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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Phil, this link doesn’t work for me.
http://iwcoffice.org/cache/downloads/ebu021ch9r4g4gs8oc8ckg48w/SC-64-BRG1.pdf
Not that I should spend my Saturday drifting about the arctic. I’ve got quite a Honey-do list.
That animation of the storm was terrific! What I see, however, is not “a heating up Arctic” but merely the import of heat (via air or water currents) into the Arctic by weather patterns which have shifted north. Warm air in the Arctic does not come from the Arctic as the sun has little ability to rapidly increase the temperature in that manner due to its low angle. Heat must therefore be transported in from lower altitudes. The question is not “why the low Arctic ice extent” but rather “why the shift in northern hemisphere weather patterns and when will the shift southward once more?”
Richard deSousa,
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.”
This is a load of global-warming-denialist-rubbish.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg
If that were true, then the extents should have been low also in the 1950’s , but they weren’t:
http://nsidc.org/icelights/files/2010/11/mean_anomaly_1953-2010.png
PWNED!
Nightvid Cole,
You seem to believe that you know all the forcings and feedbacks, and thus can state definitively exactly how much Arctic ice there should have been in the 1950’s. In reality, you have no idea how ignorant you truly are. You believe you know, based on Wikipedia. As if.
And I am still waiting for scientific evidence proving that CO2 causes global warming. It may. But without evidence it is merely a conjecture. And that conjecture is looking increasingly dubious:
http://i27.tinypic.com/25fuk8w.jpg
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1995/plot/rss/from:1996.83/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.83/normalise
Conjecture? Tyndall demonstrated that CO2 is a greenhouse gas in laboratory experiments in the mid 1850s. Countless lab experiments since then, in high school and universities, have demonstrated the radiatively absorptive properties of CO2. A great amount of work has gone into determining which frequencies of the radiation spectra are absorbed by CO2 and other gases (like water vapour, ozone, methane etc). It is an empirical fact that increasing the amount of CO2 in a volume of air in the lab will, all other things being equal, warm it.This is not conjecture, it is empirical fact. The evidence that CO2 can cause global warming is stark.
Rather, one has to concoct, or extemporise, more complex arguments to explain how CO2 can not warm the atmosphere, considering its capacity to absorb (and re-emit) radiation.
R.W. Wood did the experiment the right way, and debunked Tyndall.
I agree that radiative physics is valid and that CO2 slightly delays photons from escaping to space. But the whole catastrophic AGW debate is based on the belief that there is measurable warming. However, there is no direct, testable evidence, per the scientific method, that human emissions make a difference.
Further, WUWT has completely falsified lame experiments purporting to ‘prove’ that CO2 heats air. It’s in the archives, look it up. R.W. Wood’s experiment remains the gold standard. And if CO2 actually did heat air in a measurable way, then there would be hundreds — no, thousands — of experiments validating that claim. Those experiments would be in peer reviewed journals everywhere.The fact that there are very few, and that those all have big problems with methodology, shows that there is no measurable warming from CO2. R.W. Wood was right.
Finally, the planet itself shows the true cause and effect:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.25/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
CO2 changes follow temperature changes. There is no scientific evidence you can post like that, which shows that CO2 causes temperature to change. None. It is possible that CO2 might have a slight effect. But no one has been able to measure it directly. Therefore, it remains a conjecture.
Barry says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/19/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-13-2012-arctc-sea-ice-minimum-reached-its-all-gain-from-here/#comment-1085922
Henry says
Come on Barry! we had this argument before. D.Boehm is right. I also could not find any proof that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than cooling. The closed box experiments alone are not enough to prove that the warming effect is greater than the cooling effect.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011/
(please study the arguments made there if you want to learn something)
Either way, the (arctic) ice will all freeze back, whether you want to believe it or not,
You don’t have to worry about a thing. Just keep your pants on.
My data set shows we are on a cycle, on an a-c wave, with wavelength 88 years consisting of 44 years warming and 44 years cooling. According to my calculations, within this cycle we are now already 17 years on the cooling part. Remember: this is energy-in which is not the same as energy out. There is (quite) some lag between these two. If you count 88 years back from today we are now at the same point as 1924. There is a plus or minus 2 years that I will allow for errors. That means we could be at about the same point as reported in this newspaper from November 1922:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
please read the actual newspaper report. Does it sound familiar?
