Guest post by Dr.Tim Ball
Al Gore did more to bring melting Arctic ice to global attention and concern than anyone. Polar bears became victims and poster animals for destructive human production of CO2. He’s done more than most in creating false ideas and images for his political and economic agenda.
When asked what’s wrong with global warming people usually hesitate for some time, then say glaciers will melt and sea level will rise. That’s probably why Gore made it a major part of his movie. To add emotion to fear the demise of polar bears was threatened. People were easily fooled because few know anything about the Arctic Ocean and the ice conditions.
The Arctic Ocean, a thin line across the top of most world maps is over 14 million km2 (compare US 9.8 million km2). Every year an area equal to the US melts and refreezes and based on a record that began in 1980 (satellite launch 1978 but useable data took 2 years) we presumably can determine the true amount and variations. Gore likely knew people wouldn’t grasp the size of areas involved so added polar bears and the threat of thinning – “thin ice” is a well known danger sign.
Now alarmists use summer 2012 melt to bolster their failed anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis. As usual information is selective, limited and mostly wrong. Only the lowest area estimate was reported when the range from different agencies was over 1 million km2 or 25 percent. Again thinning was added for increased emphasis.
They claimed air temperatures were higher, but it depends on what sector; Alaska and the Bering Sea had record winds, ice and cold. Even the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), the primary source of information for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a four sector approach was necessary.
But which ice is thinner this year and why? Is it the 10 million km2 of new ice formed every year or the old or semi-permanent pack ice? What determines ice thickness?
The entire pack slowly rotates round the Pole driven by the polar easterlies, but location and break up are affected by wind patterns, which some already knew, but NASA finally acknowledged caused the changes in 2007 and again in 2012. This resulted in greater variation of ice amounts from 2007 on as the anomaly diagram shows, although the rate of loss leveled.
Source: (After) http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
The original claim of thinner ice was determined by comparing two Sets of submarine derived measures. The first Set was from USS Nautilus in August 1958 to HMS Sovereign in 1976. Then in 1992, as the global warming scare was growing, more under-ice runs were obtained. It was done to provide further evidence of the AGW hypothesis. However, in both Sets they weren’t measuring thickness. The scientists had no say in the data and how it was recorded. They had to take what the submariners were recording and like pilots need to know the height of the land they need to know how far down the ice extended.
Source: http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-stories/under-arctic-ice
The photo of the bottom of Arctic ice shows it’s not level as most expect. In the study downward extending ice was called a keel. “To qualify as a keel, an ice draft must be at least twice as deep as the local minimum draft measured from an the undeformed (sic) ice, it must be the deepest draft among all local drafts, and it must be deeper than 5.0 m.” They concluded, “Several errors can occur because of the limitations of the data, collection hardware, and methods selected to do the processing. Studies of the magnitude of errors in data gathered by upward-looking sonar systems indicate a 5% cumulative error and an absolute error of 0.3 to 0.5m.”
These are only part of the problem;
“A substantial effort was spent filtering and attempting to recover useful information from these data sets. The data had frequent ‘dropouts’ or sections of missing data. Additionally, the speed information which was critical for determining distance was often corrupted. Obvious errors were removed but questionable data remained which could effect the results.”
But what do they conclude?
“In summary, ice draft in the 1990s is over a meter thinner than two to four decades earlier. The mean draft has decreased from over 3 meters to under 2 meters”. It’s approximately a 1 meter change, but the error is 0.5 meter.
However, they’re not measuring ice thickness but ice draft, the amount of ice below the water line. This varies with snow load, which is reportedly higher because of the warmer open water area in 2012. Other problems include that the first Set was done in the cold period from 1940 to 1975 the second in the warmer period of the 1990s. Measurements were taken in different months, in different areas, with different equipment, one with narrow and the other wide beam sonar. But how did they get the second Set of data when, because of Cold War activities, especially Soviet submarines tracking under the ice, data gathered by US submarines was top secret and inaccessible?
The key was Senator Al Gore, a powerful politician totally committed to the global warming scam since he arranged NASA GISS director James Hansen’s appearance before Congress in 1988. By 1992 he was Chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology responsible for NASA and apparently with authority to create another deceptive piece in the global warming puzzle.
