People send me stuff.
Today, just over two months away from the end of summer, when NASA’s Jay Zwally famously predicted (with an assist from AP’s Seth Borenstein): “…the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012″ and we are nowhere near that becoming true, I get sent a contest being solicited by the people who run “Vision Prize” in San Francisco. I had to chuckle at this.
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: When will the Arctic Sea become free of summer
floating ice?
Dear Climate Scientist,
You have probably already seen the cover story of last month’s Economist on the Arctic: The vanishing north. The Vision Prize [online poll of climate scientists](http://visionprize.com/) is currently asking this related question:
**When (if ever) will the Arctic Sea become completely free of summer floating ice?**
Please [Sign Up](http://visionprize.com/users/new) now to submit your prediction and join [more than 200 of your colleagues](http://visionprize.com/participants#expertise) participating in this new climate risk communication project. Participation is free and takes just a few minutes. Thanks in advance for your support.
Vision Prize is affiliated with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, and is strictly nonpartisan.
Vision Prize | Box 7775 #20915 | San Francisco CA USA | 94120
===============================================================
The bottom of the original email allows the recipient to forward to a friend, so by doing so they make this a contest open to everyone.Lest some of our vocal detractors cry “foul” I’ll point out this entry in their “roster of experts“:
Glenn Tamblyn
Skepticalscience.com; (Australia); Licensed professional engineer – commercial; Mechanical Engineering; Industry – Other;
Dana Nuccitelli
Tetra Tech, Inc.; (United States); Other scientific or technical – commercial; Environmental Science, Physics; Industry – Environmental Services; climate science
Apparently, they’ll take anonymous predictions too:
puffycloud
University of Washington; (United States); Graduate student; climate variability and change; Academia – Earth Sciences; atmospheric science
They want predictions, so let’s give them some, signup here:
Please [Sign Up](http://visionprize.com/users/new) now to submit your prediction
I signed up, and the confirmation email to activate my account went immediately to SPAM, so you may have to fish it out of your own account.
Even though they’ll let members of a blog that revises history on a regular basis and treats professional scientists with unprofessional attacks and anonymous grad students in, apparently, they don’t just let anybody in. Only the anointed perhaps? This is what I got:
They are heavily weighted with UW and other faculty, according to their online live profile:
It will be interesting to see if they are biased or open and whether I get to join the “players”.
I urge WUWT readers to sign up and report your acceptances or rejections below.
Thank you for the response, Phil. I had seen the quote that you referenced. I am mostly interested in what Zwally himself said immediately prior/after the sentence you referenced. I have been doing a lot of searches online, but cannot seem to find the more complete quote. I will keep looking!!!
Phil Clarke says:
July 19, 2012 at 11:32 am (Edit)
Does anyone have a link to the entire statement made by Zwally? I’m actually quite interested in reading all of what he said. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!
Sure. There’s a link at the top …. This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: Phil Clarke says:
July 19, 2012 at 11:32 am (Edit)
Does anyone have a link to the entire statement made by Zwally? I’m actually quite interested in reading all of what he said. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!!!
Sure. There’s a link at the top …. This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.
#############
Thanks for pointing that out Phil. It really does no good to misrepresent your opponents positions. Consider this: Imagine if Bob Tisdale said ” If El nino develops, the global temperature would go up” Imagine then that an El nino did not develop. and temperatures stayed about the same. Would anyone here criticize Bob? I hope not. Zwaly spoke conditionally. Damn the press for not pushing him on this aspect. Damn the press for not asking ” well, will this rate continue?” Criticize Zwally for only presenting the worse possible case.
Zwally should have told a more complete story
“At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions. At the long term rate the arctic will be ice free in 20xx.”
So in all fairness one can hold him and the press responsible for emphasizing the worst case. He had a choice. Scientifically, however, you need to look at the conditional he offered.
dccowboy says:
July 19, 2012 at 12:14 pm (Edit)
That and I’m not sure what the quantifiable value of ‘nearly’ is in this context.
######################
That question has been asked a lot. Instead of Ice free folks now say something like Area less than 1 million sq km.
That’s not far away. Concentration and volume ( what really matters ) is being dealt crushing blows. The next year with weather and wind like 2007 will do the trick.
2020: take the under bet
Mike Lewis says:
July 19, 2012 at 10:58 am
Smokey, Smokey, Smokey… Everyone knows that heat rises, therefore all the extra heat in the atmosphere and oceans is rising to the top of the world and melting the Arctic ice.
