I don’t have much time for a detailed post, a number of people want to discuss sea ice, so here is your chance. We also need to update the ARCUS forecast for August, due Monday August 6th. Poll follows:
Sea ice is a tremendous variable, fluctuating for many different reasons – wind, sea circulation patterns etc. However, it is one of the main signifiers for the AGW crowd, and wrongly so.
Since it has only been accurately measures since 1979 via satellite, that is not a fair starting point for finding a long term trend, as you would need several centuries at least to find a meaningful pattern.
to all those who worry about sea ice extent in the Arctic, there is quite a fair amount of observational data pre 1979 which indicates a trend. The arctic warmed, and sea ice vanished rapidly from 1910-1940. As far back as 1922, we have this scenario: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
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.
Although we claim that sea ice extent is lower today than the average since 1979, it is likely (without the exact parameters of satellite data) that arctic sea ice was far less in extent that the last 7 years up until 2012
MattN
August 4, 2012 9:51 am
Meanwhile, Antarctica is having a stellar year for ice. Up almost .9M over normal. But nobody wants to look at that….
beesaman
August 4, 2012 10:23 am
Shhh, don’t mention the Antarctic, that’s not one of the Warmist’s cherries and besides we all ‘know” that global warming is a local thing…
RACookPE1978
Editor
August 4, 2012 10:30 am
It is worthwhile remembering that, during the period of minimum ice extent at the equinox of mid-September, removal of the ice coverage of the Arctic ocean water REDUCES water temperatures (evaporation losses from the exposed water surface exceed solar radiation absorbtion of the ice-free compared to ice-covered water) …..
On land, the opposite occurs (ice-covered land reflects more energy than open/pasture land/tundra), but there is NO land-covered ice left to melt in today’s climate and geography. The ONLY ice left to melt in today’s world is a small near-circular cap between 80 north and the pole at 90 north.
Therefore, the more ice melts, the lower the air temperatures in the Arctic above 80 north. So what’s to worry? The next ice age from Arctic ice feedback?
nc
August 4, 2012 10:44 am
In the TV reality show Deadiest Catch about catching crab in the Bering sea, there have been a few comments made about so called global warming considering the harshest conditions in years. Not in support of warming.
John F. Hultquist
August 4, 2012 11:01 am
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?
This is a bit off topic but maybe not. It may be a bit on the political WIth the Ice “thinning” (for the moment), Alberta will have a new option for shipping their land locked oil. Obama has blocked the Keystone pipeline to the south. BC has said they have a lot of conditions to be meto for it to go west and the BC natives communities opposition is reportedly funded by many US and foreign foundations But as I said in my post several months ago, that still leaves train transportation like Warren Buffet is doing out of the Nebraska in the absence of a pipeline (wonder which side he is funding); pipelines to the east coast to Toronto, Montreal and the Irving oil refineries in the Maritimes; and the Northern Route through the Arctic into the Pacific. The Mackenzie Valley Gas Pipeline has finally been approved after decades of opposition. With the low price of gas these days, some northerners are suggesting the flow should be oil north and through the Arctic to Asia rather than gas from the Arctic to the US. http://www.cbc.ca/thehouse/news-promo/2012/08/04/northwest-territories-offers-alternative-to-northern-gateway-pipeline/
Maybe this is a straw man, but that is what will happen if the flow south or west continues to be blocked. I wonder how Suzuki and Tides will think of successfully diverting flow from BC and into the Arctic? (Law of unintended consequences But then if they say the arctic will be ice free, then it should be quite safe, shouldn’t it? /sarc off
By the way, for those who understand inertia and complexity of systems as most here do, the temperatures today and ice extent today are highly misleading since they may reflect things that happened years ago. I fully expect it to be nasty cold in the near future so Alberta oil is a lot more likely to flow east than north if south and west are blocked … and after a few hundred people die in the upcoming cold, I am guessing a route south will be quickly opened for both oil and gas … and due to the time it takes to build projects, a lot of politicians and eco-trusts will be running for cover.
Nevertheless, if arctic ice trends down, it will bring more pressure to ship north. But personally, I expect a big uptick in ice extent over the next few years based on what I have read on these pages and others. The cycle continues.
@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.
Shevva
August 4, 2012 11:20 am
Warning if you believe that the Arctic will be ice free in the next few years like the models say do not read past the following point or you will be forced to think outside what you believe, this is the point: The Antarctic.
