Sea Ice News Volume 3 number 12 – has Arctic sea ice started to turn the corner?

Dont’ be quick on the call 🙂 🙂 ice seems to bounce a bit at the bottom

Am I seeing things or isn’t it turning a bit later every year, kind of shifting the curve to the right ever so slightly year by year?

From previous years’ graphs, it seems that similar fake inflexion points have happened in the past. The sad reality is that the 2012 minimum is lower than even 2007. This will provide endless fodder to fan AGW fires in the MSM.

@ Henry..
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
And the trend between 1920 and 1940 is FAR steeper and for a lot longer than the tiny section they have highlighted at the right. Must have been.. ….. CO2 I guess 😉

Here’s one hilarious viewpoint on it:

Using the info and link from the WUWT Sea Ice page, the daily mean temperature and climate north of the 80th northern parallel has already dipped below the melt line as normal.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

It would be surprising if it did not move up and down a bit near minimum – just as it does near maximum.
The story this year is a new record melt in the satellite record, not slightly, but by a large margin.
Just how much evidence is needed that the arctic is warming fast – look at the anomalies in sea surface temperature, ice area, ice extent and volume.
The spurious reasons put forward for this cannot deliver the energy required to produce the observed warming and melting across an entire region nor do they explain why this is happening now, so fast, or why the trend is one way.
There is likely to be a rapid refreeze because large areas of open water are going to be exposed to falling sub-zero air temperatures when the Sun sets at the pole, and then the rest of the arctic, over the next few months. But that ice will be thin and vulnerable to a big melt again next year.
Larger amplitude freeze/melt oscillations set in after the 2007 minimum
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png
and could get larger as the summer minimum heads towards very low levels.
I previously posted a range of zero extent possibilities based on 3 interpretations of the September 1979-2011 minimum plot. Earliest 2019 (steady acceleration in decline), latest 2065 (linear).
If we take the current extent as the minimum (which of course it may not be), 2012 trends below the 2019 curve ie consistent with a largely ice free arctic in September within the next 6 years. Accepted it is one year, which alone cannot be used to predict the future, but I would suggest the trend is clear to anyone who looks at the data objectively.

Over the years posters at WUWT have made multiple predictions of recovery and myriad derogatory remarks toward arctic scientists and their conclusions. In spite of this, an ocean of ice is disappearing before our eyes. Those that have bet against this trend in sites such as Intrade have lost heavily, melting away like the ice floes themselves. The arctic is telling us all something very important, if we will just listen.

The rapid decrease in sea ice area/extent was probably the result of one of the strongest Arctic summer cyclones ever recorded. Rain and windswept waves would have compromised the total area/extent numlbers. With the decrease in temperature, that fresh water rain will have frozen and the sea water would also have frozen. Notice the North pole camera shows that open sea water has now refrozen?
I have noticed many things at this site….Thanks Anthony and crew. One is that, while many sites deal with sea ice,none of them seem to relate that much to each other.The temp in one does not relate to the temp at another. Any site that ignores areas of 15 % or less has to have their methodology questioned. Not to mention that they limit coverage to 100%. Wind can blow sea ice one meter thick on top of one meter sea ice forming multi meter sea ice while reducing the area even when the amount of sea ice is the same.

The main thing that strikes me in this graph is that there’s nothing special happening. Not a trend toward catastrophic melting, not a trend toward total freeze. 2012 is just a bit more extreme on BOTH ends than the previous few years, but the extreme-ness is very small compared to the summer-winter delta.

The interesting thing in that graph is the increasing winter maximum ice extent.
If I am right and the main cause of the record melt is increased solar insolation (from decreased clouds) melting dirty ice (with embedded BC), then we should continue to see above average winter maximum ice extent and increasing summer minimum extent as most of the dirty ice has been melted, and new ice with less embedded BC is more resistant to insolation driven melt. This will occur either next year or the year after.
BTW, I’m not discounting weather effects.

Ammonite said
“Over the years posters at WUWT have made multiple predictions of recovery and myriad derogatory remarks toward arctic scientists and their conclusions. In spite of this, an ocean of ice is disappearing before our eyes. Those that have bet against this trend in sites such as Intrade have lost heavily, melting away like the ice floes themselves. The arctic is telling us all something very important, if we will just listen.”
Spot on.
The WUWT banner says the site is about commentary on (amongst other things) science. Call me old fashioned, but to do science you need data – evidence – observations. Predicting ice recovery based on wishful thinking, in turn based on a predetermined position, is anti-science.

Have I missed this? I must have been away!
http://www.arcticrow.com/
Big news from Point Hope, AK!
“The team is happy to report that they completed their journey..”
There was me thinking they were going along the coast to Russia? Maybe they just had a night there and rowed back?
Hey, ho

From Green Sand on September 4, 2012 at 4:35 pm:

There was me thinking they were going along the coast to Russia? Maybe they just had a night there and rowed back?
Hey, ho

Really? After such a long exhausting trip I would think they’d look for a warm bed and maybe a shot of vodka instead.

