally ice‐free state.
Typically a negative AO phase helps to keep old, thick ice in the Arctic Basin and thus slow summer ice loss. What the paper discussed was that despite the extreme negative AO phase of winter 2009/2010, even more old, thick ice was lost the following summer. In this way the circulation pattern that typically helps to keep ice actually caused more loss of the old, thick ice. All climate model simulations, despite being in their own phase of natural climate variability, show declining sea ice as we increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The external forcing outweighs the natural variability in these model simulations, and all models forecast ice-free summers in the future.
As for the “greenish” areas, it’s hard to see that clearly from the images you linked to. To me it looks more like melt water on the surface of the ice and thin ice regions. I doubt its the algae blooms.
As for the “greenish” areas, it’s hard to see that clearly from the images you linked to. To me it looks more like melt water on the surface of the ice and thin ice regions. I doubt its the algae blooms.
He means in the open sea. It’s either river discharge or algal blooms, probably both. Here’s a nice algal bloom from August last year (just above Norway).
Maybe that is causing the decline in sea ice? o_O
Let the ice at the poles are melting and there is no unanimity on this point. The result of this transformation is that the high-pressure stream of hot air to the cold polar regions of low pressure is constantly weakening.
Therefore there would be no more strong differential heating between the equator and the poles, and the major driving factors of large-scale winds would not work anymore.