In 1992 the US Navy (USN) approved the boundaries of an area within which environmental data from Arctic submarine exercises could be released. It was called the “Gore Box” by the USN, so there is little doubt of the origin.
Water temperature is more important than air temperature in determining ice formation and thickness, but it’s also a factor in determining the overlying air temperature. Arctic air receives heat energy passing through the ice from the water that never drops below -1.6°C, as illustrated in the approximate energy budget schematic.
Source: Oliver and Hidore, Climatology: An Introduction (1984).
Melt on the underside of the ice mostly determines thickness and varies with water temperature. This is transported into the Arctic Basin primarily by the North Atlantic Drift with an estimated 8 Sverdrups (8 million m3 per second).
Source: SEARCH Science Steering Committee, Draft SEARCH Science Plan, Polar Science Center, University of Washington, Seattle, 2000.
In recent years increasing meridional flow caused more north/south flow. As a result there was a greater influx of warmer water, especially in 2012 in the sector affected by the North Atlantic drift. The heavy ice blocking the Bering Straits would also have kept more of the warmer water within the Arctic Basin.
The so-called permanent pack ice for late summer 2012 shows how it is protected by the Greenland and the Canadian archipelago. The amount of thinning showed the effect of influx of warmer water.
The pattern and extent of ice and thinning reflects the warm water influx.
Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
There are similar, albeit more extreme, examples in the historic record. On November 20th, 1817 the President of the Royal Society, London,wrote to the Admiralty:
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.”
This remark was made two years after the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora and in the middle of the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830). In 1992 we organized a conference titled, The Year Without a Summer? World Climate in 1816 at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa to examine the eruption, its impact on circulation and resulting weather patterns. Global temperatures were reduced, but not uniformly because an extreme meridional north/south wind pattern developed. It explains the ice conditions reported by the Royal Society that parallel those from 2007 but more dramatically in 2012. There is little doubt the ice would have been thinner because it’s primarily a function of wind and the influx of warm water, not the temperature. Maybe Al Gore, whose credibility is on very thin ice, can explain how polar bears survived the 1817 conditions or any of the other variations of weather and ice in the historic record.
Related articles
- NASA on Arctic sea ice record low – storm ‘wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover’ (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Scientist Provides Alarming Prediction That All Arctic Ice Will Be Gone in Four Years (inhabitat.com)
- This Insane Obsession With Arctic Ice (stevengoddard.wordpress.com)
- Cambridge scientist predicts Arctic will be ice-free in summer 2016 (itv.com)
“The heavy ice blocking the Bering Straits would also have kept more of the warmer water within the Arctic Basin.”
You nailed it…
[snip – way waaaay off topic and in another universe, plus religious component – Anthony]
Tim
Thanks for the very interesting article. I was carrying out research at the archives of the Scott Polar institute in Cambridge last week for my next article on historic variations in Arctic ice.
I noted this;
‘Observational data of the drifting station 1950-51-by M Somov
Volume 1 of 3 of this Russian north pole station on an ice floe
Middle of june onwards ‘the melting of the snow and ice took place very quickly although the air temperature remained close to freezing’
‘the sun shone…could walk about without a coat…some even tried to get a sun tan.’
‘because of the thaw an enormous amount of water accumulated on the ice’
‘walking was only possible if one wore high rubber boots reaching above the knees’ (because of the water sitting on the ice.”
‘many problems because of the thawing.’
The account described how later in the season some high spots became dry and these were little hillocks in a sea of icy water sitting on solid ice.
Reading through the archives it is clear that the Arctic ice extent is obviously greatly affected by how sunny it is, by storms, rip tides, winds. Much of the water is actually sitting on ice.
How on earth do Satellites reliably determine what is ice, what is water and what is water sitting on ice? Are they seeing merely the ‘high spots that become dry?’
tonyb
I’m sorry, but this article is full of errors! e.g. “Arctic air receives heat energy passing through the ice from the water that never drops below -1.6°C” … where did that temp come from? The freezing temp of sea water depends on it’s salinity which is not uniform across the Arctic!
REPLY: You’ve only pointed out what you believe to be one, where’s the rest? -A
Another error is the claim that the satellite record isn’t available pre-1980. The data provided by NSIDC (and shown in the graph in this article) start on October 26th, 1978.
