From the University of Calgary Utoday:
Melting Arctic ice cap at record low – By Heath McCoy
Think of a poor hamster on a spinning wheel, caught up by momentum and unable to stop until it’s overwhelmed, sent tumbling, crashing out of control inside.
That’s the analogy John Yackel, head of the department of geography, makes when he considers the annual summer ice melt in the Arctic, which he’s been closely monitoring for the past 15 years – documenting the ice cover as it’s steadily shrunk in the wake of Arctic and global warming.
Thoughts of imminent crashes seem particularly ominous this year as last week marked the unofficial peak, or the end of the summer ice melt, with ice levels more dramatically diminished than at any time since satellite monitoring began 33 years ago.
The previous record low for Arctic sea ice extent, set on Sept. 18, 2007 with a 4.17-million sq.-km. ice cap, was already shattered by the end of August this year when it had melted to below 4-million sq. km.
“This is the smallest minimum ice extent we’ve ever had, and not just in the satellite record, but probably in the last million years,” says Yackel, a sea ice geophysicist and climatologist.
From the patterns he has observed, this year’s extreme melt could be the beginning of a frightening trend.
Yackel and the university-based Cryosphere Climate Research Group use satellite technology to research the physical properties of Arctic ice. As recently as the 1980s, most of the ice in the Arctic Ocean was “multi-year ice,” – thick ice that would remain throughout the summer. At that time, the split between multi-year ice and seasonal ice – ice that would melt away in the summer – was about 80 per cent multi-year and 20 per cent seasonal.
“In the last 20 years we’ve almost gotten to the point where we’ve reversed that ratio,” Yackel says, predicting the ice extent that covers the Arctic Ocean “is likely to be gone in the summers within the next 20 to 25 years, if not sooner.”
The depleting ice cover would have serious ramifications for the planet. Arctic ice acts as a reflector of sunlight, helping regulate the Earth’s temperature, cooling the climate.
“When there’s no longer that sea ice below the air mass and it’s just open ocean, that’s when more moisture off the ocean’s surface gets into the atmosphere and the water vapor in the atmosphere makes for more violent storms,” says Yackel.
“We can also expect to see an increase in storm frequency and storm intensity for most of the world’s populated places as the Arctic and Earth continues to warm.”
Well since the we are still awaiting increased inensity and frequency — with all the “bad” things happening — he must be right it must sort of a tipping point we are awaiting.
How [is] this guy different than a witch doctor of yore — oh yeah those guys needed some weed to go into a trance, here it is just CO2 fumes.
OK, OK… the governments of the world should require hamsters to wear little helmets when they are running on their little wheels and they should require the Arctic Ice extent to remain stable year after year. The hamsters and the Arctic must comply or face severe fines.
See? That would be a fine example of governments working together to solve the pressing problems of the world.
As for this study? I recommend the good professor keeps studying for another 25-30 years and report back around 2045 or so. This study wasn’t ready for prime time.
Roy, you are aware aren’t you that Arctic sea ice extent has been shrinking much *faster* than in the model projections, see e.g. http://www.realclimate.org/images/seaice10.jpg, in fact the current sea ice extent is below the lower limit of the credible interval of the ensemble. Sea ice extent is an example where the models (and climatologists) are obviously unduly optimistic.
“with ice levels more dramatically diminished than at any time since satellite monitoring began 33 years ago.”
A piece of useless information as far as the historic record is concerned
“This is the smallest minimum ice extent we’ve ever had” How does he know? “and not just in the satellite record, but probably in the last million years,” says Yackel,”
Once again, the word ‘probably’ creeps in just to give dramatic effect without any proof whatsoever.
Why is the trend always frightening??? Even if the Arctic is getting warmer that in itself is a good thing. The UK gets warmer, Russian and Canadian wheat fields become more productive. Sadfly I suspect Summer 2013 will bring lots of sea ice, because its clear that the year to year variation in sea-ice extent is far greater than any underlying trend. Furthermore, the tipping point clearly is nowhere near being reached, because that winter sea-ice keeps on coming back.
We just need to hunker down and enjoy the ride, like these guys:
““This is the smallest minimum ice extent we’ve ever had, and not just in the satellite record, but probably in the last million years,” says Yackel, a sea ice geophysicist and climatologist.”
And probably not with equal odds. The principle of insufficient reason rules here.