Ammonite said:
“…Over the years posters at WUWT have made multiple predictions of recovery and myriad derogatory remarks toward arctic scientists and their conclusions…”
Well, Ammonite, when you’re fed straight lines like this, the jokes just write themselves:
“…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…”
He didn’t say we’d see a new record low, he said we’d be nearly ice free by the end of THIS summer.
Also, Al Gore (during his acceptance speech in 2007 for the Nobel) stated that “…Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years…”
That means if it doesn’t nearly disappear this summer, then surely it will be gone in 2014.
Not to be outdone, another group (in an article from Reuters on Aug 30, 2012 8:00am EDT) said:
“… Ice on the Arctic Ocean could vanish in summertime as early as 2015 or linger for many decades after a thaw to a record low this month that is widely blamed on climate change, according to scientists…”
So either this year, or in 2014 or 2015 or it may linger for many decades…
And you wonder why we question the conclusions of “arctic scientists”?
Which arctic scientist should we listen to, just in case the Arctic isn’t taking our calls?

The refreeze started within days of the August storms in the arctic. That appears to have broken up large floes which regrouped. Quite a lot of it got relocated, and wave action likely is keeping it under the radar, even still. I expect to see the rebound be steeper than the decline (which by the way does not show the affect of the big blow in August – WUWT?).

@ Green Sand “There was me thinking they were going along the coast to Russia? ”
Yes, that was my memory as well, so I looked it up to verify. Sure enough here is a map of their planned voyage to Russia. http://bluecloudspatial.com/arctic-row-map Of course this is far from the described “rowing across the Arctic Ocean.”
Based on the map, I would say that they rowed more like 800 miles out of 1300 planned. And yet their web site says “The team is happy to report that they completed their journey.”
No, not even maybe. Yes, they are finished, but no, they did not complete their journey. For pity’s sake, it is a deadly ocean — can’t they just man up and admit that they got their behinds kicked?!

What can I say? The Arctic is warming and has been since the beginning of the twentieth century. Prior to that there was nothing there but two thousand years of slow, linear cooling. I pointed this out in my book “What Warming?” and again in a peer reviewed article in E&E 22(8):1069-1083 (2011). What got the warming started was a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the century that began to carry warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. There was no parallel increase of carbon dioxide when the warming started and this rules out the greenhouse effect because it would violate the radiation laws of physics. Direct measurement of water temperature reaching the Arctic in 2010 showed that it exceeds anything recorded for the last two thousand years. The warming was not steady but paused for thirty years in midcentury, then resumed, and is still going strong. This is another aspect of warming that is impossible to do with the greenhouse effect but easy if the previous flow pattern temporarily returned. What I can not understand is why all those so-called “climate” scientist are still clinging to the idea of anthropogenic warming in the Arctic after I proved that this is completely impossible.

henrythethird said: “Which arctic scientist should we listen to, just in case the Arctic isn’t taking our calls?”
Priceless.

A. Arnak.—Thank You, Sorry that I have not read your book, but I will. I have been wondering about this and a concurrent gain in sea ice in the SH for a long time. Without having looked closely at reasons why, it has seemed obvious that these are observations beckoning to be explained.

I was reading stories about the Dark Knight Satellite which was supposedly detected in the 50’s and seen in the 60’s and has a Polar Orbit. Maybe some geek can communicate with it and get it to download all its Arctic Ice Data when the can find it again.
Seriously though Mother Nature is playing a ‘gotcha’ moment on all the warmists. She decided to create a new low so they can get into a lather and then end up with egg on face next year, while we sit back and say ‘so what’.
I still havn’t got a message from the Arctic yet.

James Abbott says:
September 4, 2012 at 4:14 pm
———————————————————
I am very sympathetic to your comments. As a follower of WUWT I have noticed the redirection away from this amazingly low Arctic ice extent. Talk about Antarctica, talk about an end to the melting for this year – but ignore the record low extent.
However, I remain a skeptic that the Arctic ice is to disappear for the summer forever starting in 2013 because of CO2. So next year when we are nowhere near a record low, I look forward to James Abbott discussing why the dire predictions of no summer ice are not coming true.

Where I live, down in the SW desert of CA, flocks of birds have been heading SOUTH since early August. Not just a few, BIG flocks… We’ve already had two frontal systems come in across the coast of CA when normally at this time of year they’re still harassing those fools up in Seattle. Why all the flockign south so early this year? Don’t know…

Regards this chart:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
Source is this old NASA piece, “Dwindling Arctic Ice”, October 24, 2003:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/
Graph on page 3 with this caption:

The rapid warming trend in the Arctic over the last 25 years has dramatically reduced the region’s sea ice extent. Comparing this more recent trend with long-term data, scientists are trying to determine to whether this 25-year warming trend will continue, or is part of a longer-term cycle of ups and downs. (Graph by Larry Stock and Josefino Comiso, NASA GSFC)

Yes, they’re talking about a “25-year warming trend” using a graph showing a 20 year warming trend.
Besides the displayed trends lacking the last 11+ years of temperature numbers, with whatever “data” went into the graph likely having been “cooked” (“adjusted”) into different numbers since it came out…
Isn’t that graph just another example of picking endpoints for trend lines to show basically whatever you want? Haven’t we been warned before about using shorter and shorter periods this way?

http://drtimball.com/2012/2012-arctic-ice-melt-claims-distorted-and-inaccurate-its-the-wind-stupid/

Those dang goal posts will just keep shifting. If that ice doesn’t disappear this year… well, next year… No wait, the year after. 2015? What about 2020, anyone? How about 2025? By 2050 for sure.
It’s always out of reach, always after a few more years of funding, always the next generation will see it (or its lack). Shoot, if we all wait long enough and live long enough, we’ll watch the sun explode and that might just melt that nuisance ice once and for all.
You’d think as those goal posts shift like mirages forever into the distance, a few more warmists would wake up and become a touch skeptical themselves… Actually, I think many do.

