Sea Ice News Volume 3 Number 14 – Arctic refreeze fastest ever

After all of the news about a minimum record ice extent last month, this is interesting. As we know when water loses its ice cover, it allows a lot of heat to radiate into space as LWIR. many predictied that as a result of the extra open ocean surface, we see a very fast refreeze in the Arctic. It appears they were right. In fact, this is the fastest monthly scale refreeze rate in the NSIDC satellite record going back to 1979.

Here’s JAXA data plotted to show what has happened:

From the blog sunshine hours, here’s an analysis using NSIDC data:

=============================================================

Today is day 291 in the Arctic. The minimum in 2012 was on day 260 – 31 days ago.

If you calculate the percentage of ice gained (the refreeze) 31 days after minimum, then 2012 is the fastest refreeze ever!

Arctic Sea Ice Extent has increased by 43.8% since the minimum was reached.

Extents are in millions of sq km.

(And note I am using NSIDC data here and their algorithm is making the refreeze appear slow compared to NORSEX)

Year Minimum_Extent Extent Day Extent_Change Extent_Change_Pct
1979 6.89236 295 2.55691 27.1
1980 7.52476 280 0.95144 11.2
1981 6.88784 284 1.71672 20
1982 7.15423 287 2.41499 25.2
1983 7.19145 282 1.70096 19.1
1984 6.39916 291 2.08442 24.6
1985 6.4799 281 1.50769 18.9
1986 7.12351 280 1.8491 20.6
1987 6.89159 276 1.37713 16.7
1988 7.04905 286 1.76783 20.1
1989 6.88931 296 2.70935 28.2
1990 6.0191 295 3.46791 36.6
1991 6.26027 290 2.69726 30.1
1992 7.16324 282 1.67903 19
1993 6.15699 280 1.85199 23.1
1994 6.92645 279 1.1014 13.7
1995 5.98945 283 0.5189 8
1996 7.15283 285 1.77882 19.9
1997 6.61353 277 0.65032 9
1998 6.29922 291 2.35169 27.2
1999 5.68009 286 2.68723 32.1
2000 5.9442 286 2.32372 28.1
2001 6.56774 293 1.95252 22.9
2002 5.62456 287 2.41992 30.1
2003 5.97198 291 2.10126 26
2004 5.77608 294 2.37329 29.1
2005 5.31832 296 3.09221 36.8
2006 5.74877 288 1.72446 23.1
2007 4.1607 288 1.39556 25.1
2008 4.55469 293 3.33615 42.3
2009 5.05488 286 1.45951 22.4
2010 4.59918 293 2.88065 38.5
2011 4.30207 282 1.35023 23.9
2012 3.36855 291 2.62409 43.8

Source: sunshine hours

===========================================================

Here’s the NORSEX plot and NSIDC plot compared:

See all the data on the WUWT Sea Ice Reference Page

In other news. I’ve been in touch with Bill Chapman at UUIC/Crysophere Today to point out this bug:

It turns out to be an accidental issue, and he says:

“I was using the script to generate a plot for a publication that wanted a U.S.-centric view and it looks like I forgot to put things back to the way they were originally.

I’ll have it fixed by tomorrows update.”

Stuff happens, no worries.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
446 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Harold Ambler
October 18, 2012 4:05 pm

2012: slow to freeze, then slow to melt, then fast to melt, now fast to freeze again.
Or: a completely typical sea ice season, of the sort happening for millions of years, given star status by satellites and a nervous world.

Ron C.
October 18, 2012 4:05 pm

For comparison, the NIC ice charts showed that the “Record Arctic Melt” lasted exactly 1 month, from Sept. 16 to Oct. 16. The rest of 2012 ice extent was above 2007, at times by a great amount, as the NORSEX graph shows.
Comment by Ron C. — October 18, 2012 @ 1:08 PM | Reply

Lance Wallace
October 18, 2012 4:12 pm

It’s the fastest on a percentage basis because you have the lowest value ever in the denominator. In terms of actual ice added, 2005, 2008, & 2010 all added more ice.

Athelstan.
October 18, 2012 4:12 pm

Not gonna be on the BBC anytime soon, southern sea ice doing nicely still, as well – cripes the world is cold!

James
October 18, 2012 4:22 pm

Well I hope the bug fix puts Cryosphere today back on the Greenwich Meridian.
On a different topic, why is NSIDC the most pessimistic for Arctic sea ice content of all the agencies?
And why do they use different graph scales for the Arctic and Antarctic which would make the casual observer think that Arctic sea ice loss is many times greater than Antarctic sea ice gain?

mjk
October 18, 2012 4:22 pm

What did you expect after the biggest melt?
Mjk

Dave
October 18, 2012 4:32 pm

Take a close look at the Cyrosphere Today image for this year and you will notice a perfect circular region of uniform color around the North Pole. It’s been that way for at least the last month and was that way last year too. I submit there is something wrong with either the sensor used to collect the data or the algorithm used to analyze the data since such geometric uniformity is very unlikely.

alan
October 18, 2012 4:47 pm

OT:
What the @#$% is going on in Canada??
CONTROVERSIAL GEOENGINEERING EXPERIMENT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING DISCOVERED OFF CANADIAN COAST
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/controversial-geoengineering-experiment-to-stop-global-warming-discovered-off-canadian-coast/

David A. Evans
October 18, 2012 4:52 pm

This is no surprise. The energy loss with the open water will only lead to cooling.
I mentioned this a few years ago but not many picked it up.
This is a part of the negative feedback loop. The albedo argument for warming is and was crap.
This may go on for a decade until the Arctic ice re-stabilises to ’79 levels.
DaveE.

David A. Evans
October 18, 2012 4:57 pm

alan says:
October 18, 2012 at 4:47 pm
Do keep up, this has already been covered. It’s off the current links so I can’t easily find it.
DaveE.

Jimmy Haigh
October 18, 2012 5:01 pm

mjk says:
October 18, 2012 at 4:22 pm
‘What did you expect after the biggest melt?”
Not what you were hoping for eh?

tesla0x0
October 18, 2012 5:03 pm

Anthony,
What say you to the Yale boys on their comments on Arctic vs. antarctic ice?
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/10/slightly-increased-2012-antarctic-sea-ice-levels-no-match-for-arctic-declines/
“While there is a modest upward trend in Antarctic sea ice, that increase makes up for only a fraction of the decline in the Arctic, and global sea ice as a whole has been decreasing.
The actual data makes it hard to conclude that those wanting to point to the Antarctic as a counterpoint to what is happening in the Arctic may simply be trying to change the subject from the recent unprecedented global sea ice declines.”

MrE
October 18, 2012 5:07 pm

It almost looks like there was a mistake in the calculation on how much Arctic ice melted this year. However, I doubt anyone would/could make a mistake on the numbers.

dp
October 18, 2012 5:16 pm

The decline in the arctic included area loss to wind-driven ice. It should not be assumed all that ice melted. Review the arctic storms from August on. There was two weeks worth of ice movement in a matter of hours. And it happened at a time when the albedo was not much of a factor relative to LWIR radiation from the exposed ocean to space. That was, IMO, a net loss of energy to space.

