Sea Ice News – Volume 3 Number 9

I am wondering if they haven’t fiddled with the algorithm in order to get a lower minimum.
[REPLY: Some reasoning and/or evidence to support the wondering would be nice, otherwise it is just aspersion-casting. -REP]

I agree Gunther. There is nothing happening in the Arctic that hasn’t happened in the recent past when looking at the data through climate lenses.
Now, if you want to talk about weather…..that is a different story.

I find it meaningful that the 2nd largest vote tally comes right around the ARCUS forecast.

Just a suggestion for a site improvement, Anthony. Could you put a map of the Arctic on the Sea Ice Page that indicates the various seas that make up the Arctic Ocean? I think that would be useful given the volume of traffic you get and the many times that various seas are referred to by name in the comments. I just spent several minutes Googling the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas and never did get to a map that had the full layout of both seas. Thanks for considering this. (And if it’s already on the site somewhere, could someone will post its location?–If it is on the site already, moving it to the Sea Ice Page, or duplicating it there would seem logical, by the way.)
[REPLY: I find this one helpful, myself. -REP]

Can those who voted >5.5 M Km2 explain their choice?
It would take a sudden and unexpected change of melting trend for that to happen in my opinion.
To me, seeing that arctic ice concentration appears to be overall visibly worse than 2007, with currently slightly less extent than 2007 and relatively large areas quickly melting in the last few days, it seems it wouldn’t be a pessimistic estimate to vote around 4.0-4.2 M Km2 as a minimum for this year.

Neven has become so shrill with his warmist agenda that I’ve lost faith in his site’s objectivity so I look elsewhere for the data now…pity really…

@beesaman: “Shrill with his warmist agenda”??? Where do you see that on http://neven1.typepad.com? I’ve always found his text refreshingly agnostic.

My honest guess is 4.8 million sq-km.

Interestingly, the DMI temperature profile has been consistently below normal during the current melt season while there has been a rapid loss of ice.

****
Ecco the Dolphin says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:55 am
To me, seeing that arctic ice concentration appears to be overall visibly worse than 2007
****
One could easily change “worse” to “better”.

Meanwhile, Antarctica is having a stellar year for ice. Up almost .9M over normal. But nobody wants to look at that….

Ecco the Dolphin says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:55 am
Can those who voted >5.5 M Km2 explain their choice?
My vote this time was 4.1, but let’s say I wanted to make WUWT look out of phase with the ice and I could do that by making a high estimate. If that high category was >7.5 I think you would find a few votes there also. Thus, rather than looking for your answer in “melting trend” reasons I suggest you look to the psychological mind-set of certain folks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REP, Nice map. Equal Area, too. Cool.

Still predicting 4.5*10^6 km^2.
As often happens, differences in the assorted Arctic sea ice products are showing up. NSIDC, used for the ARCUS forecast, is 15% concentration for extent. As shown, they’ve been tracking 2012 under the current record low year of the satellite record, 2007. Looks terrifying, doesn’t it?
But IARC-JAXA (see “all years” version here), also 15%, shows 2012 has been tracking above 2007, barely, for about three weeks now.
As usual when this happens, the “blame” falls to different satellite sensors used, different processing algorithms (is this spot meltwater or open water?), etc.
But why does it seem NSIDC keeps showing up on the low end? Has it ever been discussed here that NSIDC was showing high compared to others?

@RACookPE1978 Hmm. Interesting point. Of course, the cooling effect from evaporation is eventually canceled by the condensation effect when that same water precipitates, so from a global perspective the net should be zero. The evaporative cooling and condensing warming may occur in different locations, causing regional temperature differences, though.
Solar radiation gains, however, are not canceled, so the system as a whole gains energy from reduced ice cover over water.

Kirschbaum is German for Cherrytree. Picked enough for a big pie yet, Neven?
LOL

It’s finally in runaway mode. 😉 Now let’s look at the the IPCCs early 1970s graph which showed low sea ice extent if I remember rightly.
It’s actually much worse than we thought.

‘It will, without doubt, have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice, has been during the last two years greatly abated. This affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened, and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them, not only interesting to the advancement of science, but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.’
20th November, 1817
Minutes of Council, Volume 8. pp.149-153, Royal Society, London. 20th November, 1817.
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
http://climaterealists.com/attachments/database/Royal%20Society%20Letter.pdf

It’s even worse than that!

Historic Variation in Arctic Ice – Tony B
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/

How certain are Warmists that this isn’t just natural climate variation. The satellite record began in 1979.

Rod Everson says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:48 am
Just a suggestion for a site improvement, Anthony. Could you put a map of the Arctic on the Sea Ice Page that indicates the various seas that make up the Arctic Ocean?
[REPLY: I find this one helpful, myself. -REP]

Thanks for that map, REP! Very helpful indeed!