@Werner Brozek
I find your analysis interesting, but I do wonder why the global average rises and falls noticeably with the Northern Hemisphere seasons. Especially this year when the Southern Hemisphere has experienced:
– The coldest winter in 14 years in Australia
– Snow across all of South Africa (an extremely rare event)
– South America has experienced a colder and longer than normal winter
Would I be correct in saying that this shows a lack of monitoring in the Southern Hemisphere? Or a case of the warmists trying to hide the decline?

http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Temperature/Maximum.aspx
http://www.intellicast.com/Global/Temperature/Minimum.aspx
how can the coast around siberia not be freezing?
It is perhaps better to look at anomilies rather thab sst on DMI which shows that it colder around the coast of Siberia than around the edge of the ice pack.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php
I repeat.Why is the coastline of Siberia not freezing?

AndyG55 says:
September 4, 2012 at 2:27 pm
I suspect that the scattered ice will reform quite quickly. We will see.
———————————————————————————————
Agreed.

From the comments anyone would think that this was the first ever recorded summer Arctic storm, or even that this was the first year weather, rather than climate, affected the melt.

Where’s the IMS graph?

Sorry, Mosher, but who cares? Climate has never been static and no one should want it to be. I see no problem with an ice free arctic. The planet is warming (or was up until recently). A warmer world is better for plants and animals alike – including people, we belong here too.
Unfortunately, the signs I’m seeing point to the opposite gearing up to happen, a colder more dangerous world. But I guess you don’t see that, being solely focussed the other way. That’s a shame. Somehow, though, I suspect the Big Chill will be blamed on global warming – it’s amazing how the alarmists can twist the tale and use absolutely anything to back their claims and demand more power and more money, blaming people and civilization all the way.
They lost me a long time ago.

The good thing is that we wont get another record low Arctic sea ice extent for another four or five years (the record low before this new record low was 5 years ago), this means that every year before the next record low we will be able to tell those AGW believers that the ice is not melting, yay for us!

Notice how Mosher avoids answering Philip Bradley’s question about the Antartic.
As for your models Mosher, pure BS.

Russians have seaicemaps too. It’s bit diffrent.
http://www.aari.ru/odata/_d0015.php?lang=1
It has been wery similar after that storm.

Venter says:
September 5, 2012 at 3:10 am
Avoiding also my father’s article, ….

Steven Mosher says:
“In a warming world we expect less ice floating in the warmer water.”
&
“That is a silly question. the arctic doesnt respond to the GLOBAL temperature.”
Physician, heal thyself.

JohnB says:
September 5, 2012 at 6:21 am
But not well advertised.

[Snip. Policy. ~ dbs, mod.]

@- Philip Bradley says
“So why is Antarctic sea ice increasing?
By your logic, it follows the world isn’t warming and the seas aren’t getting warmer.
You have to explain all the data. Just ignoring some of it, because you can’t explain it isn’t science.”
The Arctic and Antarctic are opposites. The Arctic an ocean surrounded by land, the Antarctic land surrounded by ocean. The result is that in the Arctic the summer melt is significant but in the Antarctic the sea ice can melt back to the edge of the Antarctic continent, but can decrease no further.
However the land ice on the Antarctic ice-cap IS shrinking as shown by direct observation and GRACE satellite data.
So at BOTH poles the ice-caps are shrinking and at both poles summer sea ice is at or near the minimum that it could possibly reach.
Winter ice in both regions may vary, but is dependent on salinity, snowfall and currents as much as temperature so provides no clear guide to warming alone.
However the large summer reduction in ice both sea and land based at both poles confirms the significant addition of energy to the climate system.
For those that think it is a distant irrelevency, consider that the low Arctic summer ice triggers instabilities in the N.H. Jet stream that leads to increased winter snowfalls and increased summer droughts for many parts of the N.H. While other parts may see increased storms and flooding. It is changes in the Arctic that puts the local weather on steroids.

Dale says:
September 4, 2012 at 9:30 pm
Would I be correct in saying that this shows a lack of monitoring in the Southern Hemisphere? Or a case of the warmists trying to hide the decline?
As for why the “global average rises and falls noticeably with the Northern Hemisphere seasons”, my understanding is that it is due to the huge amount of land in the Northern Hemisphere that greatly absorbs the sun’s heat in the summer, despite the fact that the sun is furthest away around July 4. But as for “when the Southern Hemisphere has experienced:
– The coldest winter in 14 years in Australia”, I have no clue about that. However I believe we can rule out a lack of monitoring since the satellite data show the Southern Hemisphere only warming at a rate of 0.08/decade over the last 32 years but the Northern Hemisphere at a rate of 0.19/decade. See
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
As for why this is happening, I do not know.