October 18, 2012 5:19 pm

2012 (to day 291) already has a higher average sea ice extent (NSIDC) than 2011 (which may change).
And is closing in on 2007.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/2012-average-arctic-sea-ice-extent-so-far/
I suspect the NORSEX data (if I could find it) would show 2012 higher than both.

October 18, 2012 5:21 pm

For those warmists, do try and remember that 2012 was well above 2007 for a long stretch this year.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/agw-arctic-sea-ice-propganda-ignores-area/

u.k.(us)
October 18, 2012 5:25 pm

Even rotten ice needs to start somewhere.
sarc/

Mike Bromley the Canucklehead
October 18, 2012 5:32 pm

Gee, maybe the Arctic Ocean needs to do this every so often to purge excess heat….!
Oh no! The travesty meter has blown a fuse!

Editor
October 18, 2012 5:43 pm

If you calculate the percentage of ice gained (the refreeze) 31 days after minimum, then 2012 is the fastest refreeze ever!

I call Bogus! How do you write what Click & Clack say? “Bo-whoo-whoo-gus?”
If even more arctic ice had melted, each new sq km of ice would be an even greater precentage!
And if all the ice had melted, the regrowth would be infinitely greater.
Typo – predictied -> predicted.

davidmhoffer
October 18, 2012 5:52 pm

teslaoxo;
…those wanting to point to the Antarctic as a counterpoint to what is happening in the Arctic may simply be trying to change the subject from the recent unprecedented global sea ice declines.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It could just as easily be said that those pointing to the Arctic and global sea ice declines are tryong to avoid talking about the system as a whole. The fact is that the Antarctic ice is increasing, in opposition to cagw theory. More importantly, there are many other factors to consider. The arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, and hence should be expected to show much larger variation than the antarctic which is land surrounded by ocean. So a larger decline in the arctic may actually not be as significant as a record (but smaller) increase in the antarctic. Further, much of the decline in the arctic was clearly from unusual storm activity, and this is shown by the rapid reformation of the ice which will leave the average for the year much higher than 2007. Which says more about long term temps? The minimum extent for a 60 day period or the average for the year? Not to mention that the historical records make it clear that current ice conditions in the arctic are higher to this day than they were in the days of the Vikings.
Why not discuss ALL of these factors teslaoxo? Why try focus the conversation on a tiny subset of them?

October 18, 2012 5:53 pm

The negative feedback that David A. Evans mentions makes much sense. With open water there is no ice insulation; such sea water loses a lot of energy; this continues as long as the wind blows. When the wind stops blowing the water may start freezing fast.
The albedo difference between ice and open water is indeed small this time of the year at the arctic. See the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_reflectivity.jpg
In principle the negative feedback could be big enough to create a record size ice extent this winter.

Editor
October 18, 2012 5:54 pm

alan says:
October 18, 2012 at 4:47 pm

OT:
What the @#$% is going on in Canada??
CONTROVERSIAL GEOENGINEERING EXPERIMENT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING DISCOVERED OFF CANADIAN COAST

1) It’s really rude to post OT stuff within an hour of a new post.
2) OT stuff like this is what Tips and Notes is for.
3) THERE’S NO NEED TO SHOUT.
4) Nothing escapes WUWT. Why didn’t you read http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/16/climate-craziness-of-the-week-environmentalist-ignores-international-moratoriums-dumps-in-the-ocean/
5) Next time check my two week summary at my Guide to WUWT. That list provides a handy way to see what you’ve missed.

Tim Folkerts
October 18, 2012 6:00 pm

David A. Evans says: “This is no surprise. The energy loss with the open water will only lead to cooling.
If that were the case, then wouldn’t we expect that the ocean and air temperatures should be below normal by now from all that cooling? In fact, the temperatures are continuing to run above average.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries.pl?ntype=1&var=Air+Temperature&level=2000&lat1=90&lat2=70&lon1=0&lon2=360&iseas=0&mon1=0&mon2=0&iarea=1&typeout=1&Submit=Create+Timeseries
While I agree that open water will lead to more cooling than an equivalent amount of cooler, icier surface, the simple fact is that it first must cool to the “normal levels”. But by the time it cools to normal levels, then there is not impetus to continue to cool rapidly.

AndyG55
October 18, 2012 6:02 pm

Oh dear, the climate hypochondriacs will not be happy !!!!! 😉
An interesting point will be when it peaks in Feb/March.
Any estimates ?? I’m speculating, nearer 15 than 14.5

Bill Illis
October 18, 2012 6:07 pm

Another myth we have been subjected to is that snow cover is declining in the Northern Hemisphere.
That is not what the actual data shows (so some must have been using extreme data selection on the anomaly method to show this – but it is not true).
http://s19.postimage.org/bvov92idv/Snow_Cover_Week_39_2012.png

Brian H
October 18, 2012 6:08 pm

Dave;
That uniform circle is the latitudes too high for the satellites to scan. No worries.
Just a “visual” observation: it seems that the Arctic ice is swinging more to the extremes, and perhaps we should expect a high level of cover this winter. Sort of “feedback overshoot” at both ends.

u.k.(us)
October 18, 2012 6:11 pm

Ric Werme says:
October 18, 2012 at 5:43 pm
If you calculate the percentage of ice gained (the refreeze) 31 days after minimum, then 2012 is the fastest refreeze ever!
I call Bogus! How do you write what Click & Clack say? “Bo-whoo-whoo-gus?”
If even more arctic ice had melted, each new sq km of ice would be an even greater precentage!
And if all the ice had melted, the regrowth would be infinitely greater.
Typo – predictied -> predicted.
==============================
==========================
Take it easy Ric, it is not personal,
welcome the unwashed masses, they might learn enough to turn the tide.
[Reply: precentage –> percentage — mod ☺]

October 18, 2012 6:12 pm

Hogwash. The Arctic is melting. I read it online just days ago, in an article authored by a doctor, thus he must be a smart person. It must be true. Or something.
“As Arctic Melts, Business As Usual” Written by Will Hickey, YaleGlobal, Friday, 12 October 2012
http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4893&Itemid=189

tesla0x0
October 18, 2012 6:21 pm

Gentlemen,
Thank you for the responses thus far on the Yale article, and might I request that someone (smarter than I) directly reply from this forum to theirs with a very detailed and measured response showing the gaps in their perspective on the issue. Thinking there may also be deficiencies in their time averaging (only 1978-present) and smoothing of the data that skew the longer term view…so to speak.
I just wanted you to be aware of what was recently put out there,and Zeke Hausfather’s statements deserve a response.
Thank you,
Tesla

October 18, 2012 6:33 pm

The actual data makes it hard to conclude that those wanting to point to the Antarctic as a counterpoint to what is happening in the Arctic may simply be trying to change the subject from the recent unprecedented global sea ice declines.”
And those who point to the global average, are simply trying to change the subject from ‘why is sea ice going in opposite directions in each half of the world?’, and hide the fact that the cause cannot be a global effect.