Given the animal actions of the Midwest and western states along with the premature widening of the polar Jet, I would guess the arctic is about to get real cold and the melting will stop much sooner than the norm.
Just yesterday we had the first cold front of the season which is a full 6 weeks early from the average in Wyoming. If the polar jet is getting up enough speed and width to push the heat bubble across the US things are already changing… and very early to boot..
will wait and watch along with everyone else..

kadaka (KD Knoebel): It;s the difference between area actually covered by ice (sea ice area) and the area where there is significant ice (sort of drawing a line around the ice pack. If the ice is broken up significantly the extent is much greater than the area, but in that case it is much more vulnerable to melting. This very day, the ratio of the area to the extent has hit a new low, which means you can expect both to nose dive soon

Here’s a very nifty interactive map with lots of detail.

Your next poll needs an optional response “I have no qualifications to make an estimate, but I want to see the results.” It might be interesting to see how many people like me are following you guys. (Yes, I know you can get to the results without picking, as I did, but it would be an interesting data point to see how many do.)

Whatever happened with NSIDC saying they were going to change their normals period to run a full 30 years instead of the 21 years they do now? It seems like many months ago that they were saying they were trying to find the right time to make the switch…

RCS says:
August 4, 2012 at 8:36 am
Interestingly, the DMI temperature profile has been consistently below normal during the current melt season while there has been a rapid loss of ice.

When will you learn that facts don’t matter. It is about belief in warm air temperature caused by co2 causing the low ice extent. Never mind natural climate variation, soot, low extent many times befor etc.

The difference may be in the resolution. The whole Arctic map is derived from microwave data with a resolution of about 50km. The Canadian coast map is based on higher resolution data and shows more detail. Smaller patches which would not be resolved by the former would be identified by the latter. NSIDC had a discussion Icelight on this.
http://nsidc.org/icelights/2012/07/18/do-satellites-sometimes-see-ice-where-there-isnt-any/
PS I voted 4.0.

Ecco the Dolphin says:
August 4, 2012 at 7:55 am
“To me, seeing that arctic ice concentration appears to be overall visibly worse than 2007, with currently slightly less extent than 2007 and relatively large areas quickly melting in the last few days, it seems it wouldn’t be a pessimistic estimate to vote around 4.0-4.2 M Km2 as a minimum for this year.”
====================================================================
I agree. To me, 2007 looks great compared to the condition of the ice this year, and we still have at least 6 more weeks to go in the melt season. I’m guessing way under 4 million sq/km., and 2012 will easily shatter the 2007 record.

Well said Mike H:
“Few people on this site seem alarmed about the disintegration of Arctic sea ice, and the implications for future northern hemisphere climate. I’m not suggesting we all sell our cars and move into caves, but surely it’s not too much to acknowledge that something very serious is going on, and it might be time to discuss it seriously rather than denying its importance.”
The reason for this is that the sceptic/denial community is only interested in finding reasons to undermine the science. So even credible observations showing dramatic decline in arctic sea ice area and volume “must” have an alternative explanation to the mainstrean view – which is that it is largely caused by warming seas and atmosphere and that is largely due to human induced global warming.
The melt event in Greenland recently was dismissed by some as due to soot from Asia (hilarious) – until it was proven to be due to warm air sweeping over the landmass.
Many of the comments in this thread now talk of ocean currents being responsible for the melt in the arctic or that “it has happened before”. Well yes, ocean currents play a part and it has happened before – but not in modern history. There is no reliable evidence that there has been such a decline in recent centuries.
So for example P Wilson says
“However, in 1932, some 10 years later, a Rusian ice breaker was found floating in free waters, some 300 miles from the North pole -a feat that would be physically impossible today.”
Really ? In September 2007 the melt on the Siberian side was not far off that
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/deetest/deetmp.17565.png
If the melt trend continues – and only time will tell – it will be very interesting to see what the sceptic/denial community says when it is largely all gone – and on current trends thats sometime in September 2020 to 2060.
Maybe by then a different branch of science will be the favoured punchbag ?

Just something picked up on the Internet somewhere,sometime.
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 ( Royal Society Archives).

Smokey says
“It is even possible that the Antarctic had little ice several centuries ago. Now, of course, the Antarctic [which holds more than 90% of the planet’s ice] is steadily gaining ice.”
Blimey. That is a major scientific discovery.
So an icecap several kilometers deep formed in a few centuries – in one of the driest places on Earth – and those ice core drills must be all wrong.
I blame Superman.

Mike H: “Few people on this site seem alarmed about the disintegration of Arctic sea ice, and the implications for future northern hemisphere climate.”
And you don’t seem to be alarmed that the Antarctic ice sheet is currently expanding and what the coming Ice Age will due to Argentina.
The problem here is that both need to be taken in context of cyclical variations throughout a day, year, and at longer terms. But what we lack at this point is enough knowledge of the relevant climate systems to state “We are DOOMED!”. There are simply no accurate and empirically verified models out there to even allow such outside having picnics with the Jonestown folks.
For example, in James Abbot’s response to you he stated: “Really ? In September 2007 the melt on the Siberian side was not far off that”
Which simply begs you to take the emotional hysteria pill and drink the Koolaid. But the limit of what we can say properly, and the factual limit that Abbot stayed within, is that 2007 is more or less the same as 1932. Otherwise known as: Been there, done that.

