The WUWT Extent Projection: 4.55 million square kilometers.
Readers polled, 142 responded with 22.11% of responses in the range of 4.5 to 4.6 million square kilometers.
- 4.6 million sqkm 11.21% (72 votes)
- 4.5 million sqkm 10.9% (70 votes)
This was almost double the highest single category: 4.8 million sqkm 12.15% (78 votes)
Thus, the median of 4.55 million sqkm was chosen to represent WUWT readers.
UPDATE: DPlot author David Hyde sends this graph along, click to enlarge:
Here’s raw data breakdown of votes as of noon 7-5-12:
| Answer | Votes | Percent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.8 million sqkm | 78 | 12% | |
| 4.6 million sqkm | 72 | 11% | |
| 4.5 million sqkm | 70 | 11% | |
| 5.0 million sqkm | 58 | 9% | |
| 4.9 million sqkm | 49 | 8% | |
| 4.4 million sqkm | 39 | 6% | |
| 4.2 million sqkm | 39 | 6% | |
| 4.3 million sqkm | 36 | 6% | |
| 4.7 million sqkm | 33 | 5% | |
| Less than 4.0 million sqkm | 33 | 5% | |
| More than 5.5 million sqkm | 31 | 5% | |
| 4.1 million sqkm | 21 | 3% | |
| 5.1 million sqkm | 20 | 3% | |
| 4.0 million sqkm | 16 | 2% | |
| 5.2 million sqkm | 14 | 2% | |
| Less than 1 million sqkm (Zwally’s ice free 2012 forecast) | 14 | 2% | |
| 5.4 million sqkm | 9 | 1% | |
| 5.5 million sqkm | 6 | 1% | |
| 5.3 million sqkm | 6 | 1% |
Seems arbitrary. Isn’t the median of all the votes 4.7?
You realize if you win, you are endorsing the IPCC methodology of scientific consensus means accuracy.
4.55 is not just abandoning “recovery,” it’s embracing the death spiral. Even a straight linear decline would leave us with half a million square kilometers(!) more ice than 4.55.
However, the actual median of those votes is 4.6.
Gneiss,
“Death spiral” exists only in the imagination of those who picked the abnormally large ice extent as the starting point. You know this as well as anybody else. Go scare some illiterate children.
I would have very much liked to have voted in this but something in my browser that removes all the spam and crap also seems to remove your polls.
I’d have gone for 4.2. I don’t understand the mechanics but it appears we are having high extent winters with low extent summers and i personally think none of it is significant unless the ice thickness data are included in reports.
Alexander, comments like yours make me wish there were a +/- or thumbs up/down button! (That was a compliment, if I weren’t clear)
The median value would be between 4.5 and 4.6, or between 4.6 and 4.7 since the cumulative counts for the middle value are 4.5 @ 268 and 4.6 @ 340 in one direction and 4.7 @ 304 and 4.6 @ 376 in the opposite direction. Total votes is 644 and the median is 322.5. By taking the center points of the two ranges, you could say that the median was 4.6. It’s messy because it’s not a normal distribution.
The weighted average of the votes, treating all values of “less than” and “greater than” as equal to the stipulated value (ie 14 votes for less than 1.0 million km2 is taken as 14 votes at 1.0 million km2) is 4.58 million km2, rounded to the nearest hundreth, or 4.6 million km2 rounded to the nearest tenth.
My 2 cents; I don’t see, given the current trend, how it can be anywhere close to that high, but time will tell.
Alexander Feht writes,
““Death spiral” exists only in the imagination of those who picked the abnormally large ice extent as the starting point.”
Who are “those who picked what abnormally large ice extent as a starting point” That’s a conspiracy I had not heard about.
“You know this as well as anybody else.”
Nope. Haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.
“Go scare some illiterate children.”
What children? I was laughing at WUWT, where not very long ago the faith ran like this:
“WUWT is predicting a recovery again this year, which we started mentioning as a prediction last fall.”
And the median is still 4.6
[Moderator’s Comment: Gneiss, anonymous commenters using anonymous proxy servers are in no position to laugh at anyone. Alexander Feht uses his real name here. You, on the other hand, are unwilling to stand behind your words. You’re rather like a kitty-cat that once moved in: all fluff and hiss but no substance. Never did know who she was. Your laughter means nothing because you have no substance. In the event you failed to do so, re-read the policy page here. Do not be outraged if further snark gets snipped. -REP]
From the U.K. Met Office of all places, there is a very interesting graph:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/charts/NHEM_extanom.png
Judged from the above, looking at July sea ice extents may be a misleading picture. In terms of summer minimum ice extent, 2011 had less ice than 2008, but, in ice averaged year-round, ice has been rising much since 2007. With the recent particularly large winter-summer oscillations seen, ice extent this July will likely be around as low as in 2008, maybe as low as in 2011 or even a little lower, but that will be misleading. The 60-year ocean cycle seems to have peaked already (a timing fitting with the history seen in http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif ); the current solar cycle has not yet; but, in several years, arctic ice in terms of annual averages could be back within part of the 1970s range seen in the first graph linked.
I sure hope we can get another shot at this at the end of July. I hope I’m wrong but I suspect 4.55 will look very optimistic by then.
Frederick Michael says:
July 5, 2012 at 6:47 pm (Edit)
I sure hope we can get another shot at this at the end of July. I hope I’m wrong but I suspect 4.55 will look very optimistic by then.
######################
Given the record setting month we saw in June I’m surprised as well.
Lets look back 30 days
19 groups submitted outlooks The median of the 19 groups was 4.4
the 3rd quartile was 4.7. WUWT was outside that at 4.9
Now, 30 days later with a record June under our belt and statistics that put 2012
on par with 2007 ( which ended at 4.3 ) folks did respond to facts. They dropped
from 4.9 down to 4.6 ( or 4.55 if you prefer ) That’s still above the median estimation
of 4.4.
Are people
1. Betting what they hope? but why hope that ice will be higher than experts predict?
2. Betting what they believe, and ignorant of the past 30 days of data?
Those who are betting what they hope are most interesting. does one hope that the ice number
comes in higher because
A) you like to see experts be wrong. if they are right will you change your opinion
of them? the last 30 days says no.
B) you really see that ice numbers support the AGW story.?
Why is everbody getting bent out of shape over summer sea ice extent? It does not matter what happens to the sea ice during summer.
After the sun falls below the horizon in the fall, freeze-up occurs quite rapidly. By Dec when the ice is about 3 ft thick, the ice road trucking season can start and the nat gas and oil drilling operations can get underway.