Smokey said
“Natural cycles fully explain all current observations”
OK – give us the references for papers that can do this for the modern era ie instrument record period. Not anecodotes or wishful thinking, but peer reviewed science.
And
David Ball
you said
“James Abbott says:
September 5, 2012 at 7:07 am
“I am very sympathetic to your comments. As a follower of WUWT I have noticed the redirection away from this amazingly low Arctic ice extent.”
You start with a blatant lie, and then continue in that vein.”
You clearly have not been following the thread. The first bit in quotes was from Steve from Rockwood, not me.
Secondly you claim that what I did write to follow was a “blatant lie”.
Thats strong stuff – you can presumably evidence your allegation ?

“in a warmer world you can expect less floating ice in water. ”
The problem is that distribution counts. It’s quite possible to have a warmer world where the antarctic and arctic become colder, and it’s also possible to have a colder world where the antarctic and arctic become warmer. That doesn’t even address the topic of ocean warmth versus atmospheric warmth.
Maybe a better way of putting would be, “in a world with warmer poles, you can expect less floating ice in water.”

clue = IF co2 was NOT in the atmosphere, WE would not be here………TRY for the chance to make this point co2 is a NUTRIENT required for life as we know it, and in no way is pollution.

James Abbott said September 5, 2012 at 7:07 am
So the “natural cycles” and “steady natural warming ” theory needs to explain the observed acceleration in change before it is credible.
——————————
Nope.
You make the assumption that temperatures were a straight horizontal line prior to the recent warming seen in the latter part of the century. You ignore the earlier warming period where co2 remained essentially flat, and you ignored all previous temperature ups and downs, some of them dramatic indeed where co2 could not possibly have played a role. Many with warming (and cooling) gradients every bit as steep and steeper.
It is for you to firstly show that those previous temperature gradients are not at play here, until you have done that you cannot make a credible argument for co2 as being of any relevance to warming over the latter part of the century, since co2 has never been shown to be relevant to historic temperature fluctuations. The onus of proof is on you not Smokey.
Global temperatures have been declining for the last 15 years and God has turned down the dimmer control on the Sun. You need to chill out, that ice is going to come back with a vengeance as per the Little Ice Age. So Julienne and Walt live in interesting times for sure.

J. M. Careful here. I have seen estimates regarding a no CO2 atmosphere from many credible scientists who are very skeptical of much warming by additional CO2. The estimates have been between 8 and about 20 Deg C.
A hundred years ago, in lab investigations it was determined that adding CO2 would not cause much warming (at one time there was thought it might cause some cooling) because almost all the IR frequencies that CO2 can absorb are being absorbed. Curiously, it was several German scientists about the time of WW11 that change our atomic model, and with it came quantum mechanics. Energy that is absorbed is remitted in all directions; up down, sideways and this happens in each molecule millions of times in a second. GHG is really a misnomer. It should be called the Tyndall gas effect. Greenhouses, or you car, warm because they prevent convection, those who believe there is positive feedback believe there will be changes in water vapor content at certain altitudes. This happens because of convection. However, the models showing this have been inaccurate.
An analogy might be putting on a coat to keep you worm. Each additional coat you put on warms you less.
IMO additional CO2 will cause progressively less warming, In fact so little that we will never be quite sure of how much, It such seems foolish to try spend money to limit a fundamental requirement of life.

Ammonite says:
September 4, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Over the years posters at WUWT have made multiple predictions of recovery……

Over the years Warmists and worried alarmists have made multiple predictions of an ice-free Arctic for the following years:
1989, 2000, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2035, 2040
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080620-north-pole.html
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/ice-free-arctic-forecasts/
http://select.nytimes.co/gst/abstract.html?res=F40A11FC3959147493C2AB1789D85F4D8685F9

izen says:
September 5, 2012 at 7:25 am
@- Philip Bradley says
“So why is Antarctic sea ice increasing?
The Arctic and Antarctic are opposites. The Arctic an ocean surrounded by land, the Antarctic land surrounded by ocean. The result is that in the Arctic the summer melt is significant but in the Antarctic the sea ice can melt back to the edge of the Antarctic continent, but can decrease no further.
However the land ice on the Antarctic ice-cap IS shrinking as shown by direct observation and GRACE satellite data.
You present no physical mechanism, and this is just a psuedo-argument.
FYI, the mechanism I described above also accounts for Antarctic Peninsula melt and Greenland melt as well.
The melt of the Larson icesheets on the Antarctic Peninsula is interesting because Larsen B and C are surrounded by permanent sea ice that hasn’t melted.
How come the much thicker icesheet melts, when the thinner sea ice doesn’t?
The answer is that the icesheet, having originated on land, contains substantial embedded material (rock particles) which act like the embedded black carbon in Arctic sea ice. accumulating at the surface and decreasing the albedo, as solar insolation melts/sublimates the ice surface.

People are forgetting so quickly, that the satellite which made the sea ice measurements, over at “cryosphere today” had damaged it’s sensor and the satellite was replaced, so the instrument measurements for this year are from a different satellite and instrument. So then the new instrument has a difficulty in seeing ice cover which is fragmented, whereas the old sensor did not.
The result is all this wittering about whether the ice is in terminal decline or not, but it is an exaggerated “anomaly”. Furthermore when the “pendulum swings” more strongly in one direction, experience shows that it shall also swing more strongly in the opposite direction. Accordingly it is predicted that the forthcoming Winter will show a corresponding increase in Arctic sea ice.