James at 48
October 18, 2012 6:38 pm

At its nadir the ice was lacking in area however it was massively piled up against the poleward end of Greenland and nearby archipeleggo islands. It may have actually been pinned by the wind and very unstable in terms of potential energy. The combination of a sort of slow avalanche from that pile up and refreezing is now giving us something to behold.

pat
October 18, 2012 6:40 pm

I must say I believe I hit this season pretty good. Frankly I thought the ice would be fast growing and early. This will drive the Warmist crazy. Of course they will claim it follows the models. It does no such thing. But it does seem to follow weather patterns long observed by military and Alaskan meteorologist.

ossqss
October 18, 2012 6:42 pm

Let’s not forget the anomaly that provided a huge ice loss over a short time happen in the first place. Let alone the decade long weather pattern that year over year blew ice to warmer water.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/a-closer-look-at-ice-impacts-of-a-rare-arctic-summer-storm/

davidmhoffer
October 18, 2012 6:46 pm

Tim Folkerts says:
October 18, 2012 at 6:00 pm
David A. Evans says: “This is no surprise. The energy loss with the open water will only lead to cooling.>>
If that were the case, then wouldn’t we expect that the ocean and air temperatures should be below normal by now from all that cooling?
>>>>>>>>>
I’d think not. It is the ocean that is cooling more than normal. It must give up that heat through both conduction and radiance. As a consequence, I’d expect air temps to be higher.

Pamela Gray
October 18, 2012 6:55 pm

Natural oceanic oscillations cause heat to build in equatorial belt. Warmed oceanic pools eventually wind their way to the Arctic. Arctic cover gets melted off from this influx of warmed water and extra heat escapes to space at the pole. Slowly the system returns to a cooled state with less warming at the equatorial belt and year round Arctic ice cover begins to build up to baseline again. It’s the swing towards the other side of this pendulum that is nasty!

AndyG55
October 18, 2012 7:24 pm

davidmhoffer says:
“I’d think not. It is the ocean that is cooling more than normal. It must give up that heat through both conduction and radiance. As a consequence, I’d expect air temps to be higher.”
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2012.png
This graph shows your point. You can see the ocean heat escapinging into the atmospherer from day 230-260 (approx) then the dive back down to normal temps. It will be interesting to see how low the temp drops over the northern winter. If it drops to below 245K, i think we will see a very large arctic ice area at the beginning of 2013.

ou81b4t
October 18, 2012 7:39 pm

[Laugh] It’s all in the ‘Al Gore’ rhythm method perfected by Mann .. Ah the Thumb Print of Mann.

October 18, 2012 7:59 pm

Is the NRL map on the sea ice page a five-day forecast? It seems to show more ice on the Siberian coast, and especially around Wrangal Island, than the Cryosphere map does.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicennowcast.gif

Eliza
October 18, 2012 8:01 pm

Predict this will be last low Arctic anomaly in our lifetime. From now on the chill will set in as the low solar effect starts to kick in over the next 1000 years LOL

pat
October 18, 2012 8:09 pm

meanwhile, in Canberra, Australia, home to our Federal Parliament:
19 Oct: Canberra Times: Bob Douglas: Carbon age must end or we will
(Bob Douglas is a retired epidemiologist, a director of Australia21 and chair of SEE-Change ACT)
During a Canberra symposium last week on ”The Future of Homo Sapiens” in a 12-hour day of presentations and panel discussions, 15 leading Australian experts from climate science, public health, theology, philosophy, politics and economics expressed their dismay at the seriousness of the human predicament.
They bemoaned the continuing effectiveness of entrenched interests to maintain a culture of denial and inaction about the seriousness of the developing climate emergency…
For now, the climate-change denial industry remains in the ascendancy…
The good news is that many Australians are now acting and that the 50,000 strong Australian Youth Climate Coalition is working strategically with politicians on a number of fronts to awaken the dreamers to the reality that the threat is here and now.
The Manning Clark conference heard from former Liberal (Conservative) leader John Hewson, who is leading an international ratings agency that is monitoring the extent to which trillions of dollars of investment and superannuation funds are being used to prop up fossil fuels rather than promote renewable technologies. This is a brilliant strategy to force investors to a reality check on how their funds are being used…
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/carbon-age-must-end-or-we-will-20121018-27tqz.html

October 18, 2012 8:24 pm

The commenter “Phil” and I have had some interesting discussions (to me at least), during prior sea-ice posts, about what became of the ice that existed before that big summer storm.
A third commenter brought up an interesting topic, involving how different salt water is from fresh water.
Fresh water freezes at 32 degrees F, but fresh water close to freezing actually is less dense than slightly warmer water. IE: water of 32.5 floats on water at 33, which floats on top of water at 33.5, which floats on top of water at 34. Because the coldest water actually stays at the surface, it freezes quickly.
Salt water behaves differently. It doesn’t freeze until it gets down to around 28 degrees F, and also cold salt water simply sinks. The coldest water does not stay at the surface.
This made me wonder how the surface can ever freeze. In theory, at least, the water would need to get to 28 degrees from top to bottom, before surface cold water didn’t sink, replaced by rising, warm water from below.
My actual experience, from a time I lived and worked on the coast of Maine, is that when the air gets bitterly cold the sea-water gets a sort of oily look, just before it freezes. I wonder if the air gets so very cold it freezes the very topmost molecules of water, which then float in suspension with the liquid water, and don’t sink even as the coldest water does. Eventually these suspended molecules form a skim of slush, which is the beginning of the ice-cover. I’ve witnessed this.
In any case, it is dynamically harder to freeze salt water than it is to freeze fresh water. The fact the sea refroze so quickly this year suggests it remained very cold, after the summer storm, even if actual ice was sparse.

October 18, 2012 8:35 pm

I like to witness the stae of polar ice via the “North Pole Camera.”
Norwegan tapayers might not be too pleased, but American taxpayers saved a bit of money when the North Pole Camera drifted down to Fram Strait, but, before the ice broke up and the camera sunk to the bottom, the RS Lance retrieved it, or parts of it.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/RVLance_Buoy_recovery_2012.html
There is a neat time-lapse film of the RS Lance plowing about the arctic during the summer:
http://www.npolar.no/en/about-us/lance/

A Crooks
October 18, 2012 8:50 pm

“I was using the script to generate a plot for a publication that wanted a U.S.-centric view and it looks like I forgot to put things back to the way they were originally.”
Oh dear, Why do I feel so nervous here?

October 18, 2012 9:13 pm

I fear we are facing some hard times, and budgets in Europe and America will have to be slashed. Sadly, this may mean some of my favorite luxuries, such as the North Pole Camera, may vanish for a while.
While I am in favor of slashing the budgets of some areas of “climate science,” which includes fellows who care more about political theory than science, my experience has been that a lot of the scientists who gather the actual data from the arctic are actual scientists. What’s more, when you contact them you don’t need to take them to court to get data, or emply the FOI Act. They are more than eager to tell you what they know and share data they have on hand. I urge people to be polite, and contact the various agencies. I was pleasantly surprised, as a Skeptic who has grown thick-skinned and who has become used to curses and abuse.
One fellow responded with an eye-witness description of what he saw, while flying over the arctic ocean last summer. Considering I can’t afford to fly up there and see for myself, the response I recieved was one of the rare occations where I felt I was getting a lot of bang for my buck, in terms of tax dollars.
I fear we too often leap to the conclusion that anyone with a government job is automatically a mooch and slouch. However they are not all bad.
Perhaps some have stressed the lack of ice in the arctic as a way to get funding. I can hardly blame them, and I think we will miss them, if we need to slash funding to a degree where we get very little news from up north.