“From the patterns he has observed, this year’s extreme melt could be the beginning of a frightening trend.”
And it could be the beginning of nothing and/or something awesome with equal odds. Same reason as before.
““In the last 20 years we’ve almost gotten to the point where we’ve reversed that ratio,” Yackel says, predicting the ice extent that covers the Arctic Ocean “is likely to be gone in the summers within the next 20 to 25 years, if not sooner.””
“And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” — Mark Twain
“The depleting ice cover would have serious ramifications for the planet. Arctic ice acts as a reflector of sunlight, helping regulate the Earth’s temperature, cooling the climate.”
At high angles of incidence the reflectivity of water exceeds the albedo of sea ice.
““When there’s no longer that sea ice below the air mass and it’s just open ocean, that’s when more moisture off the ocean’s surface gets into the atmosphere and the water vapor in the atmosphere makes for more violent storms,” says Yackel.”
Which increases cooling of arctic waters. But increases the abundance of the notorious greenhouse gas H2O.
““We can also expect to see an increase in storm frequency and storm intensity for most of the world’s populated places as the Arctic and Earth continues to warm.””
Which can only happen if the temperature differential increases between the poles and elsewhere. Which does not occur under his own scenario.
Despite all the clip-art phrases and common wisdom that gets bandied about: This subject is so unstudied that we are not even able to speak credibly about what differences can occur with and without sea ice in the arctic. And then there’s the Antarctic.
Oh really!!
Roy, you do know that Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking *faster* than the climatologists models predicted, don’t you?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/01/2010-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
(repost as initial post didn’t appear)
Here is some more though in this case the article is not peer-reviewed. 😉 Interesting read though.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/
Garethman, thirty years ago we had similar rainfall yet with more ice cover so there is no logical correlation…
It’s called weather, sometimes at this time of year it dumps the heavy rain on Ireland, sometimes in the Irish Sea, sometimes in the North Sea. This time it just happened to dump it on the land in between the latter two. It only takes a shift of a few hundred miles in the path of a low pressure system, something well within the natural boundaries of normal weather patterns.
Why does everything have to be down to some doomist climate theory?
Physorg ran with this:
24 Sept: Physorg: Melting Arctic ice cap at record
With Arctic ice cap at record low this summer, University of Calgary geography professor John Yackel predicts serious consequences for the planet
Provided by University of Calgary
http://phys.org/news/2012-09-arctic-ice-cap.html
but what interests me is, if you do a search “john yackel” + physorg, you get almost 470 results, with the majority being physorg articles on all kinds of subjects going back as far as 2006, yet all or most of the results showing some part of the following:
“University of Calgary geography professor John Yackel predicts serious consequences for the planet”
omicron technology of douglas, isle of man, now owns physorg, says wikipedia. they are obviously very good at disseminating this kind of scary story.
“Garethman says:
September 26, 2012 at 2:10 am
IN the UK we have just had the heaviest 24 hours of rainfall for 30 years. This is in addition to a
wet cold summer and cold winters, the 4th year in a row. It may be all coincidental, but it’s looking suspicious that the ice has dramatically declined in the same period.”
=========
“The beginning of the 14th Century is marked by one of
the great disasters of human history. The rain started in 1315, and
continued particularly in the summers for 7 years.”
Above quote from http://geochemistry.usask.ca/bill/Courses/Climate/The%20Great%20Famine_prt.pdf
Just to put things in perspective!
Garethman says:
September 26, 2012 at 2:10 am
>>
IN the UK we have just had the heaviest 24 hours of rainfall for 30 years. This is in addition to a wet cold summer and cold winters, the 4th year in a row. It may be all coincidental, but it’s looking suspicious that the ice has dramatically declined in the same period.
>>
But the ice has NOT declined in that period.
http://i50.tinypic.com/24enw2c.png
we need to look at the whole year , not one day.
But surely Arctic sea ice is self regulating?
Won’t all that recently formed almost fresh melt water due to the August storm driving the ice south be floating on the surface of the North Atlantic and be carried back into the Arctic to quickly re-freeze?
And won’t the sinking of cold briney water South of Greenland now slow down and in turn slow down the drift north of warm water?
There are many studies which suggest the Arctic was warmer, and with less ice, for most of the last 10000 years.
Here are a few.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/little-ice-age-was-the-coldest-period-for-10000-years/
Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth – where are you?