DarrylB.
I am happy to listen to all four arguments;
(1). That co2 causes warming.
(2). That co2 causes neither warming nor cooling.
(3). That co2 causes cooling.
(4). That co2 causes both warming and cooling.
——————————————————————
(1) Considered by many to be well established, though not all.
(2) Is suggested by the incoherent ups and downs of previous temperatures and co2 levels.
(3) (a). The Pacific hot spot that turns out to be a cold spot. (b). The current rate of warming being less than previous warming events and therefore being held back by increasing levels of co2. (c). The cessation and ringing (like an electrical square wave) seen when exiting a glaciation, temperatures climb rapidly with co2 following, so if co2 caused warming then temperatures would not stop rising, but they do stop and a logical conclusion could be drawn that co2 causes cooling and brings the warming to a halt, we see some variation afterwards (ringing), before we meet the rear slope of the interstitial (temperature square wave).
(4) OK I can’t think how this last one might work, though perhaps different functions at different atmospheric heights.
At this time I consider;
(1) to be minor at best, and most probably unlikely, and in either event of no effective relevance to mankind, food supply or future temperatures.
I remain open minded about the other 3 and look forward to hearing many well argued cases for and against.

Smokey.
Yes I think warming definitely causes co2 levels to increase.
But in item (3) I wonder if the co2 that the warming pulls from the oceans on the way out of glaciation then pulls back the warming.
So we get a warming spike which increases co2, but co2 could have a cooling effect, thus causing the warming event to stabilise and level off and then temperatures are dragged back down by the co2 into a glaciation.
Yes the record of glaciations clearly show that warming causes co2 to increase.
Personally I would prefer to find a planetary cause for glaciations.

@Smokey: The mental model that seems to fit best for me is that of a buffer solution. In the same way that a buffer solution will neutralize both acids and bases, it seems that oceanic CO2 is probably buffering the levels in the atmosphere. Increased CO2 emissions by humans are buffered by the ocean absorbing more CO2. Similarly, if there were a *decrease* in CO2 emissions by humans, they’d be buffered by the ocean emitting more CO2. The set point of atmospheric CO2 levels buffered by the oceans is determined by ocean temperature (i.e., warming causes CO2).
If one doesn’t understand the concept of a buffer solution, I can see how one could get wrapped around the axle, imagining that it’s an elementary mathematics problem of putting soil into a hole, or taking soil out of a hole.

J Martin said re CO2 warming
“Nice try, but no cigar.
Credible ? in what way ? You just made a bald statement of belief with no attempt at substantiation. Perhaps you’d like to explain the mechanism by which co2 has induced climate change (global warming) and how that translates into reduced ice cover.
You obviously haven’t been reading WUWT for very long otherwise you wouldn’t still be trotting out religious unsubstantiated statements.”
Well, like others who post here who believe in the scientific method, I am trying to substantiate a case, but its mighty difficult to put an argument to people who deny just about every basic starting point, even including that CO2 is a greenhouse gas – a scientific fact established nearly 200 years ago. I agree I have not been reading WUWT for long but it has not taken long either to figure out its purpose.
I asked Smokey to respond to the CO2 point, which he failed to do. He thinks the CO2 contribution to the natural greenhouse effect is negligable, and so I asked what would happen if CO2 was absent from the atmosphere. No answer.
You J Martin say
“at most about one degree C cooler. This of course presumes that co2 has any heating effect at all.”
But give no reference for either claim.
You also calim
“Global temperatures have been declining for the last 15 years”
No they have not. They have been flatlining for about the last 9 years, but not declining.
And
“God has turned down the dimmer control on the Sun.”
Which is an inane comment – and then you accuse me of having a religious belief in climate change ?
and you add
“chill out, that ice is going to come back with a vengeance as per the Little Ice Age”
Again – no evidence – just a pile more wishful thinking to back a pre-determined position.
JJ said
“Actually, what that temp record shows is about 0.5C warming in the century to 1940, and a similar amount from 1980 to present. There is no change in acceleration.”
So JJ you conveniently miss out the period 1940 to 1980 to calculate a rate of change to suit your case ? Thats some method you are using there. Maybe Governments can miss out the period since 2008 to show there has been no banking crisis ?
Getting back to the evidence
CO2 is an important natural greenhouse gas and much more important than a 1C contribution.
According to
http://phys.org/news/2010-10-carbon-dioxide-earths-temperature.html
CO2 accounts for about 20 percent of the greenhouse effect – that keeps Earth about 21 C (or more depending on source) warmer than it would be with just oxygen and nitrogen.
So here is the killer argument – if the amount of CO2 is increased substantially over natural levels, it will get warmer. How controversial is that ?
How does that melt ice ? Well lets see, a warmer ocean below the ice and a warmer atmosphere above the ice (reference the many anomaly maps on this website) ?
It seems that with the sceptic community it all boils down pretty much to one basic argument and that is that CO2 has much less warming potential than a host of studies have concluded or even that CO2 has no warming potential which turns atmospheric physics back to the early C19th.