Roger Knights
October 18, 2012 9:15 pm

tesla0x0 says:
October 18, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Anthony,
What say you to the Yale boys on their comments on Arctic vs. antarctic ice?
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/10/slightly-increased-2012-antarctic-sea-ice-levels-no-match-for-arctic-declines/

One comeback would be to say that the average daily ice cover this year is greater than 2007’s and other low years:

sunshinehours1 says:
October 18, 2012 at 5:19 pm
2012 (to day 291) already has a higher average sea ice extent (NSIDC) than 2011 (which may change). And is closing in on 2007.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/2012-average-arctic-sea-ice-extent-so-far/
I suspect the NORSEX data (if I could find it) would show 2012 higher than both.

Roger Knights
October 18, 2012 9:24 pm

PS: I suggest that a new figure be added to the sea ice reference page that gives the average daily arctic ice cover going back to 1979.

October 18, 2012 9:32 pm

To demonstrate how you can get a good response, if you are a polite Skeptic, I’d like to share a response I got from NSIDC when I, as a nobody, emailed them with a bunch of questions.
Background: A situation had developed where a drilling rig was threatened by an area of ice, and closed down operations. It was in an area of the Arctic Ocean maps showed as “ice free.” I could get no reply from Royal Dutch Shell, as they seemed a bit gun shy, due to the fact Greenpeace was out to destroy them. Greenpeace was of the opinion there was no ice, as maps showed the area was ice free, and the “evil oil company” was making the story up. I got curious, and sent emails to various places, who replied and also suggested I contact NSIDC. So I did, and received the following polite response: (My questions, and scientist’s replies.)
————————————————————–
Hi Caleb,
One of NSIDC’s scientists answered your questions below.
Have a great weekend!
Cheers,
Shannon
——————————————————
From NSIDC scientist:
Did a 12 by 30 mile area of ice actually exist, where Royal Dutch Shell said it did?
Yes. I wouldn’t see any reason to mistrust them. Also, in operational ice charts, which track even small isolated floes of ice, the region had been marked as having sparse ice cover.
If it existed, could such ice actually be 82 feet thick, in one spot?
Yes. It’s unusual, but not impossible. The region where that ice came from may have been near Wrangel Island. Sea Ice tends to get pushed up against the northeastern part of the island and it can pile up, or ridge. As winds blow the ice toward the shore, the ice keeps piling up.
When winds reverse, that ice can break away from shore and start drifting in the ocean. These “ridges” can be quite thick – usually
~30-40 feet thick, but 80 feet is possible. I doubt the whole floe was 82 feet thick, but a portion of it was.
When an area is reported to be “less than 15%” ice-covered, can it have masses of ice this large in it?
It’s possible. The floe was 12 x 30 miles, which is ~20 x 50 km. While the grid cells of our output sea ice data are 25 km x 25 km, the actual resolution (“footprint’) of some of the input data is as low as 45 x 70 km. So the floe would make up only ~30% of that “footprint” if it was wholly within one footprint. If it is shared between more than one footprint, then it could easily be near or below the 15% threshold within each sensor footprint. Another factor is that during melt, our concentration estimates tends to be biased low. Usually this doesn’t affect the extent (>15%) much, but when there are isolated small floes present, they can potentially be missed.
Is there someplace I could learn more about such localized areas of ice?
Yes, operational ice charts, produced in that region by the U.S. National Ice Center and the Canadian Ice Service, are more focused on mapping specific areas of ice.
They are not consistent over time, so they’re not suitable for tracking trends, but they are better if one is in a vessel in the Arctic Ocean.
If possible, can you direct me to maps and/or satellite pictures that track such localized areas?
Here is a page from the National Ice Center:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/products_on_demand.html
The yellow “marginal ice zone” areas are <80% ice, but often much less than 80%, often 10-30%. These areas may not be seen by our passive microwave data.
To best track these small areas, one would use synthetic aperture radar (SAR). This has a high resolution (on the order of 10s of meters) and can "see" through clouds.
The Canadian Ice Service doesn't really track ice in the Chukchi, but their website might be of interest as well:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/
How would Royal Dutch Shell identify this ice-area? Do they do it independently? Do they ask you (or other agencies) for help?
They do it largely independently. They may look at the operational charts, but they likely purchase their own satellite data as well and they do their own analyses of the data. They also probably fly helicopter or aircraft reconnaissance flights, and probably also have a ground radar on the platform to detect ice.
————————————————————————
Recieving this polite reply made me feel a lot better about the future of "climate science." Not everyone is as rude as Mike Mann.

Al Gore
October 18, 2012 9:35 pm

Maybee one factor adding to summer melt was ash from a couple of Islandic volcanoes?

Fred
October 18, 2012 9:45 pm

Of course the freeze rate is higher after the record minimum. Our models clearly predicted are predicting will predict that this would happen. It’s just another natural consequence of AGW. Clearly when the arctic gets colder the Earth as a whole warms up.

donald penman
October 18, 2012 9:53 pm

This is like october 2008 where the ice broke up late in almost the same place as this year,the open water has had no chance to gain heat from the sun I would hypothesise The rapid refreeze in the area broken up by the storm is evidence that the new arctic minimum was as a result of the storm in my opinion.

October 18, 2012 10:25 pm

nah?, what did I tell you. It is just going to get colder and colder.
It will take another 4 years before we have “bottomed out”.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
stop worrying about the carbon. Start getting worried about the cold.

harry
October 18, 2012 10:31 pm

What I find weird is that this seems inconsistent with the anomaly graphs. To see where I’m coming from, a few weeks ago a new “low” was reached. At that time it didn’t trigger a new maximum anomaly, because although lower than any other low, the departure from the “norm” wasn’t bigger than other anomalies that can occur any time of the year.
Now if refreezing has occurred at the fastest rate ever, I find it difficult to see how the anomaly could have increased in size, to the extent that weeks later, it reached a new record.

donald penman
October 18, 2012 10:32 pm

If the the hypothisis of lack of heat gained from summer sun in the arctic is correct then arctic sea ice could recover quickly if the conditions were right during summer and we could see the Arctic sea ice expanding like it is in the Antarctic.

dp
October 18, 2012 10:33 pm

It appears the current rate of recovery is greater than for any other year that has been at this extent or less. And I think too that the recent arctic wind storms gave us all a lesson in how multi-year ice is formed (by compaction) and was lost on us.

tesla0x0
October 18, 2012 10:34 pm

Very Cool Gentlemen….thank you all.
Tesla

wayne
October 18, 2012 10:52 pm

If you look at the open ice-free km/day water in the Arctic Ocean, that is the water each day that can evaporate, 2012’s total was actually slightly lower than in 2011 due to the abnormally high extent of ice earlier in this season. As far as evaporation goes in 2012, it was roughly the same as in 2011, though just slightly below, same for 2007. The other years has less area/day than those three years. Seems there is a top forming.
It’s funny how physics tend to even things out when all factors are considered.

