I’ve been watching the JAXA sea ice data on the WUWT sea ice page intently for the last few days. Click to enlarge.
I was ready to call the minimum this morning, but thought I’d get a second opinion, so I wrote to NSIDC’s Dr. Walt Meier
On 9/19/2012 8:34 AM, Anthony wrote:
> I think we’ve reached the turning point for Arctic Sea ice today, do
> you concur?
> Anthony
who responded with:
Yep: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
If you’re interested I could write up a guest post some time soon (maybe
this weekend); might be useful to expound a bit more on the differences
between NSIDC and MASIE/IMS (it’s still just a bit higher than us, but
as you’ve probably seen it did pass below its 2007 level). Nice
interview on PBS by the way.
walt
__________________________________________________________
Walt Meier Research Scientist
National Snow and Ice Data Center Univ. of Colorado
UCB 449, Boulder, CO 80309 walt@xxxx.xxx
Tel: 303-xxxx-xxxx Fax: 303-xxxx-xxxx
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be
called research, would it?” – Albert Einstein
__________________________________________________________
Walt, thanks for the compliment about my PBS interview. As for the guest post, I’ll trade you.
I’ll trade you a guest post on WUWT for making good on your promise of NSIDC “eventually” publishing your daily data like JAXA and other sea ice monitoring outlets do.
Quite a lot of time has passed since that promise was made. Thanks for your consideration – Anthony
Worth noting is this statement from the NSIDC today:
On September 16, 2012 sea ice extent dropped to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest extent of the year. In response to the setting sun and falling temperatures, ice extent will
notnow climb through autumn and winter. However, a shift in wind patterns or a period of late season melt could still push the ice extent lower. The minimum extent was reached three days later than the 1979 to 2000 average minimum date of September 13.This year’s minimum was 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) below the previous record minimum extent in the satellite record, which occurred on September 18, 2007.
I think Walt meant to say “will” instead of “will not” here: In response to the setting sun and falling temperatures, ice extent will not climb through autumn and winter.
[update: he says its been fixed to read “will now”, I’ve corrected text here also. -A ]
At 3.41 million sq km, that means that in the ARCUS forecasting contest, everybody missed the forecast mark:
Download High Resolution Version of Figure 1.
Note that NSIDC’s Dr. Meier and WUWT had identical forecasts of 4.5 million sq km submitted to ARCUS, so we share the failure equally. That big storm in the Arctic really busted up the ice as well as the predictions.
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D. J. Hawkins says:
September 19, 2012 at 10:23 am
I agree. The open Arctic Ocean will radiate vast amounts of energy to space, energy which comes mainly from other parts of the globe via ocean currents. Thus we have a climate governor in the north polar region that complements Willis Echenbach’s equatorial thermal governor in the tropics. And this is why there is no stable climate regime substantially warmer than that of the Eemian or Holocene, there is only the other colder regime, the stable ice age regime. Stefan-Boltzman shows us that it takes a great deal of added forcing to warm the globe but a correspondingly small decrease in forcing should have a pronounced effect on global temperature. Climate change in the direction of global warming is a chimera, it is a farce. Mankind’s only climate worry is the descent into the next ice age.
As I said, by my analysis, all the arctic ice will be back, by 2039, as it did freeze back from 1925-1945
Does anyone here have access to that newspaper report from 1920 or 1921 that I saw on WUWT where all were surprised about same ice melt at that time?
Indeed. Can you let me know what the cause(s) the decline since 1979?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
BA says:
September 19, 2012 at 11:11 am
At 3.41 million sq km, that means that in the ARCUS forecasting contest, everybody missed the forecast mark
Yes, while some nonscientists have been predicting cycles and recovery, the experts have been predicting ice decline. But real ice has been going down much faster than even most of the experts (except Maslowski) thought it would. Not a good sign.
*
Watch this space.
We haven’t been measuring global cycles long enough to know for sure what is normal over say 1000 years.
I have followed the Arctic ice for a long time and the comments about it.
It made me wonder if the yearly difference between maximum and minimum could tell a story too.
Normally we only hear about the minimum and some times the maximum, but the change from winter to summer and back again tells also something of the conditions of the polar climate/weather.
I do not feel competent or able to do such an analysis, but maybe someone could do it?
Anthony,
You didn’t post it above, but it’s worth noting that ARCUS called for late summer update after the NSIDC Sea Ice Extent dropped to record levels in mid-August. The breakdown of the handful of responses can be found here (sorry, I don’t know the html tag for an image). Of those, I would say 3 of them were spot-on (we were still projecting from a month out) and the Meier et al contribution was reasonably close.
(Since someone will be quick to notice, yes, mine was the worst. But I did say in the write-up that I thought the results were too high. And I’d said from the beginning that 2012 would be at or below previous records.)
Jimbo:
Indeed. Can you let me know what the cause(s) the decline since 1979?
Not sure why you’d ask me; if you’re curious there are hundreds of articles by scientists on this. Warming air and water are obvious answers, with albedo feedback to speed things along. I’m no scientist but I guess those “north of 80” air tempertures that DMI models will show more warming if the small area north of 80 finally contains more open water; until then it’s just estimating air temperature a few feet above ice.