There has been no mention on “Ice Road Trucker”, “License to Drill”, or “Ice Pilots” of “global warming” having any effect on these Arctic operations.
The polar regions are like big blocks of ice in an old-fashioned ice box like we all had back in the old days before modern frig’s become readily available in the early 1950’s.
Due to the tilt of the earth’s axis of rotation, one polar ice block melts while the other polar region starts to freeze-up (i.e., recharge) and release heat absorbed during summer. Thus, the earth has natural cooling system. Ice bergs drift out of the polar regions and cool warm water coming out the tropical areas.
The claim by the climate scientists (aka white-coated wise guys) that the earth has a “tipping point” is nonsense. If these guys had be born about ca 1950 or earlier they would know about ice boxes and how they work. The block ice was located in the top of the box, i.e., the North Pole (or South Pole if you are down under).
There is no rapid decline in arctic sea ice extent that i can see, it is decreasing slowly.The graphs are telling a false story and I refuse to accept that story until I see a rapid decline .I think that we have no more than 8 weeks left of melting. While the continents are warming it does not seem to be reaching the Arctic area ,this could be an indication of how strong this El Nino is.
Harold.
The decline in Ice during the summer means:
more Terra watts absorbed by open water
more melting of the permafrost ( more GHGs released)
More c02 will warm the planet about 1.2C per doubling, all other things remaining equal.
Losing Ice, is not “all things remaining equal. which means you end up with more than 1.2C warming per doubling because of feedbacks. ie, lower albedo.
donald.
The word “rapid” is subjective and should be avoided. The ice is declining at a rate of about
8% per decade ( minimum extent)
yes, we have 8 weeks left. If the ice continues to melt at its current rate we will break the record
( while the sun sleeps no less). If the ice melts at the average rate of other years we will come
close to breaking the record.
temperatures in the arctic are record breaking.
But then we knew that would happen. its predicted.
Steven Mosher says:
July 5, 2012 at 10:07 pm
more Terra watts absorbed by open water
Has anyone investigated from satelite imaging what the albedo change really is? The Arctic ocean is cold, so it very often has a blanket of fog. Even though the Arctic has 24 hours of daily sunlight and is a relatively dry place, it still is a cloudy place. So is there really a significant albedo change?
Steven Mosher says on July 5, 2012 at 10:02 pm:
Harold.
The decline in Ice during the summer means:
more Terra watts absorbed by open water
more melting of the permafrost ( more GHGs released)
FYI, there is no emprical evidence that GHG’s cause any global warming or have any influence on climate change whatsoever. To date the so-called climate scientists have only produced computational speculation and conjecture. The climate models are fatally flawed because then conc of CO2 used by these is valid only highly-purified, bone-dry air.
Down load and read this essay: “Climate Change Reexamined” by Joel M. Kauffman, Journal of Scientific Explaration, Vol 23, No. pp 723-749 2007.
For starters, Thank you Steven Mosher, for being one of the few around here to talk some sense.
For people here who still think that Arctic sea ice will somehow miraculously ‘recover’ from it’s downward spiral, I would like to give one example here of positive feedback in the Arctic.
Let’s look at snow cover.
The NSIDC just release the snow cover anomaly for June snow cover anomaly :
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/07/Figure5a.png
June 2012 has set a record 6 million km^2 snow cover anomaly compared to the long term average. By a large margin.
What does that mean for sea ice cover ?
Well, I know it’s not very common here on WUWT, but let’s be a little scientific, and do a back-of-the-envelope calculation here for a second.
We know that the average 24/7 solar insolation on-the-ground in June around the Arctic perimeter is something like 280 W/m^2.
We also know that if snow melts, that the albedo drops from something like 0.8 to about 0.1. Over that 6 million km^2, that means that during June 2012, the Northern Hemisphere absorbed something like 1180 TW (that is tera-watt) EXTRA and ABOVE what it would absorb in June on ‘average’.
How much is 1180 TW ?
Well, total human energy consumption is 17 TW or so.
Also, there is 70 TW ocean heat going into the Barents Sea, which keeps it largely ice-free in WINTER.
1180 TW is enough heat to melt about 3.6 million ton of ice PER SECOND.
Over the entire month of June 2012, the 6 million km^2 snow anomaly accumulated enough heat to melt out some 9300 Gigaton of ice ABOVE what the average month of June would melt out. That is roughly 1/3rd of the entire winter volume of Arctic sea ice.
Now, not all that heat makes it to melting ice. For starters, not all of the snow anomaly borders Arctic sea ice (although most of it does) and a little bit of the heat warms the atmosphere and then starts increasing radiation to space (at some 10 W/m^2).
More significantly, only half makes it over the ice, since wind blows as much onto as off the ice. The other half goes to warming (less cooling) of lower latitudes. Did we notice anything of that in the US ?
With reasonable numbers filled in for these losses, we still end up with enough heat to melt out some 2-3 million km^2 of FYI (1.5 meter thick) as compared to the long-term average (since the 60s). Incidentally, that’s more or less what we have been observing.
Even with respect to 2011, 1 million km^2 snow is lost in June, which, following the same calculations, would eventually (September) lead to an ice loss of some 500 km^2 sea ice area below beyond 2011. And that was just the influence of June snow anomaly, with May ignored and July still to come, as well as the additional albedo effects that these ice-free areas will endure before the melting season is over.
This is what is called ‘arctic amplification’ and it is a positive feedback mechanism, since it surely did not take that much energy to melt that snow. And it surely was not caused by ‘wind’ or ‘ice breaker activity’ as some of the WUWT regulars have suggested.
Maybe it is time to become a real skeptic and a real climate realist instead of staring yourself blind on the temperature of melting ice in the DMI 80+ graph. That one will only change rapidly once open ocean significantly takes over sea ice in a summer in the not so far future.
ATTN: Steve M.
Further to previous comment
See Fig. 7. Note that in the range of 700-400 wavenumbers water vapor absorbs most of the OLR not CO2. At 298 K the maximum of the OLR is ca 500 wavenumbers, which is the center the OH2 absorbtions. This FT-IR has cut-off of 400 wavenumers. The a OH2 below 400 wavenumbers that absorb OLR.
The claim by the climate scientist that CO2 is the main driven of the alleged global warming is falsified by the empirical data in this spectrum.
Note the stong CO2 peak at ca 2300 wavenumbers. There is no OLR at this wavelenght.
How go outside and watch the clouds. Then ask yourself this question: What are the equations that described these amorphous structures in space and time? Clouds are the regulators of the earth’s climate.
Steve Mosher said:
If Mosher would bother checking what was actually predicted, Antarctica should be the hottest place on earth. Funny how some people can cherry pick predictions that support their own POV and claim everything that happens is what was expected, even when said predictions are 100% wrong. Then again, everything is consistent with AGW “theory”, right Steve?