Let me also note that albedo of open water north of ~70-80 lat, is closer to ice than water most of the year due to light reflecting off the water.
http://sun.iwu.edu/~gpouch/Climate/RawData/WaterAlbedo001.pdf
So much of the fear of run away heating at the poles due to melting is just plain wrong.
Zeke Tim didn’t say the data wasn’t available he said it took two years to get usable data.
Thanks Dr. Ball.
I shall have to take quite some time to digest all of your information, but as always it looks good and the “nit pickers” are busy – that is always a good sign telling me there is not much wrong with your article.
Algoreade! “The Truth Quencher”.
Zeke Hausfather says:
October 9, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Try actually reading the article next time.
“Every year an area equal to the US melts and refreezes and based on a record that began in 1980 (satellite launch 1978 but useable data took 2 years) ”
It says nothing about there being no data, it says instead that there is no useable data prior to 1980.
1. Thanks Tony B. I recall later on in the Cold War a Russian ice station drifted into American and then Canadian waters. It raised a question about intrusion into foreign territory because of the sector division boundaries that simply extended land based borders to the Pole. As I recall the ruling was that the station was Russian because it was built when the ice was in their water.
I agree with you totally about the nature of arctic ice and overlying melt water sometimes called freshets and spoke to the problem here:
http://drtimball.com/2012/2012-arctic-ice-melt-claims-distorted-and-inaccurate-its-the-wind-stupid/
2. I am well aware of the issue about Arctic water temperature and salinity because in tracking Soviet submarines we used to drop devices (bathythermographs) to determine water temperature with depth. This was necessary to determine the layering in which acoustics provided the best opportunity for detection.
I am aware the Arctic is the least salty of the oceans because of low evaporation rates and the influx of freshwater from the Russian rivers and the Mackenzie. I chose to simply say that the water must be at least warmer than -1.6°C, the temperature at which average ocean salinity water freezes.
No matter what anyone says water is the climate “controller” – it is the only substance capable of transferring significant amounts of energy because it is the only substance which flows around as ocean currents and it is the only significant substance undergoing phase change associated with significant amounts of energy.
How gasses at 1/1000 th of the density of water or soils are supposed to transfer any significant energy remains an unanswered question.
Claiming radiation doesn’t care about its propogation and radiation from cold objects can (somehow) warm warmer objects does not meet any obligation to demonstrate the energy transfer disparity.
Q = m X Cp X deltaT still applies – we KNOW it does no matter what radiation theory may claim – and with the atmosphere at such a low density the piddling energy transfer from atmosphere to surface becomes negligible especially when the bulk of the atmosphere is almost always cooler than the surface even at the poles.
The satellite visuals are clear: since 1979 the ice covers less area now than it did prior to 2006, and since 2006 it has see-sawed with larger variations than before between 1979 and 2006. If it weren’t for the larger variation, without doubt due to the loss of multiyear ice, we would be saying that Arctic ice loss has halted since ’06.
Spin it or not, there is a substantial and obvious ice loss. But what does this mean? Is it “unprecedented” when there are clear signs that the Arctic has lost much of its ice at various times over the last few thousand years without A-CO2? No. But you cannot argue away the loss of nearshore ice: it’s real.
The INCREASE of Antarctic ice is a real stumbling block for a global warming theory that says the changes are global. If the Arctic is a taken to reflect a global, not regional change, then you should be able to say that the Antarctic could equally be taken to reflect a global, not regional change. Like the two men in Hyde Park claiming to be Jesus, AT LEAST one of these positions must be wrong, and probably both are (as simplistic examples of both the nature and the extent of global changes, that is).
Al Gore reminds me of the polar bears I encountered in Churchill: in videos they are cute, cuddly posterchildren of sweetness and altruism, but on the ground they are scary animals with their own agendas prepared to eat not just your lunch but you, should you stand in their way. But that doesn’t mean we can whine away the Arctic ice melt. Our skeptical theories do indicate a reversal of (temperature) fortunes for Big Al around 2015, however, so what we have to do is point to the Antarctic, ask why the oceans aren’t rising as they were forecast (which means Greenland isn’t melting much as well as Antarctica) and hang tough. And steer clear of Al’s investment advice.