The Greenland melt at summit heights turns out to be not that unusual (ever second year versus every 150 years).
The Danish DMI posted this on July 28th (and they sound a little p’oed at NASA for the hype).
Google English Translation and historical data for the summit.
http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&u=http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/t_vejr_pa_gr_nlands_top

Mark Serreze’s colorful 2008 comment increasingly seems prescient: because of positive feedbacks, Arctic sea ice is in a death spiral. This year looks very likely to set new record lows for extent, area and volume consistent with a steepening downward trend.

From James Abbott on August 4, 2012 at 4:14 pm:

The reason for this is that the sceptic/denial community is only interested in finding reasons to undermine the science.

Wow, another blanket insult against the entire grouping, and you just couldn’t stop yourself from slipping in the “d-word” despite the Site Policy.

So even credible observations showing dramatic decline in arctic sea ice area and volume “must” have an alternative explanation to the mainstrean view – which is that it is largely caused by warming seas and atmosphere and that is largely due to human induced global warming.

Gee, with regards to the 2007 record Arctic sea ice low, NASA said it was due to the wind:

“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,” said Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader of the study. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

Wow, NASA is part of the “sceptic/denial community” embracing alternative explanations for a dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice. Someone better tell Hansen that NASA-GISS is no longer authoritative outside of the “sceptic/denial community”, maybe the shame will force him to retire.

Smokey says:
August 4, 2012 at 5:17 pm
” the amount of Arctic ice is a function of natural variability.”
You talk a lot about this natural variability. Some peer reviewed evidence for the drivers you regard as causing this variability would not come amiss.

James Abbot: “…more reliable than vague ancient maps …”
Based on ships logs.
“Researchers delved into shipping charts going back to the 1950s, which noted sea ice conditions. ”
Based on ships logs.
“However, taken together these records indicate that the current decline is unprecedented in the last several hundred years.”
So… like with the Greenland melt ‘unprecedented’ means ‘precedented cycle longer than 150 years’. There’s an apropos bit here: http://xkcd.com/605/

Entropic man says:
August 4, 2012 at 4:41 pm
It is unfortunate that the sea ice graph on wattsupwitthat includes the 1979-2000 average values, but not the +/- 2 SD boundaries. They help you judge how significant the changes in ice area actually are.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
With Friday’s value some 4 SD below the 1979 to 2000 average, the probability of the null hypothesis that conditions have not changed is less than 1%. (2SD is 5%, 3SD is 1%)
All years since 2007 also show significantly low values.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2012/07/N_stddev_timeseries2.png
_____________________
Do you have a real point; something meaningful to say?
In other words, SO WHAT?

“Mike H says:
August 4, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Few people on this site seem alarmed about the disintegration of Arctic sea ice, and the implications for future northern hemisphere climate. I’m not suggesting we all sell our cars and move into caves, but surely it’s not too much to acknowledge that something very serious is going on, and it might be time to discuss it seriously rather than denying its importance.”
Fascinating how we still have the odd “alarmist” heading here to warn us that things are really bad and that we should be doing something instead of nothing. Oh, and to take it serious as well. Well maybe Mike H. could supply us with the facts or is there something that he knows that we don’t. I am all ears, as it is still fascinating to witness the endless alarmism being waived but no specifics offered to support it. Sad really how others who have been waiving the warmist flag are looking to an honourable discharge.

The really big picture

Entropic man says: August 4, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Jimbo says:
August 4, 2012 at 3:26 pm
RCS says:
August 4, 2012 at 8:36 am
When will you learn that facts don’t matter. It is about belief …
I cannot believe someone in a science discussion actually wrote that!
What I can’t decide is if you’re serious, or just trolling. Did you in fact read what the man said? He was engaging in snark, poking fun at your side and what they regularly say. In other words, he was giving your side of things. So, do you really believe what you said, or are you just trolling? I would hope for the latter. Trolls are at least a time honored part of internet discourse.

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 4, 2012 at 5:19 pm
“Gee, with regards to the 2007 record Arctic sea ice low, NASA said it was due to the wind:”
————————————————————————————————————–
I mentioned that to a warmist back in 2007, and they said the wind patterns that summer were caused by man-made global warming.

Why does Sea Ice News always just cover the Arctic and not also the Antarctic (where ice mass is up)?

DWR54-
“Furthermore, as I’m sure most people are aware, Zwally was not attempting to give a scientific forecast.”
The problem is, a dedicated scientist would never have made such an off-the-cuff statement to anyone, estimating a “trend” based on a singular event. This is, however, what an activist/alarmist might do.
To show how ridiculous this is, the next year the ice recovered. He could have said, with equal “validity”, that if THAT trend continued, we could be entering a new ice age.
He’s being held to his off-the-cuff remark to show how wrong it was to use his creds as a scientist to make an unscientific, alarmist and absurd statement as if that statement had any value. He has earned our derision for being more activist than scientist.
We hope to make him regret that enough that he won’t do that again. Hyperbole does not help his cause, or the discussion. I would hope YOU wouldn’t want him to say such nonsense again.
But there’s also this observation..if this is the way he thinks, is his science trustworthy, or does it need thorough…auditing? I would propose that the more activist a scientist is, the more important transparency and vetting is to evaluate the work of that scientist.