This is from Steve Goddard’s now defunct website.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/hansen-1988-antarctic-meltdown/
The link in the thread to the paper is dead. Gee, what a shame, and purely coincidental I’m sure.
However, below is an article from Popular Science August, 1989 which I assume Steve Mosher meant by “we” (whoever that is) knew it would happen, but didn’t, yet still did, well not really. Note the bright orange broiling Antarctic region compared to the rest of globe by year 2020. Even by 2050 the Antarctic is much warmer than the Arctic.
http://is.gd/hJWbTC
Climate science is great isn’t it? Just make it up as “we” go along. I’d like to ask Steve Mosher in what year did “we” know the Arctic would be warming more than the Antarctic. Was it 1990? 1995? Maybe 2000? Or was it after it became obvious the prediction was wrong, so that no matter what the outcome, claim “we” knew it all along, then get amnesia for the failed predictions? Or is there some lost archive from the early 80’s Gavin Schmidt will just happen to come across that invalidates the newer and improved obsolete predictions made in 1988/89?
Rob Dekker record minus 100.8 at the south pole. Thats were the missing cold went.
Steven Mosher says:
July 5, 2012 at 10:07 pm
“The ice is declining at a rate of about 8% per decade ( minimum extent)”
It is unfortunate that images don’t appear in comments, making them too easy to skip over. The following two together indirectly highlight how, while the July minimum this year will likely be particularly low again, there is not that kind of linear-like trend being seen over multiple decades:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/charts/NHEM_extanom.png
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
As seen in the second graph, arctic temperatures were as high in the late 1930s as in the 1990s, and, in that context, the first graph allows comparison of the annual means (beyond only July minima) of arctic ice extent in the past few years to those in the 1990s.
—————–
Global trends as opposed to arctic trends are somewhat off-topic, but, for overall albedo change:
Particularly with cloud cover change, Earth’s albedo predominately declined over the 1986-1997 period seen in http://www.pensee-unique.fr/images/pallesciencefig.jpg
Such affected how much of 170000 terawatts of incoming sunlight was absorbed, with warming during decline in albedo.
However, in contrast, 1998-now has had the opposite of predominately increased albedo as seen there and in http://www.pensee-unique.fr/images/palle2009.jpg
Such results in, unsurprisingly, the different trendlines seen in MSU global temperatures for the respective time periods:
Relative warming during the 1986-1997 albedo decrease, sunlight absorption increase:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1986/to:1997/plot/rss/from:1986/to:1997/trend
Relative cooling during the 1998-now albedo increase, sunlight absorption decrease:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2013/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2013/trend
To add longer-term data, albeit with less directly global data available, Greenland temperatures 200-11000 years ago:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
according to data from
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
and (where these NOAA figures could be partially off but mainly only some skeptics thinking so):
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/epica_domec/edc-co2.txt
By (1180*10^12) / (4*π*6371008^2/2 * 86400*30 * 240) * 100(%) that means your terrifying 1180 excess TERAWATTS in all of June is but 0.00000074377% or a fraction of 0.0000000074377 of the insolation per your 240 Ws-2 if the entire N.H., and that is if the entire N.H. has the same irradiation as what is gathered around the Arctic perimeter per your remark. But really the average insolation over the entire hemisphere is nearly triple that, so your example makes no sense, or if it does to you, cut those factors by about another 1/3rd.
So the N.H. absorbed 7.4e-07% more radiation than before, do you really think that matters squat? The 11 year 0.1% solar cycle bobble is huge compared to that and it’s climate effect is basically called immeasurable.
See how ridiculous your statements sound? So melted snow cover has you a bit worried does it? If you can handle a calculator you might try it before posting such dribble.
Anthony
Oh No! I’m too late to vote. Ill let you know if I was right once the season finishes. I suspect I would have been spot on…
tonyb
No wayne.
Even if you spread out that 1180 TW over the entire Northern Hemisphere, you get (1180*10^12) / (4*pi*6371008^2/2) or about 4.6 W/m^2 increase in insolation.
That is just about 2 % increase over your 240 W/m^2 average instead of your 0.00000074377 %.
Hold onto your hats…
This melt season is shaping up to be ‘really interesting’…
Spend some time at Cryosphere Today, going back over their images from the Arctic over the last month and comparing it to previous years. 1/2 the arctic sea ice looks like it is being attacked by rats. Hugely larger areas of ice for this time of year are showing sea ice concentrations of 60-80%. Meaning they are 20-40% open water. Reasonable perhaps in September, but not in June/July. And each of those patches, even though they may later revert back to a higher concentration some days later, represent a patch of ice that has lost it’s mechanical strength; thin refrozen sections appear to the satellites like ice, but their thinness means they don’t contribute to maintaining the mechanical strength of the ice.
So later in the melt season, this weaker ice vanishes far more easily.
For the first time in the Ice Concentration data we have seen patches of 60% concentration ice along the north coast of Ellesmere Island & Greenland over the last week. And satellite images are showing significant fissuring of the ice their now. More so than during the height of the melt season last year. When the ice looses its mechanical strength, it is a dead man walking.
Then there is the latest results from PIOMAS, estimating the total volume of ice. Their recent results are showing Arctic ice volume has already dropped below the comparable 2011 figures. And we are still in the early stages of the melt season.
PIOMAS adjusts their daily data by comparing it to the long term average for the same day.In principle, this should filter out the seasonal cycle and show the long-term trend. In the last 3 years the seasonal cycle is still strongly visible.
What this is saying is that the seasonal cycle has grown so much that it is overwhelming the adjustment based on long term averages. The seasonal cycle up there has become much more pronounced in the last 3 years.
So what does this mean for ice Extent/Area/Volume this season?
It means that the whole system is more vulnerable! If weather conditions turn towards cooling, then there may not be much changes. However, if we have a warmer melt season up there this year, it could drive significant change. An Ice Free North Pole can’t be ruled out. If we get weather conditions like 2007, after the way weather up to now has ‘primed’ the ice for change so far, substantial changes are possible.
The final collapse of the Summer Ice Sheet is now a possibility this year.
Don’t believe me. Go to Cryosphere Today and loook at how much Red (60%) ice there is up there today. Not September. Now.
Wayne, watts are a measure of power. You can’t then divide by time. They are already measured on a per second basis.
Mea culpa fellows. I learned two good lessons. don’t post comments as your heading for bed and to be sure to re-read the source comment before hitting the submit! I simply had tera-joules in my head.