“In recent years increasing meridional flow caused more north/south flow. As a result there was a greater influx of warmer water, especially in 2012 in the sector affected by the North Atlantic drift.”
The first sentence in this statement is not clear to me. I don’t understand what flowed differently, and how that caused the “result” (greater influx of warmer water).
Gerry Parker
This article is full of misinformation and for the most part avoids giving any data on the present situation.
For example:
As usual information is selective, limited and mostly wrong. Only the lowest area estimate was reported when the range from different agencies was over 1 million km2 or 25 percent. Again thinning was added for increased emphasis.
Yes the different agencies show somewhat different numbers because they measure different quantities, for example some measure area and some measure extent. However they all show record lows for 2012, something Ball implies they don’t.
You can check that out here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
In recent years increasing meridional flow caused more north/south flow. As a result there was a greater influx of warmer water, especially in 2012 in the sector affected by the North Atlantic drift. The heavy ice blocking the Bering Straits would also have kept more of the warmer water within the Arctic Basin.
So there is an influx of warm water which is thinning the ice, so it is thinning after all? But what is this ‘heavy ice blocking the Bering Straits’, are we supposed to believe that the Bering Straits were blocked by ice this year? It certainly wasn’t.
The US Navy shows no more than a couple of meters thick last winter.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim365d.gif
Also he distorts the historical record, for example:
There are similar, albeit more extreme, examples in the historic record. On November 20th, 1817 the President of the Royal Society, London,wrote to the Admiralty:
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.”
Yes, the “impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated”, relative to what it had formerly be but the implication is that it abated to levels like today’s. However, the Royal Navy acted on that advice and sent a two ship expedition to sail between Greenland and Spitsbergen towards the North Pole. The expedition was unable to reach beyond 80º 34’N, the Dorothea was so severely damaged that they were forced to return to England. Unfortunately the RN found west of Spitsbergen “The ships were here hemmed in, in almost the same position where Baffin, Hudson, Poole, Captain Phipps, and all the early voyagers to this quarter had been stopped.” So much for the abatement!
The problem with attributing Arctic sea ice melt to ocean currents is these should affect sea ice all year round, whereas the melt is clearly a summer effect from 2007 onwards.
In 4 out of the 5 winters since 2007, the winter sea ice has almost reached the satellite era average. Which means amongst other things that we are seeing record winter ice formation.
It’s hard to see how there could be any other cause than increased solar insolation (combined with BC albedo changes).
Does anyone know when we can expect an update/resolution to the Mann v. Ball case?
I am looking forward to cruelly mocking Mann, as he well deserves.
Darn that history thing. If only we could somehow do away with all that old information. Seems to me that both sides of this debate like their historical information. What I really like is that this data is in historical context.
Phil. says:
“…the different agencies show somewhat different numbers because they measure different quantities, for example some measure area and some measure extent. However they all show record lows for 2012… The US Navy shows no more than a couple of meters thick last winter.”
Question: So what?
If the Northwest Passage was permanently ice free it would be an unmitigated benefit. The only unhappy folks would be the wild-eyed climate alarmist contingent.
Excellent post. Bravo Zulu
You know, they could solve this whole thing by simply drilling an Arctic ice core, and seeing what the ice there was like over the past million years.
Or not.
Dr Ball:
The “assumption” about ice albedo (65 in the graphic above that tries to display the Arctic heat balance) is correct only if that “Arctic ice” is on the equator. In today’s real world, it is dead wrong; but worse, leads to an opposite effect of additional global cooling.
Your source was: Oliver and Hidore, Climatology: An Introduction (1984).
It is a common error – deliberately spread perhaps as a very, very important part of the CAGW “fear” of the Arctic ice melt drama. Specifically, the CAGW myth holds that melting Arctic sea ice exposes the roughened, “dark” water to the sunlight – often also with the caveat or remark about “24 hours of sunshine in the Arctic summer.” The “dark” polar water absorbs the sun’s energy, heats the water (and ice and atmosphere) and thus causes more warming and more ice melt. The Arctic sea ice, on the other hand, is believed to reflect the sunlight back into space, thus cooling the planet/preventing global warming.
Now, the above is true if the sun is directly overhead – as I mentioned as if the polar ice were on the equator.
It is not.