Now please. Have patience. It will take at least 2 decades for all the ice to come back, as it did, from 1922-1945. For those of you who cannot stand the cold (like me): buy some extra warm cloths. Winter in 2013 and 2014 in the NH is going to be bad. Very bad. This is because the acceleration of cooling is still very high.
Caleb says:
September 22, 2012 at 3:46 am
Phil, this link doesn’t work for me.
http://iwcoffice.org/cache/downloads/ebu021ch9r4g4gs8oc8ckg48w/SC-64-BRG1.pdf
Not that I should spend my Saturday drifting about the arctic. I’ve got quite a Honey-do list.
Me too!
I can open it on my computer but not on my phone, don’t know why!
It’s title is:
“Seasonal Movements of the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Stock of Bowhead Whales: 2006–2011 Satellite Telemetry Results”
Maybe you can find it via another route (once honey is satisfied).
The figure I referred to showed that in some years Bowheads spent a lot of time near Wrangel.
D Böehm says:
September 22, 2012 at 10:56 am
R.W. Wood did the experiment the right way, and debunked Tyndall.
No, it was a quick experiment with inadequate controls.
I agree that radiative physics is valid and that CO2 slightly delays photons from escaping to space.
What it really does is capture IR photons from a high emissivity source and then collisionally transfers the energy to the low emissivity atmosphere. Only near the tropospause is the atmosphere able to emit to space so the original emitting surface is replaced by a considerably colder atmosphere and so less IR is emitted to space. This behavior is a function of CO2 concentration.
But the whole catastrophic AGW debate is based on the belief that there is measurable warming. However, there is no direct, testable evidence, per the scientific method, that human emissions make a difference.
There is abundant evidence that the present CO2 concentration depends on fossil fuel emissions.
Further, WUWT has completely falsified lame experiments purporting to ‘prove’ that CO2 heats air. It’s in the archives, look it up. R.W. Wood’s experiment remains the gold standard.
Certainly is not, the experiment is actually very difficult, I’ve yet to see a good one.
And if CO2 actually did heat air in a measurable way, then there would be hundreds — no, thousands — of experiments validating that claim. Those experiments would be in peer reviewed journals everywhere.The fact that there are very few, and that those all have big problems with methodology, shows that there is no measurable warming from CO2. R.W. Wood was right.
No what it shows is that it’s a difficult, expensive experiment to do right.
Phil says:
There is abundant evidence that the present CO2 concentration depends on fossil fuel emissions.
I would agree that human CO2 emissions are collecting in the atmosphere. But the planet disagrees regarding any putative warming as a result:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0167610eb5f3970b-pi
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1995/plot/rss/from:1996.83/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.83/normalise
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/GlobalTroposphereTemperaturesAverage.jpg
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Bastardi-HadCrut15-years.gif
When the planet and the models disagree, the planet is correct and the models are wrong. Always, without exception.
And this is what happens during ice age transitions.
But your ‘analysis’ does not address the cause/effect of CO2 rise/temps from industrial emissions. Having essentially removed the trend in your graph, the strongest effect remaining is the ENSO fluctuation, which DOES influence CO2 on short time scales.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985Metic..20..437K
You’ve shown that ENSO causes short-term fluctuations in CO2 levels, which has been known for more than 20 years. But ENSO fluctuates on interannual time scales and cannot be responsible for the rise in CO2 over the last century or so. Therefore temps cannot be said to be leading CO2 on that time frame.
We know for a fact that the recent 40% rise in atmospheric CO2 is almost entirely anthropogenic in origin. Your argument seems to seek to deny that.
Gunga Din says:
September 21, 2012 at 12:00 am
This may be OT but it occurred to me that I’ve read a lot and heard a lot about “The Ice Age”. But all of it seems to deal with the Northern Hemisphere. What happened in the Southern Hemisphere? I know there’s less land and so perhaps less evidence but, can someone provide a link or two to some good and understandable info? Thanks in advance.
It’s been many hours since you asked this very appropriate question, but I’ve seen no answers yet. Let me try to address a few points, then I’ll let our partners in Argentina and New Zealand and Australia (for reasons that will become clear below) address more details.