26 Sept: Bishop Hill: Wood insanity be the reason?
Insanity is a possibility, but more likely this is just the great law of unintended consequences – so often a feature of well-meaning politicians. Drax, a major UK energy generator is about to convert one of its major power stations to burn wood. Since wood is categorised as a renewable energy source this plan will enable them to escape the EU’s strictures against fossil fuels…
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/9/26/wood-insanity-be-the-reason.html
There was I thinking the hamster description fitted the effects of the August Arctic cyclone on sea ice.
I should have known better,
Could someone send me a package of global warming. I am down at Bryce Canyon Utah with a couple of horses doing an endurance ride. I had to get up in the middle of the night two nights ago and drill holes in the floor of my living quarters horse trailer cause a pipe burst and I had 25 gallons of water pumped onto the floor. Hay, maybe that is where the missing arctic ice has gone. Got the furnace cranked up now and the door to the water pump open to keep it from freezing.. Just where is that Global Warming when you need it?/sarc off
“We can also expect to see an increase in storm frequency and storm intensity for most of the world’s populated places as the Arctic and Earth continues to warm.”
I’ve seen this before and there are a number of questions arise about the physics:
1. Aren’t tropical storms Earth’s way of balancing its energy budget, and as the Arctic is getting while the tropics stay more or less at the same temperature, won’t that result in less intensive storms, not more intensive?
2. If the water vapour leads to more intense storms, doesn’t that mean more clouds? More clouds mean more albedo and less warming doesn’t it?
“It may be all coincidental, but it’s looking suspicious that the ice has dramatically declined in the same period.”
Doubly suspicious as the temperature in the Arctic has been below or at average over the whole of the summer.
What we have here are wannabe witch-doctors, unfortunately they’re practising in the wrong era, there is too much information to hand for their outpourings to have any effect on those that don’t want to be affected.
This friends and foes, is the begining on the end of the CarboNazi regimes and belifes, on an issue that has been becomed a religious obsesion, the Taha morgana on windmills and what the game is about.
http://tv.nrk.no/serie/brennpunkt/mdup11000912/25-09-2012
# its in norwegian, and I hope that scandinavians see this and gives a roundup of whats the main points of this video, and in the end, the Minister admits the fraud on behalf of the so called Green power setificate issue and windmill prodjekts in general, they where fooled and she is the ONLY one to admitt it, so far”
And the kick goes to the MSM to.
Enjoy.
I have been into this for many years, and its been a bumby road and the expirience is eyeopening, and acusations, strawmann, flattout lies and forgerys of intent, but I have waited because the reality will soner or later manifest it self, the truth prevails.
It may take a while, but I know one thing, education is essence and without sites like this, the Lie would have been victorious, and we all would been draged into a costly and comletly usless scam.
Because this is a scam.
Some of us have known this for years.
peace
Garethman says:
September 26, 2012 at 2:10 am
>>
IN the UK we have just had the heaviest 24 hours of rainfall for 30 years. This is in addition to a wet cold summer and cold winters, the 4th year in a row. It may be all coincidental, but it’s looking suspicious that the ice has dramatically declined in the same period.
>>
The ice extent has NOT declined in that period it has increased! What is suspicious is why we are told to look just at the minimum. Swings have been increasing in both directions, maxima have gone up as well , they just don’t put that in headlines (in fact they don’t even mention it).
Look at the anomaly data, note the increased swings:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
now if we plot ALL the data with a 6m or 12m filter we get to see that ice extent is recovering. The big melt ended in 2007:
http://i48.tinypic.com/dzj70k.png
The claim that this year’s sea ice summer cover is the smallest for probably 1 million years is a wild guess not supported by any evidence. The MWP had low ice cover which the Vikings used to help the expansion to Greenland.
So 30 years of satellite data is enough to make these claims? I don’t think so.
The old seadog. says:
September 26, 2012 at 12:49 am
Almost 200 years ago , the UK Admiralty was saying much the same thing…..
Yes, but with one important difference. Although they seem to have thought that the warming trend they had observed would continue (it didn’t) they did not try to extrapolate too far into the future or the remote past.
January to june 1878 temperature in Central Englang rose from -2.8 to 16 degrees. That’s 37.6 degrees per year. Extrapolating that means by 2012 the temperature will be 4318°C.