October 18, 2012 11:05 pm

Big ice melt = large volume of fresh water added
large volume of fresh water present = faster freezing

Michael Hammer
October 18, 2012 11:41 pm

Did I read the start of this post correctly “As we know when water loses its ice cover, it allows a lot of heat to radiate into space as LWIR”. The implications of this statement are PROFOUND. Water has an emissivity of around 1 in the thermal IR range (same as LWIR). The statement implies that ice radiates far less LWIR than does water which mans its emissivity in the LWIR much lower than 1. But the entire claim of positive feedback in the arctic is based on the supposition that ice is very reflective in the visible hence absorbs little of the incoming solar energy but has a LWIR emissivity of close to 1. Thus with ice, little energy absorption plus high emission hence cooling. Without ice same emission but more absorption hence warming.
But if ice is a poor emitter of LWIR then the case for positive feedback collapses. The presence of ice reduces both absorption and emission. In fact, since the amount of solar energy at the poles is quite low and effectively zero for 6 months of the year whereas LWIR emission occurs year round a better case could be made for it being negative feedback.
There is considerable evidence to suggest that ice is a poor LWIR emitter and I have argued that in the past. Here may be further evidence. I THINK THIS IS IMPORTANT FOLKS.

R Korbs
October 19, 2012 12:25 am

This stupid site can put a +ve spin even on diabolically bad news. Want a good laugh (or cry) read this one.
Sea Ice News Volume 3 Number 15 – Arctic refreeze fastest ever
No mention of the inconvenient truth that the ice cover is still only a little above ½ of long term average. Wont it be wonderful when it all melts in summer and we can slap ourselves on the back about the infinite % increase in cover as it freezes in autumn.
As long as the autumn freezing % keeps increasing there surly cant be a problem.
How devoid of intellectual rigor can a blog be and not be called brain-dead?

garymount
October 19, 2012 1:10 am

Could someone please plot a graph of the average radius of arctic sea ice extent over time.
The formula is to divide the area by pi then take the square root of that value, then plot that value.
I am curious what such a graph would look like, as I have a hunch that the closer you get to the pole, the harder it is in an exponential fashion to melt the ice. The warmists seem to be calculating a linear trend when predicting the no ice condition even though the area of concern sits on a sphere.

Kelvin Vaughan
October 19, 2012 1:12 am

Confucios say Mann in heatwave talk a lot of hot air!

LazyTeenager
October 19, 2012 1:28 am

Hee hee. The high rate of change is just a simple mathematical consequence of the very extreme depth of the fall in ice extent in the first place.
Someone in warmists land has been reading Anthony’s mind apparently, because they predicted that this trend argument will be a favorite one, once the peak had passed. I now count two uses of the “record trend” argument.

Matto Bat
October 19, 2012 1:32 am

This is a really positive thing, the sea ice increase attemp[ts to return the sea ice to its balance.
@Hammer That could very well be important, more research might do good though, because there could be many reasons that are not intuitive with such a small knowledge of the particular system.

Geoff Sherrington
October 19, 2012 1:48 am

Would not the more relevant measurement be the annual integrated ice extent (the area under the graph each year?) Seems to me that there would be a different energy ranking sequence if each year was summed day by day. Spread over a year, the minimum extent date and area seem to depend on several variables, some of which act in light and some in darkness, some months away from where the minimum extent happens. It’s not area that is the primary focus, it’s energy. including that difficult wind energy component & direction over a year.

Bloke down the pub
October 19, 2012 2:04 am

The Cryosphere today graph would indicate the sea ice area anomaly is getting larger. This means that while as a percentage the ice growth may be quick, in real terms it is not as quick as the long term mean.

TomVonk
October 19, 2012 2:07 am

Ice and water have basically the same emissivity (very near to 1) between 4 and 11 µm.
Beyond 11µm where is a bit more than a half of the total radiated energy for temperatures near freezing point, the emissivity of ice drops below the one of water – water decreases slowly towards 0.98 as the wavelength increases while ice quite brutally drops towards 0.94.
So yes ice emissivity is is below water (for the wavelengths above 11µm) but the difference is not SO huge – about 4 %.
And as it bears only on half of the energy, the ice radiates roughly 2% less than water.
Now even if this is not a big number, it can not be neglected as it represents some 6 W/m² less emission for the ice.
See https://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/pplassma/MedImaging/PROJECTS/IR/CAMTEST/Icewater.htm

John Marshall
October 19, 2012 2:13 am

Interesting but not ground breaking news.
How fast is Antarctic sea ice melting now? I would guess not very fast.

Roy
October 19, 2012 2:37 am

Wouldn’t the graphs be more convincing if you could get a hockey stick out of them?

MikeB
October 19, 2012 2:40 am

” As we know when water loses its ice cover, it allows a lot of heat to radiate into space as LWIR”
Can anyone explain to me why open water should radiate more than ice ? The emissivity of ice and snow is very close unity in the infrared, making it a near perfect blackbody. It also increases the Earth’s albedo by reflecting incoming sunlight. So the implication that open water would have a greater cooling effect that ice cover is not obvious. Can anyone provide evidence or logic for that statement?
Thanks MB

Peter
October 19, 2012 2:48 am

… and, one summer when the Arctic has melted out completely (in only a few years or decades from now), the instant the first ice crystals form during the autumn refreeze, then the recovery will be INFINITY PERCENT IN A MILLISECOND.
Berk.

richardscourtney
October 19, 2012 2:52 am

John Marshall:
At October 19, 2012 at 2:13 am you say of the rapid Arctic refreeze

Interesting but not ground breaking news.

But it is disappointing news.
I had hoped for an ice-free Arctic ocean with all the resulting benefits for trade and shipping.
And nobody has managed to tell me of any problems likely to derive from an ice-free Arctic ocean (although some people who know nothing about polar bears think the bears would not like it).
The rapid refreeze implies we may not get the benefits of an ice-free Arctic ocean. It is a matter for regret.
Richard

MikeB
October 19, 2012 3:08 am

TomVonk says:
October 19, 2012 at 2:07 am
Thanks Tom, I didn’t see your post at the time, you seem to have answered most of my question – nice link too. Do you or anyone happen to know what the albedo of water is? Especially at oblique incidence angles experienced by the Arctic Ocean?

Michael Hammer
October 19, 2012 3:13 am

Tom Vonk at 2.07 am. Hi Tom, I accept that ice probably has high emissivity but the same may not be the case for snow. Most diffuse scattering comes about from repeated rapid changes in refractive index in this case air to ice to air to ice etc. This also occurs of course in a cloud but In a cloud the water droplets are around 2 microns so visible light is scattered (wavelength 0.4 to 0.7 microns) while thermal IR simply diffracts around the droplets (wavelength 8 to 50 microns). This is why red light (and IR even better) penetrates a fog better than blue light. I am sure you know that already. But in the case of snow the ice crystals are far larger. Large enough to scatter even thermal IR which means I at least would predict that snow would be very reflective both in the visible and in the IR. If it is highly reflective (ie: absorptivity is low) then more or less by definition emissivity must be similarly low since emissivity must equal absorptivity.
Thus very clean ice ie: black ice would have high emissivity but ice which has a crazed surface or is covered with snow might well have a very low IR emissivity. All the photos I have seen of sea ice shows it as intensely white, meaning that the surface is strongly scattering. A smooth clean ice surface does not look intensely white.