Take a look at the death spiral in Antarctica.
I don’t think anybody has predicted a death spiral already in Antarctica, especially not in winter. Have they?
BA:
At September 19, 2012 at 12:49 pm you say
Thankyou. I had observed that but your confirmation is appreciated.
Richard
The divergence from the pack of the three lowest years-2007 2011 2012-seemed to happen around August. It was said that in 2012 there was a big storm that broke the ice up. Was there any similar event in 2007 or 2011?
tonyb
HenryP
I suspect it was this article from 1922 that you were looking for;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
tonyb
richardscourtney:
BA:
At September 19, 2012 at 12:49 pm you say
I’m no scientist but I guess
Thankyou. I had observed that but your confirmation is appreciated.
Cue the laugh track! But afterwards let’s restore the rest of my sentence:
“I’m no scientist but I guess those “north of 80″ air tempertures that DMI models will show more warming if the small area north of 80 finally contains more open water; until then it’s just estimating air temperature a few feet above ice.”
Can you explain how that’s wrong? The lateness of DMI temperature going down this week would (in my laymans view) reflect the fact that there is an unusual amount of open water above 80.
Don’t see what is all the fuss about, expect the same or similar again the next summer, and for some years to come.
Ice summer melt and winter formation in the Arctic is all to do with temperatures of the North Atlantic currents inflow.
Less ice build up in the winter larger the extent of the ice summer melt.
The summer temperatures have little changed in the last 300 years, while the winter temperatures have been on the rise for the last 300 years.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MidSummer-MidWinter.htm
Anthony,
I would echo Richard S Courtney’s and etudiant’s requests to welcome, without strings, a further contribution from Dr Meier. The more open communication there is, the better.
NORSEX and DMI show an even more pronounced “recovery” (see the sea ice page). Don’t know why large chunks of perfectly good ocean being covered with pretty much useless ice is called a “recovery”, but I think the arctic circle temps from DMI are even more interesting. As several people have pointed out, the absence of ice mean an awful lot of energy being dissipated that would otherwise have been trapped under the ice. So, initially I would expect warmer than average air temps, and once the heat from the water has been exhausted, a precipitous decline. Too early to tell, but have a look at arctic circle temps from DMI:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Hmmm….I immediately wondered if another cyclonic storm or other wind event could drive it lower, and I see this on the NSIDC page:
Please note that this is a preliminary announcement. Changing winds could still push ice floes together, reducing ice extent further.
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
September 19, 2012 at 11:27 am
Looks like the Antarctic has set another record as well, on the upside…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/
====================================================================
Has Mann tweeted anybody asking if the antarctic ice cover is a record?
I can read a graph as well as anyone, and that was a noteworthy melt. I’ve looked at the animations numerous times to try to see what is occurring but can’t see from the one year animation. The ice is clearly too thin along the coast of the former Soviet Union to withstand the summer melt, but it is not clear to me if that is a water temp (current) or other cause. I did some searching, but could not find any temperature data for the Barents Sea that would validate the warm Atlantic current idea.
Gerry Parker
Richard deSousa on September 19, 2012 at 10:11 am
It’s not CO2 which caused the lowest minimum of the Arctic ice pack this year but the warm AMO! Once the AMO turns negative, and it will, every thing will return to “normal.”
————
So how do you know that the AMO is especially warm and why is it especially warm?
A number of those ice curves show decreases after this time of year. You could still have a weeks worth of down still to come.
BA says:
September 19, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Jimbo says
Take a look at the death spiral in Antarctica.
=============================================
I don’t think anybody has predicted a death spiral already in Antarctica, especially not in winter. Have they?
============================================================
Wrong, the climate models did, as well as James Hansen.
@D. J. Hawkins says:
and to Robert Austin who agrees with him
>…Any back-of-the-envelope estimates on how much more heat will be lost in the Arctic before the ice cover is re-established as opposed to the 1979-2000 average? What effects might this have elsewhere on the planet?
Water has a very high emissivity so it is going to freeze very rapidly but once there is nice white ice on top, that consideration is largely gone. No one has mentioned the temperature of the water, just the presence of ice. If it was actually warm, that might take a little time to freeze.
Please remember that if it is getting colder ‘up there’ the ice buildup in a year can be very large so it is going to be far more interesting to watch the rate of freezing in tonnage than how far it happens to spread. I see lots of ‘multi-year ice’ but that tells us little. Ice volume, lots.
I still can’t get cranked up about an ice free Arctic in summer. It is a normal condition a great deal of the time and it is not causing any harm that does not come naturally. If ships can traverse it, the oil fuel savings will be massive. And if BC remains obstinate, Alberta can run their oil export pipeline to the Manitoba Coast.
Crispin in Waterloo;
Water has a very high emissivity so it is going to freeze very rapidly but once there is nice white ice on top, that consideration is largely gone.
>>>>>>>>>
Fresh water yes, salt water no. Salt water bodies have to cool to the freezing point from top to bottom before ice can form. So, once you’re talking about open water, that’s a lot of heat the ocean has to give up to start forming ice again.
It would be interesting to develop a new statistic to capture trends in the polar see-saw – like some sort of weighted average of the two poles taking into account the amount of ice on land as well as water.