Nothing definitive, but interesting. The area plot above is from NANSEN. The extent plot also shows a turn:
DMI also shows it…
Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) – Centre for Ocean and Ice – Click the pic to view at sourceBut JAXA does not….suggesting a difference in sensors/processes.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) – International Arctic Research Center (IARC) – Click the pic to view at sourceOf course NSIDC has a 5 day average, so we won’t see a change for awhile. Time will tell if this is just a blip or a turn from the new record low for the satellite data set.
More at the WUWT Sea Ice reference page
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.
Eric E says:
September 5, 2012 at 9:53 pm
Here to do some damage control? In your uninformed opinion, it is 1 inch of ground.
Henry Clark says:
September 5, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Excellent post.
David Ball:
Thanks. Having come across drtimball.com months ago (a good site), sometimes it feels like a small world.
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
Wayne wrote:
Seems it’s been just cloud cover for almost a month, glad to finally see some breaks and would really like to know how these agencies count the area and extent underneath the solid cloud cover.
MASIE can see through clouds.
http://www.freedomsledder.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=61033
Quote 1) “Our data is from passive microwave imagery. It is not affected by clouds, it obtains complete data every data (except when there may be a sensor issue), it has only consistent, automated processes. So we have much more confidence in comparing different days, years, etc. in our passive microwave data than is possible using MASIE.”
Quote 2 (Regarding your spotting ice under the breaks in the clouds) “Finally, MASIE’s mandate is to try to produce the best estimate they can of where there is any sea ice. So they may include even very low concentrations of ice <15%. In looking at visible imagery from MODIS, in the few cloud-free regions, there does appear to be some small concentration of ice where MASIE is mapping ice and our satellite data is not detecting ice. This is ice that is very sparse, likely quite thin. So it will probably melt out completely in the next week or two."
MASIE says we’re down to 3.8 million km^2 as of Sep. 4, 2012.
Okay, so ‘quote’ tags don’t work like I hoped they did…
Rereading, think I misunderstood what I read and quoted? MASIE doesn’t see through clouds?
Re David Ball’s comment about the Royal Society reading their own reports. Perhaps they also read the reports of the Royal Navy’s expeditions that were undertaken as a result of those RS reports which were failures and encountered pack ice which impeded their progress?
Re: SideShowBob says:
September 5, 2012 at 8:36 pm
looks like the Watts effect is alive and well 🙂
As soon as Anthony calls it, it goes the other way!
We should hook him to a day trading machine, he’s peak or low picking abilities are uncanny, I propose as soon as he makes a prediction we short it the other way, sure as day follows night the watts effect will kick in, the stock will be jinxed and will do down not long after.
————————————————————————————————————-
Objection.
According to the graph “Northern Hemisphere Sea Surface Temperature” from the Danish Meteorological Institute, as well as the graphs “Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperatures” by NOAA ESRL and “Arctic Sea Surface Temperature” by Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) – HYCOM Consortium for Data-Assimilative Ocean Modeling – HUGE swathes of the Arctic Ocean are at -2 degrees Celsius, the freezing point of saltwater.
In fact, these areas are so large that I assume a whole lot of ice forming there already – which, due to it’s “slushy” nature, only doesn’t show up on any microwave-, radar- od visual scan, becase said scans can’t distinguish it’s image from the scatter of waves, yet.
I, for one, expect a MASsIVE refreeze starting these days – in fact, so much of it, that some people will be going to bring up sensor issues to explain it away.
***
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.
For the several folks that have wondered why the maximum extent has been more stable a value than the minimum, consider that the Arctic Ocean is mostly surrounded by land. It has a definite maximum size, and when the whole thing ices over in winter, the area effectively flatlines at that amount – about 14 million sq miles. YMMV, depending on your definition of the area of the Arctic Ocean
No, Smokey, the Arctic has never been this ice-free in summer before. When has the Northeast Passage been ice-free? Instead of bringing non-existent evidence, you bluster ‘BFD’. Do you think the “Warm Arctic, Cold Continents” effect is a fantasy?
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.
dvunkannon says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:22 am
I know that Smokey is quite capable of defending himself, but you are trying to change the discussion. The northeast passage has been navigated by ICEBREAKERS. Wake up and smell the roses, not cow farts. Very poor redirect attempt.
Smokey says: September 5, 2012 at 8:43 pm ….
I must say, that was pretty amazing, Smokey.
In one brief post, you managed to:
1) completely avoid supporting your own position
2) counter-attack with an ad hominem argument.
3) rebut with a 100% straw man argument.
The challenge still stands:
Give it your best shot — which year and which specific eyewitness accounts support Arctic-wide melting similar to this whole past decade?