The southern edge of the most recent ice in north America was roughly an area ending just south of Chicago IL and New York City, NY. On the other continent, the caves in Spain were (more or less) continuously occupied through the last Ice Age. Since all of these are right at 40 north latitude, let’s assume that (if geography were identical in the north and south) the Southern Ice Age would be ice-covered from the Antarctic continent “up” to latitude 40 south.
But ….
40 south is south of the southernmost tip of Africa. So “glaciers” would be limited in Africa to regions around the mountains … and those are very close to the equator, and so heat on the plains below the volcanoes would prevent “large” glacier expanses. (Maybe somebody can find glacier moraines in the plains around the volcanoes of Kenya?)
40 south goes south of Australia, and just north of Tasmania, and right through New Zealand. Would Tasmanian or New Zealand mountains have moraines? Maybe, maybe not. Those glaciers might end over the water, and so drop all glacier ice-carried rocks into the sea around the island. Don’t know. All of those mountains have “very short” “very narrow” valleys ending very close to the sea, so the glaciers would be very different than the huge masses covering the large flat areas of middle North America. Equally, the entire island might easily be covered, and so the glacier ice would scrape off all evidence of its presence entirely from all three islands.
There’s only one land mass left to look at: 40 south crosses mid Argentina after going through the Andes. IF glacier evidence were present at 40 south, they’d be most likely found in the Argentina plains, on top of the mountains at the southern tip of the continent, and more land to the EAST of the Andes further north as glaciers run down from the Andes towards the Amazon basin (sound weird doesn’t it!) and Buenos Aires delta.
barry says:
You’ve shown that ENSO causes short-term fluctuations in CO2 levels…
I have shown empirical scientific evidence. You have given your conjecture.
Evidence trumps.
…ENSO fluctuates on interannual time scales and cannot be responsible for the rise in CO2 over the last century or so. Therefore temps cannot be said to be leading CO2 on that time frame.
Wrong. That is exactly what I am saying. CO2 lags temperature on all time scales out to hundreds of millennia. I would have posted the CO2/Temp relationship farther back, but the WFT database only goes back to 1958. If you have a graph supporting your belief, which goes back a century or more, post it here. Scientific evidence only, please, not some globaloney high priest’s pal reviewed model based conjecture. Next:
We know for a fact that the recent 40% rise in atmospheric CO2 is almost entirely anthropogenic in origin. Your argument seems to seek to deny that.
Labeling someone a denier takes the place of thinking, and of scientific evidence.
CO2 has risen. So what? It is clearly not having the effect that you believe it should have. You are in the position of arguing with reality. Not credible. When there is a divergence between models and reality, the planet is right, not the models. I am simply agreeing with Planet Earth, while you are disagreeing.
Boehm.
Your graph shows no trend at all. You have removed it. Yet we know that CO2 has risen fairly steadily to 40% above preindustrial levels. Therefore, your graph cannot explain the CO2 rise, and can say nothing about whether temps lead or lag at these time scales in the modern era.
Whereas we know that the CO2 rise since the industrial revolution is caused by anthropogenic emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Seeing as we’ve emitted twice as much as has been added to the atmosphere, you’re going to have a hard time arguing that this addition comes some other source (like rising temperatures). You’d have to make the anthro contribution disappear first – separately from any natural contribution, and with immediate effect in the system. I don’t think so. That’s magical thinking
Temperature changes are not the cause of 40% rise of CO2 since the industrial revolution. We are.
barry,
I provided empirical evidence based on real data. All you provided was your evidence-free conjecture, which is contradicted by Planet Earth.
I agree that the rise in CO2 is due to fossil fuel combustion. So what? There hasn’t been any global warming for at least fifteen years. Thus, your belief system is being falsified by the planet.
And the null hypothesis has never been falsified… unlike your conjecture.
barry,
You can keep disputing the empirical evidence provided by Planet Earth. But your misplaced belief in catastrophic AGW is not supported by any scientific evidence.
Believe in empirical facts, barry. Not in baseless conjectures. Believe in the null hypothesis. If you do, you won’t go wrong.
Henry@Barry
Barry I had a look at some UAH data and I have come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with that data.. There is no correlation whatsoever, meaning the results are all over the place. In the old days we would say: you cannot make head or tail of it.
