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.”
Just a thought from a layman. Maximum arctic ice melt is at the end of summer. So
why wouldn’t maximum arctic ice melt be at the end of the interglacial?
We just need more hamsters??
“Think of a poor hamster on a spinning wheel, caught up by momentum”
The hamster has no momentum: it is stationary; the wheel moves.
Would this scenario be so dire if it were a rich hamster?
““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.”
Am I right in assuming that no evidentiary basis was provided for this statement
I have a feeling that this unprecedented warming of the Arctic (among other catastrophic things) is going to lead to a refreezing of the Arctic and the climate scientists will be right again.
Where’s all this water hiding, because it isn’t in the atmosphere:
http://www.climate4you.com/GreenhouseGasses.htm#Atmospheric%20water%20vapor
Maybe it’s hanging out with all that missing heat!
He appears to suggest, or imply, that the same heat can melt ice AND evaporate water at the pole. No double counting allowed in thermodynamics.
Also, the Arctic sea-ice minimum occurs as the sun is setting in the Arctic. Not so much energy to absorb then, and more light reflects of oceans at low solar angles. What is happening is that the ocean is pi$$ing out heat like a punctured Zeppelin.
Soup: “Sea ice extent is an example where the models (and climatologists) are obviously unduly opt’imistic.”
Optimistic’, just a kind word for ‘wrong again’.
Otter says: They do it constantly enough that we’re pretty sure they are just having fun.
SasjaL says: A good descripton of the AGW hysteria …
P. Solar says: evidence is mounting that AGW alarmists display the same behavioural patterns as hamsters.
Hamsters with lofty aspiration towards lemminghood, it seems.
If you’ll excuse my ENGLISH… in the real world we call what the article is doing “talking shit”
I understand Anthony published this without comment, as yet another display of climate “science”…
Lord save me – momentum of hamsters, frightening trends, increased storms.
Interesting that no CO2 is mentioned, or drowning polar bears.
Brian Johnson uk notes that the USN Skate was at the north pole in 1959. Great picture, but obviously forged. John Yackel was not born yet, so that is ancient history. Myths handed down through the generations, you know.
Graphite says:
September 25, 2012 at 11:33 pm
Do hamsters on spinning wheels get caught up by momentum, become unable to stop until they’re overwhelmed and are sent tumbling, crashing out of control inside?
I’d have thought they’d just run out of puff, slow down until they regain their breath then kick on again.
http://www.achgut.tv/20110623674/
If climate alarmism ever tires of pandas & penguins as heralid animals…
And of course he just had to over egg the pudding and spoil it didnt he?
“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”
It all plays well to the pews at the Holy church of the one true faith, but why stop at a million?
Somebody’s gotta say it: ‘Mr. Yackel and Mr. McCoy’s wheels are turning but their hamsters are dead’. Or maybe: ‘It’s life Jim, but not as we know it’.
Somebody should start a collection of the worst climate catastrophe analogies, metaphors and such — a kind of Climate Hall of Dumb.
A Lovell
“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.”
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/intermediate-period-half-bond-events/
So we take 720, add that to 1315, and get 2035. Gee, right in the middle of the window predicted by several folks including some notables in Russia with Ph.D.s for the coldest part of the solar sleep cycle…
Oh, and someone needs to send the folks in Calgary a copy of Ice Age by John and Mary Gribbin so he can learn how Milankovitch Cycles work.
http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Age-MARY-GRIBBIN-JOHN/dp/0713996129/ref=sr_1_14
A very readable history of the discovery of how Ice Ages work. But along the way you learn that the major thing needed for an interglacial is warm enough north pole to prevent persistent ice. It only comes around for a few thousands of years of orbital elements, then ends.
What these idiots (and I rarely uses such terms) fail to grasp is that as soon as we have what they so fully demand, persistent multi-year ice that does not reduce we are headed back into the next glacial. Pronto.
We barely dodged the bullet coming out of the L.I.A.