————————-
….. and there was I thinking it was because CO2 is upside down in the Southern Hemisphere, thereby causing cooling. Silly me.
Engineering Vision Prize: Given a limitless supply of climate scientists with blowtorches, (a) How many tonnes of butane would it take to melt all the ice in the Arctic? (b) How long would it take?
Given the Vostok cores I’m going with 102,001 AD
Smokey says: “Wrong question.”
Too bad you then proceed to give the wrong answer!
“The Antarctic is gaining ice. And the Antarctic holds 90% of the planet’s ice. [With a link to an impressive looking graph.]”
1) The graph is for “May” extent. Hmmm … why do you suppose that ONE month was selected, rather than any other month, or the data for all months? You don’t suppose they cherry-picked May because it shows the steepest gain for Antarctic ice AND the smallest drop for Arctic Ice? The annual change is about 50% less in the south and about 50% more in the north.
2) You are comparing apples and oranges — sea ice vs land ice. The graph is sea ice, which does show a modest gain. However, when you say “the Antarctic holds 90% of the planet’s ice”, you are clearly referencing land ice. And the land ice has been declining steadily since 2003 (when accurate satellite measurements started). http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/slide2.jpg This decline in land ice outweighs any small gain in sea ice.
Phil Clarke says:
July 19, 2012 at 11:32 am
So we can conclude
a) That’s only one condition. But then, I’m also convinced that there’s only one Kilimanjaro.
a) we need highly paid government scientists to do linear interpolation. Layman can’t do that because they’re not climate scientists.
b) Just as he has explicit preconditions in his prophecy, the warmist scientists in general have an implicit precondition in their prophecies: IF our models have predicitive skill. Notice that this already failed for the observed timeframe.
@philincalifornia – I hadn’t thought about the CO2 being upside down. It’s worse than I thought!!
We have a drought on par with the mid 1950’s I suspect we will have Arctic ice like in the mid 1950’s . Now where are those submarine pictures from the mid to late 1950’s showing very little ice at the north pole ?
Are you sure they’re not trying to put together another “consensus”?
It might be helpful in such an important debate if the people contributing actually looked at the data. Most people contributing to WUWT and other similar sites don’t seem interested in the evidence.
Cryosphere Today is reporting that currently (July 19th 2012) arctic sea ice is over 2 million km2 below the 1989-2008 mean.
Arctic sea ice area this year is already lower than almost all the September minimums at the start of the satellite record in the 1970s and 1980s.
The anomaly this summer has now been at or below previous record levels for nearly 2 months.
Looking at the NSIDC September plot from the start of the satellite record, on the linear trend line they use, the arctic will be largely ice free in September in about 2065;
on the current rate of decline (tangent to the curve) by about 2030;
or if the acceleration in decline seen since the late 1990s persists, by about 2019.
So take your pick.
The evidence points strongly to a major change taking place in the arctic. Whether its “alarmist” to think this is serious is subjective.
The point is, it is happening. The arctic is warming faster than any other region on the planet and the most likely cause of that is climate change caused by increasing CO2 levels.
Both a rapidly warming arctic and a generally warming world have been predicted as a consequence of a major rise in CO2 concentration since the 1970s and before – long before the media got hold of the issue and even longer before the climate change sceptic community got going.
Forget dodgy models, who said what, leaked e-mails and all the other guff. Look at the data.
We have found the enemy and it is us. My answer is 42
Good idea! If only we could, because apparently the scientific method of openness and a federal law about freedom of information don’t apply to certain climate scientists.
Steven Mosher says:
July 19, 2012 at 12:28 pm
“That question has been asked a lot. Instead of Ice free folks now say something like Area less than 1 million sq km.
That’s not far away. Concentration and volume ( what really matters ) is being dealt crushing blows. The next year with weather and wind like 2007 will do the trick.
2020: take the under bet”
============
Does this mean we can forego the windmill craze, or will it only hasten the outcome ?
James Abbott says:
July 19, 2012 at 2:30 pm
No, the “Arctic” is not getting hotter faster than any other part of the planet. [“Parts” of the central Canada tundra have been calculated (by the self-serving self-funding NASA-GISS to further serve its political interests and continued funding) to be 1-2 degrees warmer than a previous homogenized value of re-calculated values.] But these central Canada tundra regions are NOT the regions passing warmer air to the Arctic ocean: the Arctic Ocean is 15 to 20 degrees further north than these mid_Canada plant-covered regions where the temperature is (assumed) to be warmer than before.
But up north?