From Rob Dekker on July 5, 2012 at 11:06 pm:
See, this a prime example of having an unholy “love of numbers” where one rattles them off without considering perspective and loses credibility.
Over about 180 days, around 9 million square kilometers is normally lost in the melt season. That’s an average 50 thousand square kilometers a day.
So you have 1% of average daily loss, spread over the entire melt season, which you are touting as something significant as it’s worth mentioning.
Hate to break it to you bud, but your calculations can’t show an additional 500 km^2 loss. And I don’t care how correct they are. That amount is below the level of significance when considering the significant digits involved in sea ice calculations. Your result is noise. It is easily swamped out by random fluctuations. At 1% of 1/180th of the total loss, on a single day a small shift of a jet stream can alter the cloud patterns enough to wipe out or double that loss, easily.
Please find yourself a map before embarrassing yourself further. Ask if the Canadians got that “Arctic warmth” before wondering if the continental US got it. And if Russia got it, and Europe got it, as all of them have far greater lengths of the “northern shore” than the CONUS. If all of those did not get that “Arctic warmth” then it was merely a regional effect.
Plus in your zeal to spout off heat numbers, you fail to realize you’re treating the Arctic Ocean like a cooking pot. It’s not a closed system, energy in yields ice melted. Besides melting, there is also the loss of sea ice that gets flushed out of the Arctic basin, as through the Fram Strait. This occurred is previous melt seasons, it’ll occur this year.
You just can’t do your heat calculations for ice loss with comparisons to previous amounts without accounting for the sea ice that isn’t now and wasn’t then there to be melted. It’s a variable amount, controlled by far more other things than mere heat. By failing to account for such a major variable, you have committed a major scientific blunder.
From earlier in your comment:
You’ve shown your work to be so “little scientific” as to be insignificantly small. By worrying about such tiny amounts while missing such a large method of loss, I wouldn’t trust you to do a household budget.
I want to point out that the posts Gneiss, Rob Dekker and Steve Mosher have left are considerably more civil, and clearly more factually correct, than those countering them. They (excepting Mosher) do disparage WUWT (which deserves a fire-house pressures of scorn in unending measure), but regarding individual posters, I see only neutral, or even (and you idiots don’t deserve them) respectful responses and corrections of egregiously errant calculations or ridiculously unrealistic assumptions.
On the other side, I see completely unjustified derision, poorly phrased insults, childish taunts that always prove false, and the cocksure strutting of delusional ideologues who are wrong, again and again.
Any of you morons want to address the fact that WUWT has been predicting or claiming as proven “recovery of the Arctic Ice?” Anyone want to bet how many idiotic and delusional postings we can find on WUWT denying this degree of Arctic melt possible in 2012?
As you can tell, I admire Gneiss, Rob and Steve for their restraint. I cannot emulate them.
@ thanes on July 6, 2012 at 7:19 pm:
And from we idiots, we morons, prone to our idiotic and delusional postings, here on the Best Science Blog which “deserves a fire-house pressures of scorn in unending measure”, you have our gratitude for providing this wonderful example of tolerance for opposing viewpoints which exemplifies one of the finest qualities, if not the absolute best one, of this excellent site.
We thank you for your patronage.
Wayne said :
No big deal Wayne. We all make mistakes (especially just before hitting the sack).
I for one missed a letter “k” behind “500” for the estimate of sea ice area loss since 2011 as caused by the extra 1 million km^2 snow anomaly in June since last year.
What matters are the numbers once corrected and what they mean.
In summary, the recod 6 million km^2 snow anomaly in June this year cause some 1180 TW extra insolation to be absorbed around the Arctic w.r.t. the long term average. When compensated for losses to space and lower latitudes, this increased heat absorption can quite easily explain the 1-3 million km^2 sea ice area loss we experienced over the past couple of decades.
And the 1 million km^2 difference in snow cover since last year alone would suggest that the 2012 sea ice minimum would be some 500 k km^2 \less than 2011.
In perspective, that 500 k km^2 extra melt since 2011 is a factor 20 larger than the (wind driven) sea ice export through Fram Strait in the month of June.
It’s simple, really : heat melts ice, and a lot of heat melts a lot of ice. And that’s what we are observing as we speak.
From Rob Dekker on July 7, 2012 at 12:50 am:
The 2007 record minimum is attributable to an anonymously high influx of warm water from the Pacific into the Arctic. Here’s a good write-up:
http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/RS_ArcticIce_2007.htm
As of May 2010, last update, a long term trend of increasing amounts of Pacific influx is noted. 2007 had unusual winds and much more heat coming in, leading to “record” amounts of erosion from underneath the sea ice. An example of Beaufort Sea ice was 3.3m at the start, that ended up at just 50 cm thick, with about 2m lost from the bottom, five times normal.
Compared to 2006, 2007 had 16% fewer clouds and 32 W per m² greater downwelling shortwave insolation in the Western Arctic (Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea area), where there was major ice loss. However downwelling longwave was reduced by 4 W/m², so a net difference of 28 W/m². For the mentioned Beaufort example, the loss from the top was about 70cm, about typical for the summer.
The increased insolation was noted as raising water temperatures enough for 0.3m of ice loss. The loss from the top was about typical. Yet about 2m of loss occurred under the ice, in excess of what was attributed to the increased insolation.
Since loss of ice due to wind driven influx of warm Pacific water is shown to be likely significant compared to that from insolation increase alone, this variable source of Arctic Ocean heating should be considered when performing calculations of ice loss from heat that are used for making comparisons with previous years. You can say X amount of heat should melt Y amount of ice. You cannot say X amount of extra heat will yield Y amount of less total ice than another year.
Is a Terra Watt much different from a Luna Watt?
Just askin’ …
“Please find a map before you embarrass yourself further.”
” I wouldn’t trust you to do a household budget.”
” You’ve shown your work to be so ‘little scientific’ as to be insignificant.”
Even though Dekker is actually right.
I do think that my post contributed to your second post being less insulting. Still wrong, but at least not insulting.
From thanes on July 7, 2012 at 9:25 am:
Certainly. He was so right he corrected himself while addressing two of my major points in his reply to Wayne, and didn’t repeat the fallacious linking of June warmth in the US to his proposed “Arctic warmth” that was a third major point.
In reality… I have had good teachers in my life who were tough yet fair. One memorable math teacher would throw chalkboard erasers at you if you were’t paying attention or otherwise being stupid. When sufficiently provoked, on rare occasions, chalk. And, I admit the style of Willis Eschenbach has rubbed off on me a bit, and that’s a good thing.
By being willing to correct himself, Rob showed me he was willing to try to get the science correct. So he warranted less eraser chucking.