From James Abbott on August 4, 2012 at 5:51 pm:

I wonder if a fool can understand that the factors that influence the annual ice melt will include wind, currents, ocean and air temperature and other factors and that the influence of each can be measured and that when this has been done it is found that most of the melt cannot be explained by natural variation:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326.

Couldn’t you have managed the direct link?
Sources of multi-decadal variability in Arctic sea ice extent
From the Abstract:

The observed dramatic decrease in September sea ice extent (SIE) has been widely discussed in the scientific literature. Though there is qualitative agreement between observations and ensemble members of the Third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3), it is concerning that the observed trend (1979–2010) is not captured by any ensemble member.

Translation: The models have fallen and they can’t get up.

The potential sources of this discrepancy include: observational uncertainty, physical model limitations and vigorous natural climate variability. The latter has received less attention and is difficult to assess using the relatively short observational sea ice records.

Translation: We don’t know enough about natural variability to work it into the models.

In this study multi-centennial pre-industrial control simulations with five CMIP3 climate models are used to investigate the role that the Arctic oscillation (AO), the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) play in decadal sea ice variability. Further, we use the models to determine the impact that these sources of variability have had on SIE over both the era of satellite observation (1979–2010) and an extended observational record (1953–2010).

Translation: So we simulated natural variability with models.

There is little evidence of a relationship between the AO and SIE in the models. However, we find that both the AMO and AMOC indices are significantly correlated with SIE in all the models considered. Using sensitivity statistics derived from the models, assuming a linear relationship, we attribute 0.5–3.1%/decade of the 10.1%/decade decline in September SIE (1979–2010) to AMO driven variability.

Translation: Our simulated natural variability accounts for this much of the previously totally unaccounted-for model failure.
Once again, it’s models upon models, models all the way down.
Thanks for pointing out how easily real natural variability may be quantified by modeling simulated natural variability. At this rate, climate research soon won’t have to deal with the real world at all to understand reality, only models will be needed to tell us what reality really is.

lol @ 16 people. AGW trolls I tell ya :).

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 4, 2012 at 6:18 pm
“You’re saying the “sceptic/denial community” doesn’t have the information to authoritatively state the Arctic sea ice conditions pre-satellite,”
Hey [snip] how about reading the IPCC report… with the section found here…
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/screenhunter_1565-jun-02-18-32.jpg?w=640
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
figure 7.20
Straight from the churches mouth you [snip]. 1979 was a way high year and dropping below that and even the current drops are completely normal…. according to the IPCC….

i have anecdotal evidence that the coal shipping season of the west spitzbergen ports increased from 3 to 7 months in 1919….fairly drastic reduction in ice…is it possible to get the records from what is now called Svalbard?….might be interesting

Seems to be a few worryers and trolls out and about when it comes to the state of ice around Santas stables and work shop. Being but a lowly engineer and not a climatologist, it is my custom to stand back, observe and connect the dots. I see first some decades of rampant solar cycles and a warming phase that followed a cooling phase. This warming pumped some heat into the oceans, the southern ocean deals with this heat easily as Antarctica is an island and has a circular current that mixes and dilutes the warm water in short order.
The arctic is a different case and the warm waters in the northern hemisphere have no particular place to go and the currents and time makes the warm meander northward. Looking at the currant ocean anomalies, the only above average waters are surrounding the Arctic. Thus we have a slow thermostat. The melting of ice and the coming northern winter should deal with any warmth that is left in this anomaly.
That the sun has gone on holidays and the world has switched to a cooling phase, I do not like the chances of any time soon having an ice free Arctic.

P Wilson says

However, in 1932, some 10 years later, a Rusian ice breaker was found floating in free waters, some 300 miles from the North pole -a feat that would be physically impossible today.

It would be nice if you could at least give a reference to your assertion that in 1932 a Russian ice breaker was found floating in free waters, some 300 miles from the North Pole.
Also, the reference you give to the 1922 sea ice conditions report :

The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 deg 20 min in ice-free water. This is the farthest north ever reached with modern oceanographic apparatus.

Now compare this to the 82 deg North that one could venture north of Svalbard in ice-free conditions, all through WINTER of 2011… Something that has not ever been recorded previously ?
When do WUWT readers realize that not Anthony’s paper on US land temperature records may be “unprecedented” but also developments in the Arctic ?
Does it all need to melt away first ?

Rob Dekker: “Now compare this to the 82 deg North that one could venture north of Svalbard in ice-free conditions, all through WINTER of 2011… ”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2011/02/arctic-oscillation-brings-record-low-january-extent-unusual-mid-latitude-weather/
The NSIDC [snip – “disagrees” would be better]. You better write them a sternly worded letter.
[Please be more careful in your wording ~jove, mod]

@Gneiss
August 1932 Arctic ice state:
http://brunnur.vedur.is/pub/trausti/Iskort/Pdf/1932/1932_08.pdf
So yeah, nowhere near as bad as 2007 as some claim.