I see a lot of comments here that although the Arctic sea ice area / extent minimums are dropping over time, the maximum area /extent is relatively unchanged. Several posters have noted that this is because more of the thicker / older ice is melting out over the passing years, but this thicker ice is being replaced by thinner ice in the frigid Arctic winters. So, although the ice area / extent returns to more or less the same value in the winter each year, because this ice is thinner, over time, more ice melts out in the summer, which leads to record low areas/extents as we are seeing this year.
Here are a couple of charts that back these claims up:
The first is a graph of the PIOMAS daily Arctic Ice Volume taken from the Arctic Sea Ice Blog:
http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b0177446fbf0e970d-pi
The data for this chart can be downloaded from the Polar Science Center at http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/data/ .
Notice that the highest maximum Arctic ice volume can be seen in the 1979 – 2000 average and is around 30 million cubic kilometers. As you can see from the 2002 – 2012 graphed data, there have been year to year drops in the maxima for most years (with 2008 and 2009 being exceptions due to the extremely large drop in 2007) right up until 2012.
I checked the data, and the largest maximum volume that I could find for any year was in 1979 (the first year of satellite data) at 33 million cubic kilometers. The lowest maximum value is from 2012 and was 21.9 million cubic kilometers, a drop from the highest measured volume (in 1979) of about 11 million cu. km – a decrease of around 33 percent in maximum volume over the last 33 years.
The largest minimum volume that I could find in the data was in 1979 at 16.9 million cubic kilometers. The minimum volume was for day 238 of 2012 at 3.6 million cubic kilometers. This was the last date with data in the set – August 25th, if I have calculated correctly. This is a decrease in the minimum value of about 13.3 million cu. km, or 78 percent over 33 years.
So, although the minimum volume is decreasing faster (78% in 33 years vs. 33% for the maximum volume), the maximum volume is decreasing as well. Interestingly, it just occurs to me that although the percentage losses are very different, the total amount of ice loss at the two time periods (11 million cu. km at the maximum, 13.3 million cu. km at the minimum). It appears that, for the most part, once the ice is gone, it doesn’t come back.
As I and others have said, the facts that although the maximum Arctic sea ice area and extent have not changed much over the last 33 years, and the maximum Arctic sea ice volume has decreased by 33% over that same period lead to the logical conclusion that the ice has thinned at maximum volume/extent/area time (to the degree that these three measurements overlap). The Polar Ice Center demonstrates this with their graph of Daily Average Arctic Sea Ice Thickness:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/Bpiomas_plot_daily_heff.2sst.png
Notice that the average Arctic sea ice thickness has been declining over the last 33 years at all times of the year.
I hope this clarifies what posters mean when they say that even though the average Arctic sea ice area and extent both return to about the same value each year, Arctic sea ice is clearly declining over time due to a decrease in thickness.
Thanks,
Robert

This just published does not look like steady natural cyclical change:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“Following the new record low recorded on August 26, Arctic sea ice extent continued to drop and is now below 4.00 million square kilometers (1.54 million square miles). Compared to September conditions in the 1980s and 1990s, this represents a 45% reduction in the area of the Arctic covered by sea ice.
In 2012, the rate of ice loss for August was 91,700 square kilometers (35,400 square miles) per day, the fastest observed for the month of August over the period of satellite observations.
Between mid-March and the third week of August, the total amount of multiyear ice within the Arctic Ocean declined by 33%, and the oldest ice, ice older than five years, declined by 51%.”
So – a THIRD of multiyear ice and HALF the oldest ice melting in one summer ?

James Abbott says:
September 5, 2012 at 3:29 pm
I will ignore your puny comment about WUWT? and it’s “religious” nature. Confirms my statement even more.

The ignoring (or ignorance) of known historic and geologic information is another thing that reveal the systemic bias in government and academia. Selective information is the same as a lie, IMHO. The motive and opportunity are there. No need for a conspiracy theory. Back to you James,…….

James Abbott says:
September 5, 2012 at 2:55 pm
You also calim
“Global temperatures have been declining for the last 15 years”
No they have not. They have been flatlining for about the last 9 years, but not declining.
The above depends on the data set you are using. And for those sets below that are flat for over 15 years, they ARE slightly declining for the last 15 years. See the site below and note the yellow downward sloping line for RSS for example.
On all data sets, the different times for a slope that is flat for all practical purposes range from 10 years and 10 months to 15 years and 8 months. Following is the longest period of time (above 10 years) where each of the data sets is more or less flat. (*No slope is positive except UAH which is +0.0022 per year or +0.22/century up to July. So while it is not flat, the slope is not statistically significant either.)
1. UAH: since October 2001 or 10 years, 10 months (goes to July, but note * above)
2. GISS: since March 2001 or 11 years, 5 months (goes to July)
3. Combination of 4 global temperatures: since November 2000 or 11 years, 9 months (goes to July)
4. HadCrut3: since February 1997 or 15 years, 6 months (goes to July)
5. Sea surface temperatures: since January 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to July)
6. RSS: since December 1996 or 15 years, 8 months (goes to July)
RSS is 188/204 or 92.2% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.
7. Hadcrut4: since December 2000 or 11 years, 8 months (goes to July using GISS. See below.)
See the graph below to show it all for #1 to #6.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001.16/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend/plot/wti/from:2000.8/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:2001.75/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.58/trend
For #7: Hadcrut4 only goes to December 2010 so what I did was get the slope of GISS from December 2000 to the end of December 2010. Then I got the slope of GISS from December 2000 to the present. The DIFFERENCE in slope was that the slope was 0.0049 lower for the total period. The positive slope for Hadcrut4 was 0.0041 from December 2000. So IF Hadcrut4 were totally up to date, and IF it then were to trend like GISS, I conclude it would show no slope for at least 11 years and 8 months going back to December 2000. (By the way, doing the same thing with Hadcrut3 gives the same end result, but GISS comes out much sooner each month.) See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000/to/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000/plot/gistemp/from:2000.9/to:2011/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2000.9/trend