October 19, 2012 3:23 am

Don’t you think that arctic sea ice is toast and it’s just a matter of a short time before the arctic is ice free? Pointing out a record refreeze isn’t going to save sea ice. Sea ice insulates the heat in an ocean, so it’s keeping heat from escaping into space during the early part of the ice formation season. That first year ice isn’t going to survive a melt. Don’t confuse insulation with insolation! Parts of that arctic aren’t getting sunlight, so why would someone bring up albedo, which isn’t important when sunlight isn’t direct, like in the summer? Anyone who has made an honest effort to study arctic sea ice knows it’s toast, so what’s with the games?

Jimbo
October 19, 2012 3:56 am

tesla0x0 says:
October 18, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Anthony,
What say you to the Yale boys on their comments on Arctic vs. antarctic ice?
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/10/slightly-increased-2012-antarctic-sea-ice-levels-no-match-for-arctic-declines/
………………………..
The actual data makes it hard to conclude that those wanting to point to the Antarctic as a counterpoint to what is happening in the Arctic may simply be trying to change the subject from the recent unprecedented global sea ice declines.”

I can’t be bothered to go over there but do please let them know that the bolded phrase is a lie of unprecedented proportions. 😉
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.08.016
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMPP11A0203F 😉

Jimbo
October 19, 2012 3:58 am

Ooops! I forgot the bolding.

“The actual data makes it hard to conclude that those wanting to point to the Antarctic as a counterpoint to what is happening in the Arctic may simply be trying to change the subject from the recent unprecedented global sea ice declines.””

Sigmundb
October 19, 2012 4:14 am

Lesson learned : A variable with a lot of natural variability is a doblededged sword, use against your oponenents with caution and accept it will eventually cut both ways.
Any chance we will ever get arctic ice volume data, extent and cover feel so distribution dependent?

TomVonk
October 19, 2012 4:15 am

Michael Hammer
I accept that ice probably has high emissivity but the same may not be the case for snow.
See
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00120992?LI=true
Snow has actually a higher emissivity than ice (around 0.97) as this paper shows.
Problem when one talks about emissivity is that it depends on the wavelength. The paper quoted studies the interval 8-13 µm where you have only about 1 third of the total radiation.
It is rare to find a study which gives a curve (instead of a single value) of emissivities function of wavelength.
However even if IR emissivity does vary with wavelength, it never varies dramatically for solids or liquids because they are not gazes.
So it is safe to say that that water under all its non gazeous forms at 0°C and for all wavelengths has an IR emissivity which is approximately 1.
Ice being lowest and the difference to water is about 6W/m² radiation less.
Snow being nearer to ice than to water.

Joe
October 19, 2012 4:19 am

@ TomVonk, October 19, 2012 at 2:07 am
Possibly more important than the emissivity difference is the ability of open water to transport heat to the surface in order to radiate it. With ice cover, the energy has to rely on the lwo thermal conductivity of ice to transport it those last few metres. With open water it can get there by conduction, convection and turbulent mixing.
Ice is (obviously, or it would be water!) also constrained to be radiating at or below its freezing point, whereas open water is (obviously – or it would be ice!) constrained to be radiating above its freezing point. Combine those factors and open water almost certainly radiates far more than ice cover under the same conditions.
Perhaps someone could do the sums for us?

October 19, 2012 4:20 am

Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 3:23 am
“Anyone who has made an honest effort to study arctic sea ice knows it’s toast”
Gary, Trends in sea Ice go up and down, it’s the nature of Ice. If you think 30 years of data is all that’s needed to understand what the Arctic sea ice is doing in the long term then your not fit to be discussing it in a sensible manner, splash some cold water on your face and come back when your not so childishly hysterical.

October 19, 2012 4:36 am

I think the cyclone that broke the sea ice up has dispersed the ice in smaller chunks not seen by satellite and consequently seeding the Arctic ocean making it quicker and easier for ice to grow when temperatures began dropping again.

October 19, 2012 4:45 am

@MikeB “Can anyone explain to me why open water should radiate more than ice ?”
Ice insulates because it is solid: heat has to be conducted upwards to the surface before it is radiated away. Open water is liquid, so heat is transported to the surface by means of convection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection
Paradoxically, because of the insulation air temperature will be lower above an ice surface (as compared to open water), while the heat below the surface does not escape that fast.

Bloke down the pub
October 19, 2012 4:51 am

MikeB says:
October 19, 2012 at 2:40 am
” As we know when water loses its ice cover, it allows a lot of heat to radiate into space as LWIR”
Can anyone explain to me why open water should radiate more than ice ?
Because of differences in salinity, the upper level of water in the Arctic can be cooler than deeper water. When there is continuous ice cover these levels are less likely to mix. Without the ice cover, the fetch and therefore the height of waves increases, leading to greater mixing of the layers and a warming of the surface layer. Warmer water radiates energy to space much more than cooler water leading to an overall reduction in the energy held by the ocean.

mycroft
October 19, 2012 5:04 am

@Gary Lance
No games here Gary,just facts,fact is the oceans are losing heat and losing it fast and the heat system of the planet might not be topped back up to same levels for a few years.In the mean time the Arctic ice will make its slow recovery back.Add in the solar minimum, and cooler oceans what do yoyu think will happen to the earth global temps over coming decades!!?thephrase global warming will no longer be used, it will be all climate change as those with an agenda will continue to push it.

rgbatduke
October 19, 2012 5:05 am

My actual experience, from a time I lived and worked on the coast of Maine, is that when the air gets bitterly cold the sea-water gets a sort of oily look, just before it freezes. I wonder if the air gets so very cold it freezes the very topmost molecules of water, which then float in suspension with the liquid water, and don’t sink even as the coldest water does. Eventually these suspended molecules form a skim of slush, which is the beginning of the ice-cover. I’ve witnessed this.
IIRC as it freezes, it does so by separating out fresh water (which freezes) while leaving behind more concentrated salt water (which sinks through the new ice, leaving tiny pores, to rejoin the sea. This process of differential accretion/distillation of freshwater ice proceeds to produce freshwater sea ice.
The same sort of precipitation/distillation functions for water-alcohol mixes (and probably other stuff as well). The freezing point of alcohol is well below that of water. When a water-alcohol mix starts to freeze — think beer in the freezer — it does so by first nucleating tiny flecks of low-alcohol ice (which then grow) creating a slush where the ice is progressively higher in alcohol content and the remaining liquid is “distilled” into a higher alcohol concentration. The process (which I’ve oversimplified) is described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_freezing
rgb

Jimbo
October 19, 2012 5:05 am

What you guys need to understand is that it’s worse than we thought. It’s worse than the climate models predicted and it’s because of man’s extra co2.