Brian H
August 4, 2012 11:48 am
Kirschbaum is German for Cherrytree. Picked enough for a big pie yet, Neven?
LOL
chris y
August 4, 2012 11:49 am
I voted in agreement with expert Zwally’s ice-free Arctic this year. I have learned from IPCC glitterati that this is the proper response.
After all, Zwally is the go-to expert on Arctic sea ice, I am paying a portion of his salary to get the science right, and his forecast for an ice-free 2012 Arctic sea ice is right on schedule.
If Zwally turns out to be wrong, he should be fired for incompetence and wasting everybody’s money on useless climate models.
The big picture. Hardly any change in global ice. 23.5 MM km in 2000, about the same now.
DWR54
August 4, 2012 12:18 pm
chris y,
Zwally’s comment was not based on climate models. It was based, as he mentioned to the journalist who reported his comments at the time, on extrapolation of the rate of Arctic sea ice melt observed during 2007.
Furthermore, as I’m sure most people are aware, Zwally was not attempting to give a scientific forecast. He was making an off-the-cuff observation to a reporter from National Geographic.
So Zwally wasn’t making a ‘right or wrong’ forecast, and he certainly wasn’t reporting a scientific, model-based projection of future Arctic sea ice melt. In the same article, from memory, the journalist in question even made reference to a paper that did give an *actual* projection for summer Arctic sea being mostly absent.
It think it was around 2030?
Jimbo
August 4, 2012 12:33 pm
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
How certain are Warmists that this isn’t just natural climate variation. The satellite record began in 1979.
Dinostratus
August 4, 2012 12:42 pm
Yep. Trending right between 2007 and 2011. Just as the gradient from 10e6sqkm to 8e6sqkm said it would.
CRS, Dr.P.H.
August 4, 2012 12:56 pm
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!
Bill Illis
August 4, 2012 1:12 pm
NSIDC’s data is really diverging (down) from Jaxa’s trends over the last several days (before that, pretty similar).
The sea ice extent will be low this year (2011 and 2007 levels).
Here is another helpful Arctic map, with interactive goodness: http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
[Click on yellow dots for current weather reports]
Matt
August 4, 2012 1:13 pm
As an amature photagrapher, my oppinion of the plume is debris on the lens. Given the location of the camera, the debris is probably ice.
Bill H
August 4, 2012 1:37 pm
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..
Gail Combs
August 4, 2012 1:40 pm
-REP, nice map. I would consider the advance and retreat of the tree line a much better indicator of climate than the summer Arctic sea ice melt. The melt is much too dependent on wind and other factors.
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
4.8 km^2
Sea ice is a tremendous variable, fluctuating for many different reasons – wind, sea circulation patterns etc. However, it is one of the main signifiers for the AGW crowd, and wrongly so.
Since it has only been accurately measures since 1979 via satellite, that is not a fair starting point for finding a long term trend, as you would need several centuries at least to find a meaningful pattern.
to all those who worry about sea ice extent in the Arctic, there is quite a fair amount of observational data pre 1979 which indicates a trend. The arctic warmed, and sea ice vanished rapidly from 1910-1940. As far back as 1922, we have this scenario:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
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.
Although we claim that sea ice extent is lower today than the average since 1979, it is likely (without the exact parameters of satellite data) that arctic sea ice was far less in extent that the last 7 years up until 2012
Meanwhile, Antarctica is having a stellar year for ice. Up almost .9M over normal. But nobody wants to look at that….
Shhh, don’t mention the Antarctic, that’s not one of the Warmist’s cherries and besides we all ‘know” that global warming is a local thing…
It is worthwhile remembering that, during the period of minimum ice extent at the equinox of mid-September, removal of the ice coverage of the Arctic ocean water REDUCES water temperatures (evaporation losses from the exposed water surface exceed solar radiation absorbtion of the ice-free compared to ice-covered water) …..
On land, the opposite occurs (ice-covered land reflects more energy than open/pasture land/tundra), but there is NO land-covered ice left to melt in today’s climate and geography. The ONLY ice left to melt in today’s world is a small near-circular cap between 80 north and the pole at 90 north.
Therefore, the more ice melts, the lower the air temperatures in the Arctic above 80 north. So what’s to worry? The next ice age from Arctic ice feedback?
In the TV reality show Deadiest Catch about catching crab in the Bering sea, there have been a few comments made about so called global warming considering the harshest conditions in years. Not in support of warming.