By other data, I mean such as http://iceagenow.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/NorthernHemisphereSeaIceAnomaly.png most of all, which is the webcitation one from the U.K. government originally.
Currently, in ice trend charts, the reference page does show http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarctic%20SeaIceArea.gif which is relatively somewhat good in context, as in better than Cryosphere Today anyway. (If one draws lines on it, it illustrates, according to even NSIDC data, arctic peak ice in 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012 was equal within 1 pixel on its scale, which would be within 0.1 million square kilometers). But adding the former as well would give readers more of the overall picture.

Smokey says:
September 5, 2012 at 4:35 pm
…
And what, exactly, is the problem if Arctic ice melts? It has happened before, repeatedly and routinely. It has happened during the past century
…
Say what? Let’s see you back that one up. Let me guess, a photo of a submarine…

James Abbott says:
JJ said
“Actually, what that temp record shows is about 0.5C warming in the century to 1940, and a similar amount from 1980 to present. There is no change in acceleration.”
So JJ you conveniently miss out the period 1940 to 1980 to calculate a rate of change to suit your case ?
The period you refer to was called “cooling”. I left it out because doing so helps your case, and I didn’t want to be accused of cherry picking as you had done. If you would rather I not leave it out, that is OK with me.
Putting it back in leaves a trend of 0.015C/year from the beginning of the century to 1940, and a trend of only 0.009C/year for the period 1940 to present. Apparently, the net effect of “global warming” is to cut the natural warming rate by 60%.
That is the accounting that accrues when one cherry picks periods like you did, instead of making an honest comparison as I did.
The legitimate way to look at such processes over such short time periods is to look to see if the short term warming that we experienced starting approx 1980 has any precident in the past, before alleged CO2 effects could have had any effect. It does.
Several, in fact. I showed you one. Ric showed you another, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/04/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-12-has-arctic-sea-ice-started-to-turn-the-corner/#comment-1071841
Looking at 1920-40 vs the recent warming period 1980-2000 is another. That one leaves out most of the flat spot that we have been in for the last decade or more. Leaving out that flat spot helps your case – let me know if you’d prefer I add it back in.
Of course, the better thing to do (as I stated earlier and you ran from like a frightened school girl) is to look at longer, more climatologically relevant periods. Smokey showed you one of those, here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1840/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:0.15/detrend:-0.16/plot/hadcrut3vgl/trend/offset:-0.4/detrend:-0.18/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.00001/offset:1.5/plot/hadcrut3vnh/scale:0.00001/offset:-1.5
Your conclusions are the result of dishonest analysis. Feel free to lie to yourself, but we are under no obligation to accept such crap from you.
So here is the killer argument – if the amount of CO2 is increased substantially over natural levels, it will get warmer. How controversial is that ?
Quite. Because the incremental effect of CO2 declines as per a log function with increasing concentration, the potential effect of the second 300 ppm is much less than that of the first 300 ppm. It is perhaps 1C, if one accepts IPCC figurings. Too, that declining potential is not guaranteed to be realized, given that the Earth’s climate system is a complex beast with numerous recursive mechanisms that often manifest as negative feedbacks and swamping effects. How much warmer, if any? You don’t know. Be a dear and don’t pretend that you do.
It seems that with the sceptic community it all boils down pretty much to one basic argument …
Only in the minds of warmist bigots such as yourself.

James Abbott says:
This just published does not look like steady natural cyclical change:
Don’t be silly. Of course it does.

tjfolkerts,
http://drtimball.com/2011/another-climate-change-scare-is-on-thin-ice/
“None of what’s going on today is outside long term variations in ice cover and thickness. On November 20, 1817 the President of the Royal Society proposed a letter to the British Admiralty:
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 inclosed (sic) the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years greatly abated.
Mr. Scoresby, a very intelligent young man who commands a whaling vessel from Whitby observed last year that 2000 square leagues of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74° and 80°N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years entirely disappeared. The change in circulation was triggered by the eruption of Tambora in 1815.
In the heat of Cancun, Mexico, everyone is learning that the fallacies of climate science – and especially attempts to exploit fear and lack of knowledge or understanding – are on very thin ice because they are totally politically motivated.”

Smokey, evidence:
http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
“Scientists have pieced together historical ice conditions to determine that Arctic sea ice could have been much lower in summer as recently as 5,500 years ago. Before then, scientists think it possible that Arctic sea ice cover melted completely during summers about 125,000 years ago, during a warm period between ice ages.
To look back into the past, researchers combine data and records from indirect sources known as proxy records. Researchers delved into shipping charts going back to the 1950s, which noted sea ice conditions. The data gleaned from those records, called the Hadley data set, show that Arctic sea ice has declined since at least the mid-1950s. Shipping records exist back to the 1700s, but do not provide complete coverage of the Arctic Ocean. However, taken together these records indicate that the current decline is unprecedented in the last several hundred years,”
And from there, follow the links to the primary sources. Note, it says possibly much lower 5,500 years ago, and ice-free 125,000 years ago. That’s what the evidence says. Now, if it was cherry-picked PR, why would it say that? Because it’s not, it is the honest result of real science. And it also says the current decline is unprecedented in the last few hundred years.
Now, if you want evidence it its anthropogenic, you have to look elsewhere. But you can Google as easily as I can. Only you don’t want to.