I have subsequently had some UAH feedback, admitting that the reference zero and calibration point might be suspect i..e the calibration as such could be the problem. Last I heard they will adjust downwards. My data set on maxima shows that it started cooling in 1995 (energy-in). From most data sets including my own it shows that earth was the warmest (energy-out) at around 1998.
However, even so the oceans have a lot of stored energy, so there can be a delay on decadal scale before you see the last of the warming effect (that ended in 1995). I am however confident that we are near a lowest point on arctic ice and that from next year and the following two decades ice in the arctic will grow back.
Hello Henry,
I well remember here the chorus of “recovery” that accompanied the 2008 minimum after the record-breaking 2007 minimum, and which crescendoed in 2009 when the minimum was even greater than 2008. Back then, a lot of people here were convinced we’d turned the corner.
I don’t think I’ve seen one person acknowledge their hastiness now that the previous record has been smashed, and the downward trend has not only continued each year, but steepened with each year.
So here you are making a prediction. You expect recovery to begin “from next year.”
What would it take in terms of the coming years’ sea ice extent to make you rethink your position? Would a new record minimum be enough? If not, what? Is there anything I could hold you to?
With the sea ice in the Arctic at a record summer minimum, and Antarctic Ice apparently at a record winter high, would it not make sense for the two figures for sea ice to be added together each month to show whether there really is a net gain or loss in the combined total? Such information would surely serve to show whether the planet is generally warming as opposed to a slight shifting of heat concenration.
[Look at the WUWT Sea Ice Page for that plot. Mod]
Henry@barry
I have come a long way from absolutely believing Al Gore’s “an Inconvenient truth” to where I am now, realizing that very few people have identified the precise cycles of warming and cooling, and what (chemical) reactions in the upper atmosphere drives them.
Suffice to say that I think man has little or no influence on climate. Heat drives up CO2, not man.
Contrary to most scientists in this field I looked at maxima as the variable rather than average temps.
According to my data set, maxima started dropping in 1995. From the curve of dropping maxima, (cooling), I learned that it is an ac-wave and the best sine wave I could get for it is for a wavelength of 88 years, consisting of 44 years warming and 44 years warming. That means “warming” started in 1951, just about the same time as when man (or is that Mann) learned to measure CO2 in Hawaii.
However, those studying SST’s seem to believe in a 60 years cycle. 16 + 1995 =2011. So I would have expected the minimum of (arctic) ice at 2011. It is now 2012. Let me give myself a 2 years error margin. That means I think ice (in the arctic) could still drop a bit further until 2013. After that, ice will come back, until at least 1995+44=2039
if it does not work out that way, plus or minus 1 year, you can call me a bad statistician. OK?
Boehm
Seeing as you agree that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of increased CO2 in the atmosphere since the IR, your argument about temperature change causing CO2 change was a complete and utter red herring – indeed, it is contradictory to your acknowledgement of the role of fossil fuel burning in CO2 rise. That is baldly incoherent and very suggestive, as is your changing of subject and goalposts.
There is plenty of empirical evidence, from observed and calculated absorption spectra, to satellite data showing decreased radiance at the top of the atmosphere at precisely those bands in the spectrum where CO2 absorbs. We have observed the increasing greenhouse effect in the atmosphere from space.
You have been saying this is all conjecture. Resoundingly – no! The greenhouse effect of CO2 is one of the most studied aspects of climate science, up there with studies of the sun, oceans and water vapour, for sheer experimental data and observation. You have absolutely no idea what you are saying.
You mean you will never change your opinion, you will reckon in any event that you got the numbers wrong? No possibility of falsification, then?
If there is another record minimum after 2014, I will suggest to you that you are not a bad statistician, but that your premises need revisiting. How’s that?
You can also check out the global sea ice area product at Cryosphere Today.
Here’s a direct link.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
Eyeballing, global sea ice coverage has decreased by at least 1 million sq kms over the satellite period.
Sorry Barry
small mistake here
I learned that it is an ac-wave and the best sine wave I could get for it is for a wavelength of 88 years, consisting of 44 years warming and 44 years warming.
That should read
I learned that it is an ac-wave and the best sine wave I could get for it is for a wavelength of 88 years, consisting of 44 years warming and 44 years cooling.