“The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard- of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface…………..Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never before been noted.”
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf

November, 1922
Monthly Weather Review

October 19, 2012 5:06 am

” As we know when water loses its ice cover, it allows a lot of heat to radiate into space as LWIR”
Heat transfer from the ice free ocean to the atmosphere is primarily by evaporation. The global average near surface atmosphere is 1.7 C cooler than the ocean surface, and presumably this represents the equilibrium where ocean heat gain from solar irradiance equals heat lost to the atmosphere, leaving ocean temperatures constant.
What’s different about the Arctic is post the autumn equinox (now). is when atmospheric temperatures get very much colder, and we must be seeing large scale heat loss from ice free areas.
In comparison, Antarctic sea ice is 500 to 800 kilometers closer to the equator – Antarctic sea ice has reached almost the same latitude as London this year. This matters because the closer the ice gets to the equator the greater the increased albedo (cooling) effect.
So, we have large scale heat loss from open Arctic Ocean and large scale heat loss from Antarctic sea ice albedo.

richardscourtney
October 19, 2012 5:06 am

MikeB:
At October 19, 2012 at 2:40 am you ask

So the implication that open water would have a greater cooling effect that ice cover is not obvious. Can anyone provide evidence or logic for that statement?

I will give it a try.
Heat is transferred towards the poles by ocean currents. The tropics are a net absorber of radiation and the polar regions are net emitters of radiation.
Therefore, the Arctic ocean radiates energy which it obtains from warmer regions. But ice acts as an insulator over the surface of the ocean: heat energy in the water has to conduct through the ice if it is to radiate from the surface. And ice is a very good insulator.
Remove the ice and the insulation is removed so heat radiates from the Arctic Ocean more rapidly and, therefore, the rate of cooling of the ocean increases.
I hope that is clear.
Richard

Jimbo
October 19, 2012 5:19 am

Haaaa haa ha
“AGW Arctic Sea Ice Propaganda in 4 Easy Steps”
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/agw-arctic-sea-ice-propganda-in-4-easy-steps/

Phil.
October 19, 2012 5:31 am

The reason that the water radiates more heat away than ice even when they have the same emissivity is due to the heat transfer from the bulk ocean. In the case of seawater the surface radiates and therefore cools, the density increases and so it sinks to be replaced by warmer water from below. So the temperature of the water remains fairly constant until ice forms. In the case of ice when the surface cools heat flows from the underlying water via conduction which is much less efficient, therefore the ice surface cools rapidly. The radiation depends on T^4 so the radiation from the surface decreases. The water can’t go below -2 whereas the ice can easily drop below -20.

Ian W
October 19, 2012 5:41 am

Tim Folkerts says:
October 18, 2012 at 6:00 pm
David A. Evans says: “This is no surprise. The energy loss with the open water will only lead to cooling.
If that were the case, then wouldn’t we expect that the ocean and air temperatures should be below normal by now from all that cooling? In fact, the temperatures are continuing to run above average.

The temperatures will remain higher than normal in a fast refreeze due to the latent heat of fusion being radiated away. Once the surface is frozen then the temperatures should start following the average curve of the DMI graphic..

October 19, 2012 5:46 am

How does a change of 2.62409 from 3.36855 equal a 43.8% difference? I get about a 78% increase. All of the percentages computed by sunshinehours1 are wrong. Of course it still is irrelevant, as someone pointed out above if the ice had completely melted this summer any recovery would constitute an infinite increase. And what is so special about day 31 after the minimum?
What has reformed is very thin first year ice. The volume is still at record lows:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2_CY.png

Dixon
October 19, 2012 5:46 am

Thermostat.

JP
October 19, 2012 5:54 am

“Hee hee. The high rate of change is just a simple mathematical consequence of the very extreme depth of the fall in ice extent in the first place. ”
And your point is, Lazy Teenager?

P. Solar
October 19, 2012 5:57 am

Since big melting slide ended in 2007 the oscillatory mode has re-established
http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
We are entering the positive (faster freezing) part of that cycle. There will be some noticeable recovery over the next couple of years.
WARMISTA WARNING: this plot was generated by looking at ALL available data not just the September minimum, so may be misleading.
I predict it will touch the 30 average first week in December.

October 19, 2012 6:00 am

Gary Lance says
Don’t you think that arctic sea ice is toast and it’s just a matter of a short time before the arctic is ice free?
Henry @ Gary, Richard C.
No. That is not going to happen.
looking at the right graph (NOT A MODEL)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
we are on a curve. It will take at least another 4 years before we have bottomed out.
Roughly speaking, comparing weather, you could count back about 88 year which brings us to about 1924. (2012-88)
Now, read this newspaper report from November 1922 (almost 1923). Do take the effort to read the original newspaper clip….
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
Sounds familiar?
Stop worrying about the carbon. Start getting prepared for the cold.

MarkW
October 19, 2012 6:07 am

As others pointed out earlier, a lot of the ice wasn’t melted, but instead turned to slush, which the satellites can’t pick up well. It makes sense that the slush would re-freeze very quickly.

NoAstronomer
October 19, 2012 6:07 am

What I’ve always found interesting about the Arctic Sea Ice Extent graphic is how little variation there is at max compared to the wide variation at minimum.
Mike.

P. Solar
October 19, 2012 6:09 am

Gary Lance says: Anyone who has made an honest effort to study arctic sea ice knows it’s toast, so what’s with the games?
Which clearly you haven’t.
Enjoy your toast.

David
October 19, 2012 6:11 am

The fast melt of the Arctic sea ice was a major story on the BBC by their so-called Environment Correspondent, David Shukman.
Oddly, there is no matching feature about the fast re-freeze…
BBC..? Biased Broadcasting Corporation….

Just an engineer
October 19, 2012 6:18 am

R Korbs says:
October 19, 2012 at 12:25 am
—————————————————————–
Much ado about nothing! Lovely acronym, where have I seen that character sequence before?

P. Solar
October 19, 2012 6:25 am

Geoff Sherrington says:
October 19, 2012 at 1:48 am
>>
Would not the more relevant measurement be the annual integrated ice extent (the area under the graph each year?) Seems to me that there would be a different energy ranking sequence if each year was summed day by day. Spread over a year, the minimum extent date and area seem to depend on several variables, some of which act in light and some in darkness, some months away from where the minimum extent happens. It’s not area that is the primary focus, it’s energy. including that difficult wind energy component & direction over a year.
>>
Valid comments but it’s hard to evaluate energy without the thickness. Ice area is probably a better index than 15% extent that depends heavily on how it gets spread or compacted by wind.
The main thing to do if one is interested how it’s changing is to look at rate of change rather than trying to guess how change is varying from the day be day data.
Once you look at rate of change and apply a one or two year filter you start to see the big picture and it’s quite surprising what you see, http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
I’m not aware of any of the major Cryo sites that are even examining this nor anyone who has noticed that the big slide has actually ended.
Perhaps Anthony should put this plot on his sea ice page 😉

Pamela Gray
October 19, 2012 6:32 am

Some AGW proponents have argued that less ice cover at the end of the melt season, which causes quite a bit of heat to escape from warmed Arctic waters, adds water vapor to the atmosphere which leads to catastrophic snow in the surrounding land areas. So we will see if snow is worse this year. That’s one issue.
Here’s the other one. This event can be explained by intrinsic oscillations better than anthropogenic causes. Why? CO2 cannot explain the warmer currents that entered into the Arctic (LWIR really sucks when it comes to heating water). But ENSO events can and do explain the warmer water entering the Arctic polar region. The same can be said for the teleconnection between oceanic conditions and atmopheric systems. So even the storm that broke up Arctic ice has natural causes.
The null hypothesis has yet to be refuted as a cause.