Like a dog chasing a speeding car trying desperately to sink his teeth into the tire; one can only hope they do not get what they so desperately want, but do not understand…
It the Arctic ice pack effectively disappears in summers, so what?
The historical illiteracy (out right deception?) demonstrated by Yackel is interesting.
This is almost as good as the hysterical prediction of Arctic sea ice disappearing even in winter this century made by some putz recorded over at Tom Nelson’s site.
This guy is obviously an amateur researcher. Not one mention of the need for more money to study this even closer. And they expect the U of C to be a major research university. Got to work harder!
Here is an e-mail I sent to Dr. Yackel. I’ll let everyone know if he responds.
Dear Dr. Yackel: I read your article on Arctic sea ice and am troubled by your assertion that:
“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,”
Please provide documentation of this claim, specifically, the assertion that the ice extent is probably the smallest in the last million years. The following links are to studies suggesting that the during the Holocene, the Arctic Ocean was likely ice-free for periods during the Arctic summer.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379110003185
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMPP11A0203F
If you are unable to provide documentation of your assertion, then you bring opprobrium and embarrassment upon yourself and the University of Calgary by making scientifically undocumented, outlandish, and unsubstantiated claims.
Sincerely,
“With climatologists screaming fear upon fear in the news and with the other planets getting warmer too, what are we to do!!”, said Chicken Little.
You know, it’s getting real easy to have a distaste for these characters who call themselves climate “scientists”. The world is getting greener (NASA), fewer tornadoes and hurricanes (NOAA), and from what I can tell, the future is looking up. Almost like the Earth is now coming back to life after being frozen and nearly CO2 starved during the last ice age, a bit because mankind discovered oil and gas under the ground. Warmth is better and I really don’t give a dilly-squat whether the Arctic Ocean is all ice over the entire summer.
That’s what I’ll be shouting from the rooftops… welcome back Mother Earth!
Looking back on the written history of weather over the last 2000 years (it’s on the web), we’ve had it quite easy during the last century when we are not killing and hating ourselves.
A classic story put out by a grant addicted ‘climate scientist’.
The obvious flaws are:
1. The recent arctic cyclone, which smashed up the ice cap in mid summer. A lot of ice was transported to warmer waters and melted. Also, this caused more saline water to be introduced into the area just under the ice cap, inhibiting ice formation and encouraging the ice to melt.
2. No mention of the Antarctic ice cap which is at a record extent – just another one of those pesky inconvenient facts which have to be ignored.
3. No mention of the effect of the record levels of human generated soot, which aids the melting of the ice.
4. “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.” Typical, unsubstantiated alarmist BS and the comment about the last million years is definitely not true.
5. “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.” Typical, unsubstantiated alarmist BS and definitely not true. Sea water evaporation in the Arctic at 0-5 degrees C is essentially almost nothing.
Sea Ice in the arctic might or might not be on a “terminal decline” but with that even as a given, I can not see the second part of his thermageddon nightmare – ever more powerful storms. To get really powerful storms there must be a large gradient for the energy to flow through. If the temperatures in the Arctic are significantly (unprecedentedly?) increasing (which I still don’t buy), then that would argue that the temperature gradient is decreasing, which would tend toward more benign weather with less destructive consequences. The guy needs a meteorology course or three to get his head around his conclusion and definitely needs to quit diving in the Thermageddon-flavored Kool-Aid.
Clearly poor John Yackel suffered from a deprived childhood and never actually owned a hamster.
“but probably in the last million years”
Nothing like shattering your credibility in the opening paragraph.
“Arctic ice acts as a reflector of sunlight, helping regulate the Earth’s temperature, cooling the climate.”
For someone who claims to be an expert on the Arctic, he sure doesn’t know much about the Arctic.
He made the statement but must have known about the other interglacials, the Holocene climate Optimum and the peer reviewed evidence which I posted above which clearly indicates his statement is not true. As a climatologist why does Yackel not know these things? Or does Yackel know but thinks others won’t?