As for you, your contribution has been to state how perfectly wonderful the “Death Spiral” aficionados have been while others are clearly rude and wrong, which you supplemented with your own rude derision of the site and its usual denizens. You have stated Dekker is right although he corrected himself, and that my last reply was wrong but haven’t pointed out what makes it wrong.
So will you be contributing to the factual discussion today Mr “thanes” or would you rather have an eraser?
kadaka, where is it, exactly, where you think Rob corrected himself?
I would also like to ask Wayne to thank Rob for showing him the error of his calculator ways, and I think Wayne might address his language
“See how ridiculous your statements sound? So melted snow cover has you a bit worried does it? If you can handle a calculator you might try it before posting such dribble.”
Being a dick and being wrong at the same time, I think more than “mea culpa” is called for. Maybe you should address, or consider the implications, of Rob’s original point, which you did not at first understand.
By the way, I’d like to point out, whenever I am looking at WUWT, I always keep in mind Joe Bastardi’s prediction for Arctic Sea ice extent for 2011- off by 1.2 MILLION DOLLARS! er square kilometers.
None of the usual denizens of this treasured salon the search for truth argued with Joe when he made that ridiculously wrong prediction. Did any of you ever address that you world view was SO FREAKIN’ WRONG in 2011? And that it looks to be so FREAKIN WRONG IN 2012?
Going by how wrong you guys are regarding the Arctic (now it seems, summer sea ice extent just isn’t important at all, huh, and surely there have been many previous collapses of polar bear population) I’ll assume that when you say we should look for 4.5 million square klicks, I’ll take off the usual WUWT 1.2 million square klick discount and predict that if we get 3.3 square million klicks humanity and the polar bears will be just plain lucky you gs aren’t usually more wrong.
Hey, Kadaka, if you can point out anywhere Rob Dekker admitted you were right and corrected something he posted, I’ll say the Earth is flat and up is down (that is, become one of you guys).
Timothy Hanes said on July 7, 2012 at 10:31 pm:
The specific example was the 500 km² ice loss, which he noted as in error due to a missed “k” prefix which would have made in 500,000 km².
Neither reiterating nor defending the bit about the US warmth may be considered an implicit correction.
He also gave consideration for the amount of ice flushed out of the Arctic, specifically mentioning the Fram Strait as I did, which I had pointed out as an error for not doing so previously.
It’s interesting to see someone essentially write a reply to me and slip it into a reply to someone else. But he did address my points so I did give him credit for it.
whoops, good thing I reloaded before posting. You subsequently said on July 7, 2012 at 10:45 pm:
He corrected the “500 km²”, noting it was an error. He finally gave consideration to the non-melt ice loss, which I had noted was an error to not do so.
However admitting I was right was seemingly ducked by sticking that in the reply to someone else rather than address me directly.
Since half of your conditions were met, I think it’s only fair you follow through with half of your response.
(I’d suggest you go with “up is down” as that’s defensible as a frame of reference issue.)
Timothy,
I did correct myself. I missed letter “k” in one of my posts.
The snow albedo anomaly for June 2012 suggests that 2012 would show a 500 k km^2 below 2011, and not 500 km^2.
As for Kadaka, he is not really wrong or right, but he is just ‘off’. He just throws up a lot of noise and mirrors.
For example, he spends and entire post on my missed letter “k”, instead of simply doing the calculations and finding out that it was just a typo. And then an entire post about teachers throwing chalk and erasers.
More on subject, he brings up ocean heat flux, but only talks about Pacific influx.
Of course, Pacific influx is important, but it is only some 35 TW, and affects mostly FYI in the Chukchi, which will melt out any way during summer. Besides, Pacific water is anomalously cold this year, so if Pacific influx would be a determining factor in Arctic sea ice decline, we would now be running at a sea ice area above the long term average.
But we don’t. Instead, 2012 sea ice area is running at an all-time low, even below 2007 and 2010.
Rob, I thought the typo of the k was so obvious it didn’t count as a correction. It did not affect your calculation, which was correct, and wayne has yet to discuss what implications there are to your point.
Regarding heat influx, it is remarkable, really quite remarkable, that he would choose to limit himself to the Pacific, which has to get through the Bering Straight and doesn’t have the Atlantic MOC.
I think Kadaka’s posts can best be described by the classic-
“Not even wrong.”
And Kadaka, let me get this right regarding the US warmth-
Your point is that is all regions bordering the Arctic (Russia, Canada) did not get increased warmth from the ice, it is merely a “regional effect”? I don’t know how valid what you say about Canada and Russiais, but regardless! What, exactly, does that have to do with Rob’s calculations regarding where the increased insolation energy from reduced ice albedo goes? You seem fixated on the idea of “global”. I think it is quite clear Rob does not admit error because he does not bring it up again. But Rob clearly has better things to do with his time, like understanding the science. Me, I’m catching up some, so I have time.
Rob did not give an “implicit correction”. He was talking about where the energy goes, you raised the point that if it isn’t pan-Arctic one could use the term “regional.” So? So what? It doesn’t have the world “global” in it, and therefore there isn’t “global warming?”
And to repeat, no, I do not agree that Rob leaving a ‘k’ out when writing a calculation that he did CORRECTLY is error. The error was wayne’s, which Rob has thoughtfully corrected for him.
kadaka,
You asked me several times to respond to you directly. I did not do so yet, since for starters I find your writing style agressive, unconstructive, arogant, insulting and contradicting and besides that you did not ask any questions.
My post was about the effects of the record snow cover anomaly and the effect it may have on sea ice reduction at the end of the melting season.
One point I made (actually a question I asked) was this : The other half goes to warming (less cooling) of lower latitudes. Did we notice anything of that in the US ?
You have now twice quested that question (and once contradicted yourself on the possible answer), which may suggest that you believe that temperatures in the US have nothing to do with the record 6 million km^2 snow cover anomaly in the North, but you do not present any evidence for that opinion.
Now, let me start by saying (again) that I do not know if the high US temperatures are affected by the record low snow cover anomaly all around the Arctic this year. However, I find it plausible that the extra 1180 TW generated North of us can have influence on lower lattitude temperatures, resulting in average higher peaks and less lower valleys in the temperatures across much of the Nothern Hemisphere land.
Here is some evidence for that opinion :
Snow albedo effect (and the 1180 TW increased absorbed solar power) of course mostly has an effect over land masses, and much less over the oceans.