***
Phil. says:
September 5, 2012 at 11:45 am
And in being rude apparently, while maintaining your anonymity behind a pseudonym.
****
Hypocrite much?
REPLY: Yes, stunning hypocrisy from an academic at Princeton. Me thinks maybe it is time to teach Phil some manners himself. – Anthony
“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.
David Ball.
Thanks for trying to support the proposition that there have been similar melt events in the past. As a skeptic, I would point out:
1) You refer to a single report by a single whaling vessel.
2) 2,000 square leagues is ~ 50,000 sq km. This is actually a relatively small change in the grand scheme of things, where the summer extent is typically two orders of magnitude larger than this (although I will grant you that we have no data about the changes in other areas — they may have also been unusually low areas, or they could have been close to normal (or even above normal)).
3) The Royal Society had economic incentives to push this idea (ie getting funding for scientific expeditions).
4) You provide no contemporaneous reports of the NW Passage or the NE Passage being open, nor of other areas being unusually ice-free.
So, yes, you have provided a glimmer of hope for the claims of other similar melting events in the last few centuries, but certainly nothing that is close to conclusive.
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
1) You refer to a single report by a single whaling vessel.
I provided EXACTLY what you asked for. The first time.
tjfolkerts says:
September 6, 2012 at 8:58 am
Read the articles posted.
dvunkannon says: September 6, 2012 at 8:22 am
“No, Smokey, the Arctic has never been this ice-free in summer before. ”
Be very careful using the word “never”. “Never” = 4 billion years and that is an impossible claim to support. Something like “never in the last 200 years” or “never in the last 2000 years” would make the hypothesis more testable and more relevant.
Even 10,000 years ago conditions were quite different, with the Arctic getting significantly more energy during the summer (due to changes in the earth’s orbit). Such conditions would have led to less summer ice — quite possibly even “nearly ice free” conditions.
Of course, the orbital conditions are different now, so this “natural cycle” cannot explain the current low ice conditions.
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.
@David Ball
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Sea_Route#Ice-free_navigation
Not ICEBREAKERS… Commercial shipping. I’m sorry you consider it a redirect, but if Smokeydokey has evidence that current conditions are part of a ‘natural cycle’ that means they have happened before. (Sorta the definition of cycle…) So I think it appropriate to ask about a specific part of the current conditions, and see what evidence the Smokester has in his humidor. The ice has mainly retreated away from the Bering Strait and the northern coast of Russia, so if these conditions happened previously, that is what we would expect to have evidence of previously.
Was it ice-free in 1937, when the ICEBREAKER Sedov got trapped in the ICE for a couple of years? Was it ice-free in the 19th Century? 18th? 17th? 16th? How long is this natural cycle, anyway?
Of course, if Smogey _had_ evidence, he wouldn’t retreat to ‘BFD’…
@tjfolkerts – point taken! Someone upthread was saying how balmy it was during the Carboniferous, so things can’t be so bad…
David Bell queries: “Do you have any understanding of what you write? … “
I don’t understand your point. I never specifically claimed current ice conditions were unnatural, so that whole post is a straw man.
I DID claim that natural changes in the orbit could not be used as a reason for the current conditions.
* Do you doubt that the orbit was different 10,000 years ago?
* Do you doubt that the increased insolation at that time could have lead to nearly ice-free summers ~ 10,000 years ago?
* Do you think that this specific natural cycle of slow, predictable orbital change has suddenly changed to produce more summer heating, accounting for the current decline in ice?
David Bell also claims: “I provided EXACTLY what you asked for. The first time.
No, I asked “Give it your best shot — which year and which specific eyewitness accounts support Arctic-wide melting similar to this whole past decade?”
You did provide a year (1817) — that was a good start. I asked for “accounts” (plural) but you provided an account (singular) — a little weak, but still it is something. But you clearly failed to provide evidence of “Arctic-wide melting”, instead providing information about one coast of Greenland. Finally, your quote only shows that the ice in that area decreased, but gives no absolute values for the total area before or after, so it cannot directly confirm or deny even that the area in question was larger or smaller than current conditions.
On the other hand, navigation of both the NW Passage and the NE Passage were both first accomplished about a century ago – in expeditions that took 2-3 years to complete as they tried to navigate the summer ice. So despite massive efforts by many countries, no one ever found a way thru the Arctic in all of those other years that were supposedly similar to current conditions. In the last decade, however, many commercial ships have made the passage thru the Arctic with relatively little trouble. That provides pretty strong evidence that the current conditions are indeed different from the past!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, once again, “Give it your best shot — which year and which specific eyewitness accounts support Arctic-wide melting similar to this whole past decade?”