Arctic Sea Ice loss 70% Man Made
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/loss-of-arctic-sea-ice-70-man-made.html

Robin Kool says:
August 5, 2012 at 2:45 am
“I understand that the most important factor in Arctic Ice melt is the wind breaking it up and pushing it into the North Atlantic. That ‘s exactly what has happened most of this spring and summer – and even last winter.
Just look at WUWT’s fantastic Sea Ice Reference Page’s section on Arctic Sea Ice Speed&Drift.”
I think Ice-Breakers are a significant factor in breaking up sea ice. How many ice-breakers and trips now versus 30 years ago?

2012………. And the Arctic Ice is still there.
So much for the catastrophism of the AGW crowd…. So what’s the next date? 2030 now?
I suppose they’ll try and say that it’s not really ice, it’s gone rotten or something…. It’s ice Jim, but not as we know it…. sigh.

What are you LOLling, those people are in danger. They should get out of there.

“Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 5, 2012 at 6:21 am
What are you LOLling, those people are in danger. They should get out of there.
”
Neven. Those publicity hounds are not in any danger.Well,yeah.Maybe in danger of having their scam exposed.Arctic Crossing.What a hoot. But then they are using the eco-cultists logic….one record high temp anywhere,AGW…..one open lead in the ice,ice free Arctic Ocean.One would laugh if your religion wasn’t so pathetic.

When will the next ice age occur? When will Chicago be covered by an ice sheet? It will happen.

What matters is not that GLOBAL ice has hardly changed since 2000 but local ice. 😉 Unless of course that Arctic local ice picks up then its off to……………………….another local area. Even one receding glacier will do quite nicely. Next, ignore the tiny, local Antarctic which holds just a fraction of the world’s ice and absolutely ignore all advancing glaciers and soot, then blame a gas called co2.

Jimbo writes,
“What matters is not that GLOBAL ice has hardly changed since 2000 but local ice.”
Not true even with your cherry pick, the GLOBAL ice area anomaly has declined significantly over the whole satellite record, and more steeply (about 70,000 square kilometers per year) since 2000.
But I’ve never heard any polar scientist declare that Arctic ice did not matter, it’s GLOBAL ice that’s important. Have you?

Antarctic area about 14,000,000km², Greenland Area about 2,000,000 km². Sea ice area is about 19,000,000 km² on average, so globally about 35,000,000 km² of ice coverage. And at the moment sea ice is about 1,000,000 km² down.
So we are talking about <3% reduction in ice cap area in this near low point of the 30 years that we have data for. Or less than 0.2% of earth's surface. All in areas that are get minimal sunlight compared to the rest of the world anyway.
Big hairy deal.
Clouds cause massively more global albedo variation.

My the Warmists get all excited when the ice goes down but we don’t hear a peep from them when it all freezes up again. The influence on the Arctic is far more from weather patterns. They appear to come under the influence of long term ocean cycles, what influences them is far more complicated than mere CO2. Time will prove this and when it does we won’t hear a peep from Neven at al because they will have moved on to the next alarmist fad.

” noiv says:
August 4, 2012 at 9:36 pm
Fred asks:
Why does Sea Ice News always just cover the Arctic and not also the Antarctic?
Yeah, that’s funny. Especially because in Summer there is even less sea ice in Antarctic.”
WTF? Isn’t this a comparison to historic norms and not absolute values at each pole? Global warming is not changing the shape of the planet in the real world, or our orientation to the sun. Is it doing that in yours? I guess it must be, as that is the only way your comment makes sense.

beesaman writes,
“My the Warmists get all excited when the ice goes down but we don’t hear a peep from them when it all freezes up again.”
That is called winter. Scientists watch winter closely, I hear a lot about that. Where are you listening, that no peeps get through? One thing they notice is that winter ice has been declining too, if you compare it with other winters instead of with summer.
“The influence on the Arctic is far more from weather patterns.”
Long-term trends are a definition of climate change, not weather.
“They appear to come under the influence of long term ocean cycles,”
Wait, long term ocean cycles are not weather either, which is it? And which long-term cycles do you mean? Conditions not seen in several thousand years imply a cycle far longer that the AMO, which is not cyclical anyway; and yet far shorter than orbital, which is. So what *is* your cycle? What’s the evidence, what’s the period, what drives it?
“Time will prove this and when it does we won’t hear a peep from Neven at al because they will have moved on to the next alarmist fad.”
Let me offer the opposite prediction that if summer sea ice stabilizes back at 1980s levels, you will hear a tremendous amount about that from scientists, and from people (like Neven) who pay close attention to the research.

It’s worse than we thought!

Dr. James Hansen
“In fact, it’s now driven our climate outside the range that has existed the last 10,000 years, this geologic epoch that we call the Holocene”.