And of course it will be dismissed as “anecdotal”,….3,2,1,…….

Incidentally, a particularly good plot from a Russian source:
A depiction covering from the 1920s through the end of the 20th century:
http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/fig2.gif
As can be seen in the plot for the Siberian Arctic basin, there was major rapid loss of ice during the late 1920s through until the early 1940s. Then mostly ice grew until the late 1980s.
Particularly by the 1990s, ice extent went down again, but, as a multi-year average, ice loss then was not impressive at all compared to the how little ice there was in the early 1940s.
Unlike the prior Siberian Arctic basin data, the North-European basin data from that source unfortunately has a data gap about right exactly on the most interesting spot of comparison, the early 1940s:
http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/fig3.gif
(The data gap is understandable considering the war at the time).
Still, even with the gap, one sees more relative loss of ice during the first half of the 20th century than during the second half, relative to their start points in each case.
That is not surprising in the context of, for example, cross-checking with other data from non-dishonest sources like http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028492.shtml which notes global sea level rise was slower in the latter half of the 20th century than the first half:
“1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003″ versus “2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953″
Anyway, those and some other plots from Russian sources are at:
http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/XX_Arctic.htm

Arguing temperature changes, plus or minus, based on the flawed and falsely-adjusted data available to us right now is sheer madness, which we fight out with each and every new post from Anthony here on WUWT. Have we been warming for the last 11,000 years, since the end of the last ice age when there were glaciers pushing all the way to where the Ohio River sits today? Yes. Are there glaciers burying the land now? No. I.E. the climate has warmed somewhat steadily.None of this was caused by CO2 or by AGW. Will it still get warmer? Quite possibly yes, as there fossil-record palm fronds on the tops of the mountains north of California where it is too cold for palms to grow today. Even if they were laid down in marshes and flat-land swamps eons ago before being uplifted, their current latitude versus the seasonal variations of the tilting of the Earth argue toward the fact that the climate had to be much warmer overall for them to grow sucessfully to the point where they were thick enough to create fossils. The same can be said for the coal deposits in England.
So, y’all are spending a tremendous amount of time and mental resources to refight a useless argument over a negligable (and highly suspect given the tampering with the data) temperature increase (or decrease) during a comfortable period when the Earth isn’t a sauna or an ice cube. I come to this post to see what the ice is doing NOW, not to refight this same war over 1″ of territory.

Henry Clark says:
September 5, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Excellent post.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/04/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-12-has-arctic-sea-ice-started-to-turn-the-corner/#comment-1072194
“Have we been warming for the last 11,000 years, since the end of the last ice age when there were glaciers pushing all the way to where the Ohio River sits today?”
No, we haven’t. The warming that started with the beginning of the current interglacial ended over 5,000 years ago. There has been a slight long term cooling trend over that time period as the Earth’s orbital peculiarities shifted ever so slowly away from the warming that initiated the Holocene. Any recent warming is taking place despite – not because of – the Earth’s long term orbital forcings.
As for the subject of this thread, NORSEX isn’t cooperating anymore:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic

Okay, so ‘quote’ tags don’t work like I hoped they did…

***
Ammonite says:
September 4, 2012 at 3:36 pm
In spite of this, an ocean of ice is disappearing before our eyes.
****
There there. You’ll feel better in a couple months. And then there’s always the next ice-age to look forward to when everything’ll be hunky-dorry.

Phil. says:
September 6, 2012 at 7:49 am
That’s your reply? Evidence please. Not that I don’t trust you to be accurate. Try also to ignore my response to tjfolkerts as he has done.

“Give it your best shot — which year and which specific eyewitness accounts support Arctic-wide melting similar to this whole past decade?”
The Royal Society is a good backup if they are spewing stuff that supports your assertions, but is not good enough when the evidence flies in the face of your ( and their ) beliefs.

J. Martin—-Thanks for a respectful response. Two things before I continue.
Are you familiar with the absorption spectra of CO2, H2O, CH4 and the other gases referred to as GHG?
On a second item. Of course as water warms, gases become less soluble. By my own calculations, considering three phases of dissolved CO2, and the purported temp change over 100 yrs, of 0.7 deg Cel. (I think when all the facts are taken into account, the temp increase will be less) I calculated that about 5 % of the CO2 increase comes from CO2 escaping.
Now as a caveat to what I just said, that 0.7 deg change is change in the atmosphere and not water temp and there are other factors such as convection and salinity. It was just to give a general idea.

tjfolkerts says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:58 am
Read the articles posted.

tjfolkerts says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:35 am
“Of course, the orbital conditions are different now, so this “natural cycle” cannot explain the current low ice conditions.”
Do you have any understanding of what you write? Again, read the posted articles. To claim what is happening in the Arctic as being “unnatural” is completely false and completely unprovable.

Steven Mosher says:
September 6, 2012 at 12:29 pm
“Hint. news clipping are not data.”
Neither is computer model output.