Now if you look at the temperature anomaly over the Northern Hemisphere during May and June it’s easy to see that the anomaly extended over the land masses, while the oceans remained cool. We see not just a warmer Canada and as far south as the US, but also a significantly warmer Russia overall, down to the Chinese border and into parts of Europe. This pattern is much wider than a simple ‘regional’ effect, and matches very well with what we would expect from a snow cover anomaly spreading all across the Arctic deep into lower latitudes.
Which suggests that the US record breaking temperatures my very well be a side effect of the record 6 million km^2 snow anomaly, or at least be “worse” than what it would be without the massive amount of extra heat this year’s snow anomaly generated all over the Northern Hemisphere land masses.
Incidentally, parts of Siberia are scorching, and the state of emergency was declared in several Siberian provences due to unprecedented wildfires burning out of control on the tundras. 30 years ago, these areas were covered in snow deep into June.
From Rob Dekker on July 9, 2012 at 1:55 am:
(You’re still here?)
Where? I accept that reading comprehension might not be one of our strong suites since you think one post was entirely about the “missing k” while another was only about teachers, chalk, and erasers, but please try to pay closer attention.
It is lamentable that you are used to neither teachers nor supervisors that aggressively challenged you to do better, as they provoke the greatest learning. I mentioned two methods of ice loss you should have considered and evaluated for significance from the start. Failing to consider them, well, that’s like a carpenter not considering kerf loss, or an electrical designer not considering line loss.
You noted about a 1×10^6 km² difference in June from last year. Checking the tabular data shows the deficit to be 1.31×10^6 km². What has that extra loss done in June, looking at mean surface temperatures, straight subtraction of 2011 from 2012?
Map.
The Arctic Ocean is overwhelmingly colder. Some land is warmer, some is colder. Overall, I don’t see any increase in warmth, looks like general cooling if anything. I don’t see that 1.31*10^6 km² making a difference.
What about May? Tabular data says deficit 2012-2011 is only 0.7*10^6 km².
Map.
Arctic Ocean perhaps slightly warmer, overall a wash to slightly warmer.
There is much snow melt from May to June. 2012 saw 30% of the Northern Hemisphere snow remaining, 2011 was 37%. So between 2012 and 2011, with less snow cover to start and more lost from May to June, with the albedo changes and the proposed increased solar energy absorption… The effect was negligible to cooling.
May and June, 2012 minus 2011: Map.
Yes, I can see the scorching -3°C hotspot around central Russia. About Siberia:
June 2012 temperatures.
Oh yeah, with those “hotspots” no greater that 17.5°C (63.5°F) and around the July average, they must be sweating buckets from those scorching temperatures!
Kadaka,
“It is regrettable that you are used to neither teachers nor supervisors that aggressively challenged you to do better…”
Jesus, who are you, Dwight Schrute? Go screw yourself. You authoritarians are all like this. Why on Earth do you think of yourself in some position of authority just because you are fascinated/enslaved by ideas of authority? You are incorrect in virtually everything you say, PLUS you know nothing of Rob’s credentials, plus you don’t seem to have ANY interest in addressing Rob’s point- describing the effect of the positive feedback of ice/snow albedo.
Your first point, missing the simple ‘k’ typo,well hell say I wrote a five page post about your first sentence about your “strong suites”. I’d be signalling “I am an unable to understand what I am reading because I don’t follow arguments or contexts.” You DID spend half a post typing about what you didn’t follow. And, if you pull your little authoritarian strutting again I’ll tell you what to do with your chalk and eraser, you poser.
Second, funny thing you should go nuts when Rob asked if the US has seen anything of the extra heat of the decreased albedo effect this year- All-time US Record Heat this last twelve month period,
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/6
Finally, faux-professor, I was making fun of you and all the jack-asses, especially Joe Bastardi, who opine about Arctic Ice in this site, in part because your ilk continues to pretend 2007 was aberrant and Arctic amplificiation of global warming is something you can ignore. You can’t. You were wrong about 2011. You will be more wrong now.
Timothy Haynes says:
“Record Heat this last twelve month period…”
Posting an NOAA link about U.S. temperatures is typical alarmist cherry-picking. If you want a link showing global temperatures, then see here. Globally, 2012 temperatures are far below recent highs, and continue to decline.
And even if current temperatures were at an all time high — which they are not — so what? Any warming due to CO2 is so small that it is unmeasurable, so get off your high horse. AGW is still only a conjecture.
AGW is a theory which has, time and AGAIN,predicted, and explained WHY, the world will get warmer, Smokey. Hottest twelve month EVER SEEN in the US is along those lines. Predicted. Proven. Prediction made, confirmed. Conject that, you ideologue.
The world I’m leaving my children is down more the 3/4 the Arctic ice I got when I was born, and the 98% + of the climate scientists are just about screaming at the top of their lungs (for about the last 100 years) they knew it was coming, why it it happening, and what we need to do to stop it becoming a PETM level disaster. Conjecture, my foot.
Where is my children’s ice?
From Timothy Hanes on July 9, 2012 at 9:15 pm:
Wrong. I said “lamentable” not “regrettable”. Simply cut-and-paste to correctly copy source quotes, include original errors like typos as that makes the quote authentically true.
As I demonstrated by showing in my last comment how a notable increase in snow cover deficit between 2011 and 2012 had little effect, arguably a negative effect. If it’s such a robust positive feedback then the result should have been more noticeable.
The idiom “strong suits” comes from card playing, specifically Bridge. Who plays Bridge anymore? “Suites” are collections, by context as used they are collections of skills. For example, I have suites of carpentry, electrical, and mechanical skills. There is more than one type of reading comprehension, for example I am more adroit at reading electrical wiring codes (specifically the NEC) than I am reading medical jargon. Thus “strong suites” says what I meant.
But, as we have heard many times before, the US is not necessarily representative of the world. So I went to the global data, NCDC GHCN, available near the bottom here, selecting “The Monthly Global (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) Index (degrees C)” and put it into a spreadsheet. Although this extends back to 1880, I only used from January 1895 to present to match the US data. Turns out the hottest 12 month period globally, found by simply summing the anomalies, was August 2009 to July 2010.
Note that, at the time I looked, June 2012 wasn’t posted. But July 2011 to May 2012 adds to 5.6012°C, the highest 12 month sum is 7.9019°C, a difference of 2.3007°C. As a simple perusal of the monthly anomalies shows none greater than 1.0°C, it is very unlikely June 2012 will end the all-time highest global 12 month period. Indeed, the hottest month ever was over five years ago, January 2007, an anomaly of 0.8418°C.
Just for you, as we’re examining Northern Hemisphere snow deficits and the proposed Arctic amplification, I did the same with the Northern Hemisphere dataset. The hottest NH 12 month period was June 2006 to May 2007. The hottest Northern Hemisphere month was also January 2007, in anomaly terms.