Does he mean the ice free central Arctic Ocean during some summers in the Holocene? Is he referring to the mega droughts during the last few thousand years? Is he referring to the Holocene Climate Optimum which was warmer than today. Did Eric the Red’s group farm in Greenland or not??? Sheesh!
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/08/priceless-in-new-pbs-interview-hansen.html
H/T Tom Nelson

Further to my last comment I have to add about Hansen’s claims:
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (Sagan)

Gneiss says:
August 5, 2012 at 9:36 am
“The most striking thing about current Arctic melting is not just that it’s moving toward a state not seen in several thousand years. It’s that the change is happening so fast, with no external drivers except us.”
==============
Care to back-up this statement with data ?

Jimbo writes,
“Did Eric the Red’s group farm in Greenland or not???”
They raised sheep, and sheep are raised near the same area today. It was ice-free when Eric landed, it is ice-free now, and it has been ice-free in all the centuries between, though sometimes rather colder. One advantage that Eric had was that no wood had been cut, and no fields ever sheep-grazed, when he landed. Eric’s descendents did not have those advantages, which made them more vulnerable when the weather got worse.
One thing that Eric’s experience does *not* prove is that the southern coast of Greenland was any warmer a thousand years ago than today. It may have been about the same, or quite possibly cooler. A toasty 61 F near Eric’s farm tomorrow, sheep don’t mind that.

Greatly appreciated. Posting about Arctic sea ice now, when by all measures we are running at or below record levels, isn’t susceptible of accusations of deceit and denial. The numbers are there. Those who predicted sea ice recovery are clearly wrong. The next step for them is to claim fraud for all the different datasets. Or to admit they were wrong and revisit their assumptions…
This year’s melt was particularly interesting because during the period with maximum insolation (from about mid-May until now), ice cover and area were constantly tracking at or near record low levels. This has important implications for albedo and ocean heat content. With El Niño building and increasing solar radiation, we’re looking at 2013 potentially leaving 2010/2005/1998 in the dust for global warmest year on record.
Looking forward to more updates in September, thanks!

u.k. (u.s.) writes,
“Care to back-up this statement with data ?”
Here is one place your could start. You have probably been told how wrong it is, but have you ever tried to read it yourself?
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html

First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.
Perhaps they are only correcting the extra melt they have been throwing in over the last few weeks.
Data here – File with ending of “…nrt.csv” means “near real-time”.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/

1.) Heat melts ice.
2.) The Arctic has warmed significantly over the last 34 years: 0.53 degrees C per decade, or around 1.8 degrees C according to UAH.
See here: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Even if you do not believe that humans have caused that warming, surely you must accept that the upward trend in temperatures must be having some causal impact on the downward trend of Arctic sea ice.
To say that it is wind or ocean currents implies that there has been some trend in wind or ocean currents. While ice is certainly affected by such things and particular years, such as 2007, will have wind patterns that are more conducive to a reduction in ice, the trend is the important thing to consider here.
What could be causing the decline in sea ice on decadal time scales?
A decadal trend.
A decadal temperature trend.
Heat melts ice.

Bruce Cobb writes,
“Interesting, so then your cherry-picked facts and emotion-based fears for your imagined future for your kids are in fact genuine. I was wrong, my apologies.”
Another mind-reading fail. You can’t rise to the challenge of arguing with something I actually said?
On the thread’s topic of sea ice, I’ve mentioned satellite data, submarine data, historical data, proxy data, time scales from seasons to thousands of years, winters as well summers, Antarctic as well as Arctic, effects on land ice and other latitudes, differences among modelers, the perspective of field scientists, and both history and current weather in south Greenland. All of that I could back up with citations to recent, refereed science articles. To wave it off as “cherry picking” simply demonstrates that you have no concept of what the term means.
Your two posts on this thread had zero content, and were silly even as insults.

Gneiss says:
August 5, 2012 at 1:56 pm
u.k. (u.s.) writes,
“Care to back-up this statement with data ?”
Here is one place your could start. You have probably been told how wrong it is, but have you ever tried to read it yourself?
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html
==============
I prefer non-fiction.

Smokey writes,
“We “know” nothing of the sort. There is observational evidence that the Arctic was ice-free thousands of years ago.”
Read your own link, Smokey, that’s not what it says. I can help:
“The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago. We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today,” says Astrid Lyså, a geologist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Norway.”
So, 6 or 7 thousand years ago … remember that you were objecting to my comment about *your own claim* regarding the last 2 thousand years. You had to move the goalposts back 4 or 5 thousand years to save that one! And even so, Dr. Lyså specifically states they do not know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, only that there was more open water north of Greenland at that time.
“This geologic evidence destroys Gneiss’s hopelessly Gnaive belief system.”
Cute, but wrong.

Jim writes,
“2000 years? That’s not very long. The earth has been here billions of years. It’s been way hotter, and way colder before. You know what? The earth has survived each time. I, for one, am not concerned over a degree temperature rise. It’s way to frigging cold here in Minnesota 9 months of the year anyways.”
This thread is surreal. Are thinking skeptics all at the beach today?
True, the planet has survived through billions of years, asteroid impacts and all. There have been a handful of Great Extinctions along the way, one of them happening right now, but the Earth itself is still here. And will be long after we’re gone.
Here’s a better answer than I gave, addressing one part of the “So what?” question about Arctic ice. It’s a presentation (J Francis & S Vavrus) made earlier this year at the American Meteorological Society.