However, this “part” of the CAGW myth IS correct for the latitudes where the Antarctic sea ice edge IS present. (The Antarctic sea ice is a “crown” whose furthest edge is very nearly a circle between 61 south latitude and 62 south latitude). At this latitude , at the equinox, the sun is between 20 and 28 degrees above the horizon almost the whole day, and at this latitde, the air mass is only 2 to 3.)
Thus, the CAGW polar ice amplification theory IS correct: ANY INCREASE in Antarctic sea ice from today’s “average” level DOES reflect additional solar energy into space, and DOES cool the planet. Further, the sun is closest to the earth in mid-September when the Antarctic sea ice is at its maximum each year, and thus even using an “average” yearly solar insolation value is wrong: there is more energy being reflected by the new, increasing Antarctic sea ice at its maximum than at any other time of the year.
But up north, in the Arctic? Wrong assumption. The arctic sun at time of minimum sea ice does not rise above 8 degrees above the horizon, and must penetrate between 30 air mass and 12 air mass – depending on time of day during the 12 hours the sun is actually above the horizon. At these low solar angles, the reflectivity even of rough water is at most only 25%, and rapidly rises towards 95% reflection of solar energy in most of the daylight hours. However, the exposed arctic water continuously lose approximately 117 watts per m^2 every minute of every hour that they are exposed. So melted sea ice exposes more area to evaporate water (loose energy) and does not absorb solar energy.
The result, of course when both record Arctic ice loss (a net cooling effect when sea ice melts) and Antarctic sea ice record high values (a net cooling effect when sea ice expands) are combined is even more global cooling.
The article states
“The key was Senator Al Gore, a powerful politician totally committed to the global warming scam since he arranged NASA GISS director James Hansen’s appearance before Congress in 1988. By 1992 he was Chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology responsible for NASA and apparently with authority to create another deceptive piece in the global warming puzzle.”
Al Gore was a member of the House Committee on Science and Technology when he was in the House from 1977 to 1984. In 1984, he was elected to the US Senate where he served until becoming Vice President in 1993. The author knows this in that he calls him “Senator Al Gore.” Gore was clearly not Chair of the “House” Committee on Science and Technology in 1992 nor was he chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (from 1981 to 1984, he was Chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology’s Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee).
I point this out not to “nitpick”. Nor is it an effort to invalidate the science of the posting on which I am remarkably unqualified to validate or invalidate. I point out this error because errors of basic facts are red flags to lurkers like me trying to figure out what is really happening to the earth’s climate.
The “settled science” arguments of the proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming have done much to push the lurkers of these blogs into what I guess is called the skeptics’ camp. I am sure it is tiresome for those of you deeply immersed in the science but it is important to get the simple non-science facts right. This is particularly true if the efforts of WUWT and Mr. Watts are to continue to build the credence it enjoys and needs to maintain its role as a voice that can reach out to the nontechnical of us on the sidelines trying to figure out what we and our governments should do.
D Böehm says:
October 9, 2012 at 5:09 pm
Phil. says:
“…the different agencies show somewhat different numbers because they measure different quantities, for example some measure area and some measure extent. However they all show record lows for 2012… The US Navy shows no more than a couple of meters thick last winter.”
Question: So what?
The same question again to a different post, comprehension not your strong point! The Bering Strait is between 30 and 50m deep, how could a mere 2m thick ice block water flow through it?
RACookPE1978 says:
October 9, 2012 at 6:01 pm
But up north, in the Arctic? Wrong assumption. The arctic sun at time of minimum sea ice does not rise above 8 degrees above the horizon, and must penetrate between 30 air mass and 12 air mass – depending on time of day during the 12 hours the sun is actually above the horizon. At these low solar angles, the reflectivity even of rough water is at most only 25%, and rapidly rises towards 95% reflection of solar energy in most of the daylight hours.
Rather misleading, the time of minimum sea ice is when it has stopped melting and has started to refreeze! The time to be concerned about the change in albedo is when the sea ice area is decreasing at its maximum rate, which just happens to be near the solstice when the sun is at its highest. This year the anomaly dropped rapidly to ~2Mm^2 below the recent average at day 168. At that date the solar angle is significantly greater than the numbers you quote and the albedo correspondingly so.