Again, no June 2012, July 2011 to May 2012 summed to 6.6376°C, highest 12-mo was 9.3494°C, difference 2.7118°C, hottest month was only 1.1798°C.
So both globally and in the Northern Hemisphere, the peak in temperatures was about 5 to 6 years ago. The US “heat wave” represents neither the globe nor the Northern Hemisphere.
And way back when Rob Dekker atarted this by noting the June snow cover anomaly graph. Ignoring 2012 as the June 2012 global and NH temperature anomalies are not currently available, you can see the 2006-7 deficits are about half of the 2010-11 amounts. So the temperature records were set when there was much more snow cover. Thus to me, it looks like the proposed “positive feedback” of “Arctic amplification” has been debunked.
And the “extra heat of the decreased albedo effect this year”, doesn’t seem to be there this year. It’s not in the global nor the NH data. The US “heat wave” is a regional effect.
But 2007 was aberrant, tied to unusual winds and greater Pacific influx.
I’ve shown how the “Arctic amplification” doesn’t seem to be happening, thus I can ignore it.
And I actually bid low this year, only 4.5*10^6 km² Arctic sea ice extent. It’ll take some doing to get much below that.
Good news,Timothy Hanes! I hit “Post” instead of “Preview” (available when using CA Assistant, highly recommended) so you can complain about my “Rob Dekker atarted” typo, which should have been “Rob Dekker started”.
KD Knoebel
Boy oh boy. You would not be able to point out a dog even if you stepped on its tail, would you, Knoebel ?
You don’t “see” any difference because you are looking in the wrong places.
For starters, as I mentioned before, heat generated by snow albedo shows up as a land temperature anomaly, not over the oceans, and not over (sea) ice either.
Since you seemed to be intrigued by teaching, let’s see if you have learned anything in this post on the albedo effect of snow cover and polar amplification :
Question 1 : If you take your 2012 minus 2011 temperature anomaly map and you discard oceans and discard the areas well outside the 2012-2011 snow anomaly (south of 60N), then what is the area integrated average temperature anomaly between 2012 and 2011 over the remaining land area ?
Question 2 : These should be easy, but a reasonable test of your high-school mathematics skills and understanding of basic physics :
(a) How much heat does it take to melt 50 cm snow (assume a 20% water content) over 1.3 million km^2 ?
(b) What is the approximate amount of extra absorbed solar power of a 1.3 million km^2 snow anomaly in June, assuming average insolation on the ground of 280 W/m^2 and an albedo factor of 0.8 for snow and 0.1 for a snow-free surface ?
(c) Given (b), how much extra solar heat is absorbed in the anomaly area during the month of June ?
(d) What is the heat amplification factor for the snow anomaly area in June (compare result of (c) to the result of (a)).
(e) What is the volume of sea ice lost if 25 % of that heat (d) ends up melting Arctic sea ice ?
(f) Assuming 1.5 meter thick ice, how many km^2 of sea ice would be lost due to the 2012 – 2011 June snow cover anomaly ?
(g) Quantify other heat sinks for the remaining 75% of the heat calculated in (c). (Where does that heat go ?).
and if you may :
(h) Re-do these calculations, now given the 6 million km^2 snow anomaly in June 2012 with respect to the long-term average, and compare to observational evidence.
Knoebel :
Yes, and that 30% is almost exclusively on the Greenland ice sheet.
If that number goes down any further, we are in much deeper trouble than the loss of summer Arctic sea ice.
Who are you kidding, Knoebel ?
From Timothy Hanes on July 9, 2012 at 11:40 pm:
You were born around the end of February and will be leaving around September?
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
See the “Data Download” link, info easily goes into a spreadsheet.
The Arctic Basin consistently freezes up every year, with variation at the “also Arctic” areas like to the right of Greenland. There has been nothing near a 75% decline from the 1980’s average maximum. In 2007 the minimum was 30.51% of the maximum. Excluding 2012 as incomplete, the lowest minimum and highest maximum presented only yields 28.66%.
So how exactly is Arctic sea ice “down more the 3/4”?
From Rob Dekker on July 10, 2012 at 1:57 pm:
Then if the heat is not going into the oceans, basically the “snow albedo effect” is transient. Sun comes up, land surface temperatures are somewhat higher, extra heat is shed to space at night. If the oceans don’t store it then the land will just lose it. Except for some higher daily maximums in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere land areas for part of the year, it has no real effect on the long term temperature trends, which are dictated by ocean heat content.
So the “snow albedo”-based “Arctic amplification” is ultimately ignorable.
KD Knoebel said :
You jump right to my question (g), but you did not quantify your answer.
Can you calculate how much the temperature of 6 million km^2 land need to warm up above freezing so that an extra 1180 TW is “shed to space” ?
As first order approximation, you can use Stefan Boltzman law.
Or just start with question (a) and work your way to through.
Ice volume, kadaka.
By the way, I must say I am impressed with your “strong suites.” “How many people still play Bridge?”. About one hundred times as many people who would have ever used the word “Suite” the way you do in your invented idiom.
So, back to the albedo feedback-
All the global hottest 12 month periods you note are in the last 6 years (be careful, you’ll undermine the entire “warming stopped in 1998” meme that is so rampant in these parts- Lord Monckton will have you carried out of the club!). And from your link, it is evident that over that period, snow cover anomalies have been severe over that entire period. That looks to me like decreased snow-albedo is very possibly a strong positive feedback. If you think you have disproven snow albedo as a significant postive feedback because you can show annual global annual temperatures and years of greatest northern hemispheric snow cover anomalies don’t line up one-to-one ( I think that’s your argument) even when they are lining up in a much more general way, you and I don’t understand complex systems and statistics the same way.
Am I right in how I’m reading you? Is that actually your argument?
From Rob Dekker on July 10, 2012 at 5:38 pm:
I’m sorry, but you appear to be under the impression I considered the rest of your comment past the quoted point with something more than a glance. Why crunch all those numbers to “prove” Arctic amplification when it’s not in the temperature indexes?
You’re saying the effect is land only, so let’s look at land only, and grab that NH dataset at the NCDC-GHCN page, “The Monthly Northern Hemisphere Land Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)”.
(BTW, open the “dat” files in a word processor, replace all double spaces with single spaces, repeat until no double spaces. Result is ready to use “Paste Special” to put in spreadsheet, space for delimiter.)
As before, no June 2012 yet. Highest month was March 2008. Highest 12 month period was December 2006-November 2007. Highest 6 month period was December 2006-May 2007. Heck, the news of the US record said it was the highest first half of a year. Here that was 2007. Highest 2nd half was back in 2005.