Smokey says:
August 5, 2012 at 3:43 pm
” There is observational evidence that the Arctic has routinely been ice-free thousands of years ago”
———————
This is from your link.
“However, the scientists are very careful about drawing parallels with the present-day trend in the Arctic Ocean where the cover of sea ice seems to be decreasing.
“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,”
That was at the peak of the Milankovich warming for this cycle.
We are now in the cooling phase of this interglacial. Based on your earlier graph linking temperature, CO2 and Milankovich cycles we should be seeing decreasing CO2, a temperature decline of 0.3C per milennium, and increasing ice cover.

Smokey wrote,
““Horseapples. The planet has been considerably warmer over the past 2,000 years.”
When I challenged Smokey’s claim he cited a paper that said the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland had less ice 6,000 or 7,000> years ago. But when I pointed out this was 4,000 or 5,000 years earlier than the period he or I had written about, Smokey wrote
“And it is not my “6 or 7 thousand years ago”. That is the peer reviewed paper’s number. But your cherry-picked “last 2 thousadn years” was just to avoid the scientific evidence showing that the planet was even warmer before that point in time.”
Very confusing!. But false besides. I had mentioned 2,000 in the first place because I was citing a paper by Spielhagen that said 2,000, no cherry picking involved. It’s what they found.
Have there been warmer and colder eras farther back in time? Of course there have, no scientist anywhere has ever denied that, so far as I know. Can conditions unseen for at least 2,000 years still be called exceptional, by human standards if not those of real gneiss? I think so. And all the more notable because global systems today are changing so fast.
+++++
Bill Illis wrote,
“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.
Perhaps they are only correcting the extra melt they have been throwing in over the last few weeks.”
If you have been watching the ice changes that closely, perhaps you can think of another hypothesis that’s more reality-based? Other people have, the discussion is all over the internets. Although oddly, nowhere on this Sea Ice News thread.

Smokey says:
August 5, 2012 at 3:06 pm
The planet has been considerably warmer over the past 2,000 years, and warmer still over the Holocene — well before CO2 began to rise.

I like the bit where you conflate a tiny bit of the planet for the whole planet.

“Interestingly, the DMI temperature profile has been consistently below normal during the current melt season while there has been a rapid loss of ice.”
DMI is a poor metric to match surface temps and melt, as explained by people working there quite a few tmes at this and other blogs. I emailed them two years ago on the matter and got this reply:

1) The surface in the +80N area is more or less fully snow and ice covered all year, so the temperature is strongly controlled by the melting temperature of the surface. I.e. the +80N temperature is bound to be very close to the melt point of the surface snow and ice (273K) and the variability is therefore very small, less than 0.5K. I am sure you will find a much clearer warming trend in the same analysis applied to the winter period. The winter period is more crucial for the state of the Arctic sea ice, as this is the period where the ice is produced and the colder the winter the thicker and more robust the sea ice will become.

(Indeed, there is a clear warming trend in the cooler part of the year over the decades.)

Kevin MacDonald says:
August 5, 2012 at 5:10 pm
“I like the bit where you conflate a tiny bit of the planet for the whole planet.”
=====================
OK, now follow the cash outflows, and tell me about “tiny bits”.

“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.”
Bill, IIRC, the NSIDC figures for the most recent few days are estimates that usually are amended a few days later after more data comes in. IOW, the most recent few days have huge error bars.
Smokey provided a graph upthread showing a changing tail over three days (but he attributed it to deliberate deception rather than improved estimates).

In the context of declining sea ice, “variability” refers to short-term effects, while “trend” refers to long-term effects. This is also how the terminology is applied in statistics, BTW. The WMO distinguishes climate variability and change this way:

4. What is the difference between climate change and climate variability?
Climate variability is the term used to describe a range of weather conditions that, averaged together, describe the “climate” of a region. In some parts of the world, or in any region for certain time periods or parts of the year, this variability can be weak, i.e. there is not much difference in the conditions within that time period. However, in other places or time periods, conditions can swing across a large range, from freezing to very warm, or from very wet to very dry, thereby exhibiting strong variability…
For the scientific community to recognize a change in climate, a shift has to occur, and persist for quite a long time.

If you want to posit some natural mechanism/s that accounts for the decline in sea ice of the last 30 – 50 years, then you need to be a lot more specific than pointing out that climates changes. Assertions so obvious might seem like evidence, but it’s just rhetoric. (As is Lindzen’s utterly fatuous implication that the climate research community thinks that Earth’s climate has been stable until the holocene. Puhhleease!)
One paper has already been offered in this thread, attributing less than 5% of recent sea ice decline to natural causes. So, what are the natural causes of the 30% reduction in sea ice cover in the Arctic over the last ~30 years? Could you cite a detailed analysis (and not some graph of temps in central England/Greenland/Antarctica/Wazawoo)?
I didn’t think so. 🙂

From barry on August 5, 2012 at 6:28 pm:

My prediction for this year’s September average is 4.25 million sq/km.
First time I’ve predicted a record-breaker, and I notice that at the moment it is the most favoured estimate on the poll here.