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.
And to the south, this story …..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/antarctica-was-once-a-rai_n_1733597.html?icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl8%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D188147
(I wonder McMurdo’s streetlights are melting?)
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?
This is a bit off topic but maybe not. It may be a bit on the political WIth the Ice “thinning” (for the moment), Alberta will have a new option for shipping their land locked oil. Obama has blocked the Keystone pipeline to the south. BC has said they have a lot of conditions to be meto for it to go west and the BC natives communities opposition is reportedly funded by many US and foreign foundations But as I said in my post several months ago, that still leaves train transportation like Warren Buffet is doing out of the Nebraska in the absence of a pipeline (wonder which side he is funding); pipelines to the east coast to Toronto, Montreal and the Irving oil refineries in the Maritimes; and the Northern Route through the Arctic into the Pacific. The Mackenzie Valley Gas Pipeline has finally been approved after decades of opposition. With the low price of gas these days, some northerners are suggesting the flow should be oil north and through the Arctic to Asia rather than gas from the Arctic to the US.
http://www.cbc.ca/thehouse/news-promo/2012/08/04/northwest-territories-offers-alternative-to-northern-gateway-pipeline/
Maybe this is a straw man, but that is what will happen if the flow south or west continues to be blocked. I wonder how Suzuki and Tides will think of successfully diverting flow from BC and into the Arctic? (Law of unintended consequences But then if they say the arctic will be ice free, then it should be quite safe, shouldn’t it? /sarc off
By the way, for those who understand inertia and complexity of systems as most here do, the temperatures today and ice extent today are highly misleading since they may reflect things that happened years ago. I fully expect it to be nasty cold in the near future so Alberta oil is a lot more likely to flow east than north if south and west are blocked … and after a few hundred people die in the upcoming cold, I am guessing a route south will be quickly opened for both oil and gas … and due to the time it takes to build projects, a lot of politicians and eco-trusts will be running for cover.
Nevertheless, if arctic ice trends down, it will bring more pressure to ship north. But personally, I expect a big uptick in ice extent over the next few years based on what I have read on these pages and others. The cycle continues.
@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.
Warning if you believe that the Arctic will be ice free in the next few years like the models say do not read past the following point or you will be forced to think outside what you believe, this is the point: The Antarctic.
Kirschbaum is German for Cherrytree. Picked enough for a big pie yet, Neven?
LOL
I voted in agreement with expert Zwally’s ice-free Arctic this year. I have learned from IPCC glitterati that this is the proper response.
After all, Zwally is the go-to expert on Arctic sea ice, I am paying a portion of his salary to get the science right, and his forecast for an ice-free 2012 Arctic sea ice is right on schedule.
If Zwally turns out to be wrong, he should be fired for incompetence and wasting everybody’s money on useless climate models.
The big picture. Hardly any change in global ice. 23.5 MM km in 2000, about the same now.
chris y,
Zwally’s comment was not based on climate models. It was based, as he mentioned to the journalist who reported his comments at the time, on extrapolation of the rate of Arctic sea ice melt observed during 2007.
Furthermore, as I’m sure most people are aware, Zwally was not attempting to give a scientific forecast. He was making an off-the-cuff observation to a reporter from National Geographic.
So Zwally wasn’t making a ‘right or wrong’ forecast, and he certainly wasn’t reporting a scientific, model-based projection of future Arctic sea ice melt. In the same article, from memory, the journalist in question even made reference to a paper that did give an *actual* projection for summer Arctic sea being mostly absent.
It think it was around 2030?
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’s even worse than that!
How certain are Warmists that this isn’t just natural climate variation. The satellite record began in 1979.
Yep. Trending right between 2007 and 2011. Just as the gradient from 10e6sqkm to 8e6sqkm said it would.
Thanks for that map, REP! Very helpful indeed!
NSIDC’s data is really diverging (down) from Jaxa’s trends over the last several days (before that, pretty similar).
The sea ice extent will be low this year (2011 and 2007 levels).
Here is another helpful Arctic map, with interactive goodness:
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
[Click on yellow dots for current weather reports]
As an amature photagrapher, my oppinion of the plume is debris on the lens. Given the location of the camera, the debris is probably ice.
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..
-REP, nice map. I would consider the advance and retreat of the tree line a much better indicator of climate than the summer Arctic sea ice melt. The melt is much too dependent on wind and other factors.
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