And as opposed to the US, “highest 12 month period” will be very unlikely with June 2012 added. Anomalies from July 2011 to May 2012 sum to 10.5788°C, highest 12-mo is 14.6536°C, difference 4.0748°C. Highest monthly anomaly January 1895 to present is only 2.3370°C. Safe bet that June 2012 won’t make up that difference.
So the NH land records were set about 5 to 6 years ago, when the June NH snow anomaly deficit you noted was much less. If “Arctic amplification” is supposed to be warming the land areas of the Northern Hemisphere, it’s not showing up in the temperature record.
From Timothy Hanes on July 10, 2012 at 9:09 pm:
Nah, still doesn’t work. Way back when, PIOMAS used to be frequently cited as proof of Arctic sea ice volume loss, despite being just a model. After colliding with reality, its flaws and biases were revealed and a less-alarming version was released.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/28/piomas-arctic-sea-ice-volume-model-corrected-still-appears-suspect/
New PIOMAS:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
Got that? The lowest amount calculated, the September 2011 minimum, which is the same as September 2010 within the estimated uncertainty, is 75% lower than the maximum in 1979.
The only way you can figure Arctic sea ice is “down more the 3/4″ in volume, is by comparing the highest calculated amount to the lowest. And those numbers aren’t even in the same part of the annual melt cycle.
Note that PIOMAS is still a model, still has issues. And that despite still appearing to have a built-in alarming bias, it does not support your ‘less than 25% remaining’ assertion.
If you have better Arctic sea ice volume information, that shows a 75% or greater loss when comparing annual maximums to maximums or minimums to minimums, please present it.
Actually, kadaka, your wrong, it’s Sept 2011 to Sept 1979, minimum to minimum. It is poorly phrased, I’ll agree, but they mean the maximum minimum, that is Sept 1979. It’s quite striking when you look at it graphically. It is very rare when you see that kind of change with a Y-Axis that begins at 0.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/06/75-per-cent-of-arctic-sea-ice-lost-in-30-years-we-check
But again, I’d like to ask, are you arguing that not showing a correlation of lowest snow-cover to lowest [Northern hemisphere temps] minimum, then second lowest to second lowest, and so on, are you arguing that that would disprove reduced albedo is not a strong positive feedback?
Really?
I’m sorry, scratch ice and insert Northern hemisphere temps.
Again, really?
[Like that? It doesn’t seem to make any more (or less) sense). Robt]
Excuse me, highest NH temps.
From Timothy Hanes on July 12, 2012 at 3:21 pm:
My wrong? Surely it is your wrong, not mine. This was already covered on WUWT last month. I will thank you, as the juicy details about the “volume loss” claim are down in the comments and I hadn’t read them before.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/03/the-guardians-ridiculous-claim-of-75-arctic-ice-loss-in-30-years/
Anthony Watts and others have already handily shredded the “75% volume loss” claim.
Remember what PIOMAS is, a model. It was thoroughly verified, all of the Arctic doom-and-gloom crowd were absolutely convinced of its accuracy. Then its makers admitted it was flawed and released the next version. Now you’re pushing a September 2011 calculation done only three months after the Great Correction, comparing it with a “hindcast” recalculated 1979 minimum, and expecting people to, once again, get alarmed over the PIOMAS results? Feel free to claim PIOMAS is thoroughly verified and accurate and can be trusted, just like they did before the previous version was shown to be broken.
At a comment, source indicated, PIOMAS said 16,900km³ for the September 1979 minimum, 4,300km³ for 2011. By the NSIDC monthly data, in September the area (not extent) was 4.53*10^6km² in 1979, and 2.89*10^6km² in 2011.
16900km³ / 4.53*10^6km² * 1000m/km = 3.73m average thickness in 1979.
4300km³ / 2.89*10^6km² * 1000m/km = 1.49m average thickness in 2011.
Of course area (only ice) was selected over extent (ice + water) for a true volume calculation.
Searching for thickness records, I found: Kwok, R., and D. A. Rothrock (2009), Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records: 1958 – 2008, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L15501, doi:10.1029/2009GL039035. PDF available for free here.
It uses declassified US Navy submarine data from outside the “exclusive economic zones” of foreign countries. While the resulting area is only about 38% of the Arctic Ocean, generally it encompasses the area where you’d expect sea ice to remain at the end of the melt season, lacking the quick-melting shore areas, with the exceptions of ice around Greenland and Ellesmere Island being excluded and Alaska areas included. See figures 1a and 2a.
Three periods are examined, submarine data for 1958-76, 1993-7, and ICESat for 2003-7.
Table 1, “Mean Ice Thickness at the End of Melt Season…”, for All Regions, 1958-76 was 3.02m, 1993-7 was 1.62m, 2003-7 was 1.43m.
Back during the “glory days” of Arctic sea ice, for 1958-76, the “All Regions” mean minimum of 3.02m for the defined area is considerably less than the derived-from-PIOMAS 1979 average minimum of 3.73m for the entire sea ice area. From Table 1, the only examined regions at or above that amount were North Pole and Nansen Basin, 3.77 and 3.88m respectively. The Chukchi Cap and Beaufort Sea were barely above only half of that.
The time periods don’t match up exactly, neither do the areas. But going with the easily-accepted belief among the doomsayers that the Arctic sea ice must have an ongoing downward trend in the “modern anthropogenic warming era”, from at least around 1950, two possible conclusions arise. Either something freaky happened that resulted in dramatically thicker ice overall in 1979 than the mean amount for 1958-76, temporarily reversing the decline in a truly extraordinary fashion… Or PIOMAS is just wrong about the 1979 volume.
From Figure 2e you can see the ice concentration of the studied area from 1978-2000 at summer minimum. Nearly all of the studied area is above 90%. Since “of course” there is a long-term decline thus summer minimum concentration had to have been better for 1958-76, there is insufficient wiggle room for an “extent vs area” argument to explain the glaring difference.
If you have plausible alternative explanations, and/or thickness data that isn’t derived from the PIOMAS model, feel free to present it. As it stands, I cannot see how PIOMAS could possibly be correct with the “75% volume loss” that was pulled out from that computer model’s butt.
Kadaka, you are wrong. It is not 1979 maximum compared to 2011 minimum. That is wrong. If you assert that, you are wrong. It is minimum to minimum. This is apparent if you look at the graphical data.
Regardless of what you and Andy think about PIOMAS or PIOMAS II, your assertion that 75% ice loss is completely off form the previous post is wrong. Correct? Say it, say your previous post was wrong and we can get into PIOMAS. Or come up with some impressive crap like your “strong suites” post earlier.