Where the Arctic Ocean actually IS when sea ice is at a minimum (further than 80 north latitude at a sea ice minimum of 4 million km2)?
Up at 80 north altitude, through the entire summer melting season the DMI-measured temperatures since 1958 have not not increased “faster than anywhere else”, they have not been steady since 1958, they have been decreasing since 1958.
Furthermore, not only have summer temperatures at 80 north latitude – during the period since 1958 when CO2 has increased – been decreasing, as CO2 increased during the period the actual Arctic temperatures have been decreasing FASTER the higher the CO2 levels worldwide have gotten.
So, as CO2 has increased, and sea ice levels since 1979 have decreased, the temperatures above that sea have decreased. Now, what does that do to your precious sea-ice-albedo catastrophic feedback?
Further, it is possible to both show WHY the both of the above are true, and WHY the sea-ice-albedo feedback to dear to the hearts of CAGW believers is dead wrong.
As CO2 has increased, plant growth of EVERY living plant on earth has increased by 15 to 27% greater mass, greater fruit, greater and thicker leaf covers. Central Canada, central Russia as well is now covered by 20 to 25% MORE plant and tree growth. Tree and greater plant growth absorbs sunlight much, much higher than the highly reflective plain grasses and lower life tundra plants previous living there. Thus, naturally, more plant growth gives lower albedo, more sunlight absorption, and higher daylight temperatures. Further north, towards the areas where strong plant growth becomes non-existent at the sea coast (which varies between 70 and 80 north), the relative amounts of sunlight absorbed has not changed – and temperatures have NOT increased.
Even NASA-GISS also shows THIS on their prejudiced Cartesian coordinate plots.
Sea ice albedo feedback?
The more sea ice is removed, the more ocean surface area is exposed to evaporation effects. At the latitude where sea ice actually is at the summer sea ice minimum (between 80 north and the pole at 90 north at a sea ice minimum of 4 million km2) the amount of energy absorbed by the ocean at NOON (at sun incident angles of 0 to 10 degrees) is LESS than that released by evaporation.
So, less sea ice? Colder arctic sea temperatures. Regardless of the “apparent” dark ocean albedo at the equator. At the Arctic Ocean beyond 80 north where the sea ice actually exists now, or may evaporate later, it doesn’t exist. Can’t exist due to the physiocs of the ice, the ocean, and the geography of the far north.
Is there a relationship between rising worldwide average global temperatures and the melt rate of Arctic sea ice? No, because if there were such a relationship, during the 15 years since worldwide average global temperatures have been steady, the Arctic sea ice extents have steadily decreased.
If there were such a relationship between worldwide average temperature and global sea ice, then in the 150 years BEFORE CO2 began increasing AND while the worldwide temperatures were increasing from the Little Ice Age, the sea ice extents should have been increasingly larger and larger. It did not. They were more or less stable, held by the maximum extent of the Arctic Ocean itself.
Oh – Land albedo changing due to sea ice extents reducing?
Can’t happen.
There are NO regions across the Arctic (mountain tops excepted!) where “ice” covers the ground at mid-September.
Little ground is covered by ice at late-June, at the point of highest solar angle.
No ground is covered by ice at Mid-July.
No ground is covered by ice at Mid-August.
Right now, ALL regions of the ground previously covered by ice and snow at the point of highest ice coverage in late March have melted by mid-July.
So, what is the area that will change albedo?
The data says the Arctic will be ice-free (down to Zero) anytime between 2050 and 2100+.
The issue is how much ice is there at the end of the winter and how melts throughout the summer. Most people do not understand that the amount of sea ice extent/area that melts throughout the summer is relatively consistent from year to year. It grown a small amount but not that much.
So, end of the winter iue, melt during the year, September minimum going back to 1972.
http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/6272/nhsiemaxmeltmin2012.png
If you think these patterns are linear (which looks to be the accurate description), there will not be an ice-free Arctic until after the year 2100. If you think these patterns have some acceleration or exhibit a polynomial function, it could be as early as 2050 (note; there is one additional March in the dataset from this year which was higher than normal which extends the crossover point out 5 years to 2050).
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/8303/nhsie2100maxmeltmin.png
My crystal ball is in the shop this week…
Steven Mosher says:
July 19, 2012 at 12:28 pm
“That’s not far away. Concentration and volume ( what really matters ) is being dealt crushing blows. The next year with weather and wind like 2007 will do the trick. ”
Do you have a data source for this assertion Steve (“crushing blows”)? Thanks.