Vote leader is 4.5*10^6 km^2, been that way for over an hour now, I checked right after your post showed up.
After last month’s voting, ARCUS rounded the WUWT submission to the hundred-thousand mark (from 4.55*10^6 to 4.6*10^6) so splitting it to the five-ten-thousands mark doesn’t work, go with the vote leader.
Just checked again, 4.5*10^6 km^2 still leading.
Your observation skills are hereby noted.

Mike H says:
August 4, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Few people on this site seem alarmed about the disintegration of Arctic sea ice, and the implications for future northern hemisphere climate….
_______________________
MSM alarmist hype is for selling newspapers because Blood sells.
So why are we not alarmed by all the hype?
How about this peer reviewed paper.
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, USA et al
Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present.
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-2/public-review-draft/sap1-2-prd-all.pdf
Or this one
Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception
Ulrich C. Müller & Jörg Pross, Institute of Geosciences, University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….”
or this Graph
Or this article at WUWT by a Geologist.

The End Holocene, or How to Make Out Like a ‘Madoff’ Climate Change Insurer
…We live today possibly near the end of the most recent interglacial, the Holocene, or the 11,715 years since we melted our way out of the last glacial, the Wisconsin Ice Age, the interglacial in which all of human civilization has occurred. Five of the last six interglacials have each lasted about half a precession cycle. The precession cycle itself varies between 19,000 and 23,000 years and we are close to the 23kyr point now, making 11,715 years about half……..which is why this discussion has relevance…

It is a long article with a lot of information.
Other info:
600 million year graph of global temperatures – various proxies showing we are at near glacial temps.
Quick cooling to glaciation
Then there is the shorter climate cycles.
The Physical Evidence of Earth’s Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle
Possible solar origin of the 1,470-year glacial climate cycle demonstrated in a coupled model
And again we maybe headed into a bond event (COLD) shortly.
From the historical perspective:
1/2 bond events
Of Time and Temperatures
Given a bit of warming or heading into a major cooling cycle possibly leading to “The big one” I will take melting in the Arctic thank you very much. Growing up during the Ice Age scare with a terminal moraine in the backyard (plus copperheads) makes you very aware glaciation is real.

The driftwood proxies show that sea ice is still well within its range of natural variability, and natural variability extends further than barry would like to admit; see here for more details of Funder’s analysis:

For the last 10,000 years, summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been far from constant. For several thousand years, there was much less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean – probably less than half of current amounts.

(This was reported at WUWT at the time)

Spence_UK said :

For the last 10,000 years, summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been far from constant. For several thousand years, there was much less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean – probably less than half of current amounts.
(This was reported at WUWT at the time)

Could you please provide a reference (WUWT or otherwise) to the claim that “for several thousand years, there was less sea ice in the Arctic Ocean – probably less than half of current amounts” ?

Gail Combs quotes Müller et al when he writes :

Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261-293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started.

If early greenhouse gas emissions (thousands of years ago) prevented the inception of a new glacial, then what would current greenhouse gas emissions result in ? Eocene / Miocene climate ?
While we are at it, does anyone here on WUWT have any scientific explanation for why glacial periods started at all (during the early Pleistocene) ? Why did the Pliocene/Miocene climate (with much higher temps and much higher sea levels) not persist ?

Bill Illis said :

First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.

That would be a nice break from the 100,000 km^2/day losses we have been seeing over the past couple of weeks.
Still, this short-term stall in ‘extent’ reduction can very easily be caused by the initial divergence of sea ice caused by the cyclone that’s moving over the Arctic as we speak.
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/cyclone-warning.html#tp
Why don’t we just follow these NSIDC numbers you referred to for the next week or so ?
Do you want to place any bets that your “positive number” assertion will sustain ?

From tjfolkerts on August 5, 2012 at 11:46 pm:

Do you see the difference? As long as you are content to say “I don’t know one way or the other” then you indeed have nothing to prove. But you are making a different assertion … that you do know something, which makes you no longer simply a skeptic. Any time you make an assertion that you DO know something, then you need evidence.

Umm… No. “Within the range of natural variability” is the null hypothesis, which is assumed true until proven otherwise. Like toilets are installed in bathrooms or your cat in your house is alive. If you need to find a toilet in an unfamiliar house, you assume it will be in a bathroom and go looking for a bathroom. You don’t say “I don’t know where a toilet is” and check if one is in the kitchen or the den. While you may be inclined to quip “I don’t know if my cat is alive or dead” you still assume it is alive.
So you say “I know the toilet is in the bathroom” or “I know my cat is alive” until you find evidence to the contrary. That’s how a null hypothesis works, it’s what you know to be true until it’s proven to be not true.