Climate Forecast:
To achieve an ice-free planet will take a while. It won’t be this century
but soon after the solar system leaves the Orion spiral arm which
should be in about 27 million years time (give or take a few million.)
There may be a GCR reduced area about half way through to give a
brief very warm spell but it won’t last.
As for this century, it will become colder, so more ice rather than less. Coldest time
will be about 2030 and it should start warming again about 2050 or so. For an idea
of the weather: read Charles Dickens (any books should do) to see what it will be
like (pretty similar to 1790-1840 during the Dalton Minimum).
Any local Super Nova will invalidate this forecast completely.
Tim Folkerts says:
July 19, 2012 at 1:13 pm
Smokey says: “Wrong question.”
Too bad you then proceed to give the wrong answer!
“The Antarctic is gaining ice. And the Antarctic holds 90% of the planet’s ice. [With a link to an impressive looking graph.]”
Tim replies:
1) The graph is for “May” extent. Hmmm … why do you suppose that ONE month was selected, rather than any other month, or the data for all months?”
Tim, wake up! The chart you’re complaining about “cherry picking” is for N.H. and S.H. ice extent up until May 2012; the latest date available. Maybe by next month they will have the June 2012 totals.
Speaking of Antarctica, here’s the current temperature at Vostok Station.
-87F (Real Feel -115F).
One is reminded of the Aztec’s human sacrifice offerings, where just in case the gods might be crazy so they had better kill off a few more, just in case.
The “X” generation has already written it off as a joke, most baby boomers are too smart to fall for this drivel so who does that leave supporting the hoax.
Remembers those lunatics from the seventies and their “flowers in your hair” mentality, spending their waking moments doped to the eyeballs on whatever brain damage drug they can find ?
There we are, bingo. Their delusions are catching up with them and here they are justifying it all. They did worship those Aztecs as well. It would appear that only someone suffering from some type or level of condition could possibly support the AGW hoax. They regularly raise their hands and verify it.
From MikeP on July 19, 2012 at 11:02 am:
The automated process (partial):
Initial name checking subroutine (partial):
1000 Name_Check:
1010 if NAME in consensus_list then goto Approve
1015 if NAME in fossil_shill_scum_list then goto Timeout_Reject
1020 gosub Google(NAME)
1030 goto Hold
1040 end Name_Check
1100 Hold:
1110 if denial_site=1 then goto Review
1120 goto Approve
1130 end Hold
1200 Review:
1202 "flag mention(s) of NAME at denial site(s)
1203 " for content checking by human
1210 gosub Add(NAME,review_list)
1220 review_list.NAME.wake_user=0
1230 review_list.NAME.allow=0
1240 goto Timeout_Reject
1250 end Review
1500 Timeout_Reject:
1510 gosub Send_Wait_Message(NAME)
1520 end Timeout_Reject
review_list gets periodically checked. If review_list.NAME.allow=1 then goto Approve and gosub Remove(NAME,review_list). If review_list.NAME.time>=86400, that is the wait timed out, and review_list.NAME.allow=0 then gosub Send_Slapdown(NAME), gosub Add(NAME,watch_list), gosub Remove(NAME,review_list).
BTW, review_list.NAME.wake_user is just for administrative purposes, to verify those “fact checkers” the temp agency sent over are bothering to do something. Gee, you’d think they’d be grateful to show they can get paying work that’s at least somehow related to their PolySci, Literature, or “Environmentalism” degrees, but nooooo…
Hello Wade
Try
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
and
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
for daily updates on sea ice. Its all there for anyone to look at.
Hello RACookPE1978
I never mentioned a “sea-ice-albedo catastrophic feedback”.
I said look at the data, I did not mention feedback.
You also state
“during the 15 years since worldwide average global temperatures have been steady”
Thats not backed by the data but is an often quoted sceptic line.
Mean global Land-Ocean temperatures have been fairly level since 2003, not 1997. Before 2002/3 there was clear warming, both on the annual plot and the 5 year running mean – see
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
You also state that “in the 150 years BEFORE CO2 began increasing AND while the worldwide temperatures were increasing from the Little Ice Age, the sea ice extents should have been increasingly larger and larger. It did not”.
How do you know ? None of us know with accuracy. There was no accurate recording then. We only have local reports and proxy records to go on. What we know now – from the data – is that arctic sea ice is rapidly declining in our era.
You also say “There are NO regions across the Arctic (mountain tops excepted!) where “ice” covers the ground at mid-September.”
Err – The Greenland ice cap ?