Rhys Jaggar
October 19, 2012 7:08 am

(A+AA) sea ice is about 10% less than 30 year mean.
Dear me……….

Dr. Lurtz
October 19, 2012 7:15 am

How about this:
1) The open water provides additional heat [over ice covered water] to warm the vacuum of space via radiation.
2) This heat acts as an insulating barrier that slows heat transfer from the equator.
3) The open water, as it evaporates [losing heat], increases water vapor in the atmosphere.
4) Increased water vapor will provide the “fuel” for increased snow.
Results:
1) More snow in the northern regions.
2) Northern Pacific/Atlantic stays warmer for an increased time.
3) Snow melts faster due to warmer northern Pacific/Atlantic.
4) Open water heat transfer to space will result in increased freezing [after enough heat is dissipated].
5) Ice will melt faster in the spring/summer due to warmer Pacific/Atlantic.
Questions:
1) What supplies the heat to warm the Pacific/Atlantic at the equator?
2) What supplies the heat to cause the El Nino?
Comment:
After 350 years of warming, the Sun is in a what appears a long term [50 year] reduced output cycle. Won’t it be great to be able to enjoy the “good old days” when the Thames River froze over!

Some European
October 19, 2012 7:20 am

@Harold “a completely typical sea ice season”.
Please proceed! This denier humour is killing me!

Scott
October 19, 2012 7:23 am

The start of the post says when seas lose their ice cover they lose a lot of heat due to LWIR, but if new sea ice is clear and transparent, doesn’t the sea still lose heat due to LWIR at near the same rate as it did before the sea froze? Once the ice becomes thick or loses its transparency then I can see how LWIR drops to near zero.

beng
October 19, 2012 7:42 am

Yeah, Anthony, but all that horrible, rotten melting that lasted a whole month or two dealt the Arctic a permanent, mortal blow from which it can never recover. /sarc for the clueless

Bruce C
October 19, 2012 7:51 am

@ sunshinehours1:
October 18, 2012 at 5:19 pm
2012 (to day 291) already has a higher average sea ice extent (NSIDC) than 2011 (which may change).
And is closing in on 2007.
I suspect the NORSEX data (if I could find it) would show 2012 higher than both.
————————————————————————————————————–
Is this what your after:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic

beng
October 19, 2012 8:03 am

****
richardscourtney says:
October 19, 2012 at 2:52 am
But it is disappointing news.
I had hoped for an ice-free Arctic ocean with all the resulting benefits for trade and shipping.
And nobody has managed to tell me of any problems likely to derive from an ice-free Arctic ocean (although some people who know nothing about polar bears think the bears would not like it).
The rapid refreeze implies we may not get the benefits of an ice-free Arctic ocean. It is a matter for regret.

****
Seconded. The further we are from glacial conditions, the better. And nobody yet has given a reasonable explanation why more ice is “better”. Not a one.
You’d think LT or Gary Lance would try, but maybe even they’re not that clueless…

KevinM
October 19, 2012 8:06 am

I agree with Gary. The 30 year trend is clearly downward. I understand the cyclical- negative feedback- and reversion to mean- thinking, however it seems to me that those things happen over a longer timespan than a few years.
Whether Mann and Lewandowsky are arrogant, or whether CO2 climate theories are wrong, the only sensible bet would be that next year’s arctic ice is below the 1990s average again. Maybe less than 2012, maybe more than 2012, but definitely below 1995.

Crispin in Yogayakarta
October 19, 2012 8:16 am

Can we please see the CO2 level in the vicinity of the freeze? Freezing ocean water expels CO2. That means the CO2 concentration in the area should rise faster than eh-vah. Yes or no?

Doug
October 19, 2012 8:27 am

The argument that some make regarding the % being higher because the extent got so low is interesting, but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. 2012 – 43.8%; 2007 – 25.1%. That puts 2007 at 16th on the list. Furthermore, if you look at km^2 refreeze per day, 2012 is 8th, while 2007 is 28th.
By the way, why would this blog writer have used refreeze as a percent of the end of the 31 days and not refreeze as a percent of the minimum?

October 19, 2012 8:35 am

KevinM says
the only sensible bet would be that next year’s arctic ice is below the 1990s average again. Maybe less than 2012, maybe more than 2012, but definitely below 1995.
henry says
What’s the bet (in monetary size or in reputation size)?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-15-arctic-refreeze-fastest-ever/#comment-1113982

October 19, 2012 8:38 am

We can play all the games you want about the arctic sea ice recovering, but it isn’t going to recover. In a few years, you’re going to run out of things to cherry pick, because that arctic sea ice isn’t going to be there in the summer and will be absent during a longer period each year. Most of the thick multi-year arctic sea ice is gone and what remains is starting to find new exits through the Canadian Archipelagos, like it has recently been exiting through the Nares Strait after the ice bridge collapsed. Spreading out ice volume with extent only looks good on paper and just means the sea ice can melt faster.
That arctic sea ice had a minimum area in 2012 about the size of Greenland, so think of them as two large areas far to the north with a high albedo, preventing warming. By June, the snow cover loss in the Northern Hemisphere was three times the area of that arctic sea ice, further south and with plenty of time to cause heating during the summer. This trend in losing snow cover is even more recent than losing arctic sea ice and may have contributed to that 97% melt on Greenland.
Specifically what I mentioned was looking for hope in a fast refreeze ignores the fact that sea ice insulates the heat in the ocean from the atmosphere. You could actually make more sea ice at this time of year by breaking up the ice and allowing the heat to escape. Only first year ice that gets lucky with drift can make it through a season.

October 19, 2012 8:40 am

“So the implication that open water would have a greater cooling effect that ice cover is not obvious. Can anyone provide evidence or logic for that statement?”
Liquid water is warmer than ice, it will radiate more energy even if they have the same emissivity.
Ice is much more likely to drop with air temps, water will continue to radiate excess heat for as long as there’s enough turnover to replace cold water with warm(non-freezing).

October 19, 2012 8:50 am

Doug: “By the way, why would this blog writer have used refreeze as a percent of the end of the 31 days and not refreeze as a percent of the minimum?”
Because I screwed up. I have issued a correction.
It was 83.1%, not 43.8%. Still the fastest in percentage terms.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/fastest-arctic-ice-extent-refreeze-ever-in-31-days/
8th largest amount of ice in 31 days.

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 8:50 am

Gary Lance says:
“We can play all the games you want about the arctic sea ice recovering, but it isn’t going to recover.”
The planet is already proving you wrong. How do you explain that?

October 19, 2012 9:05 am

Sunshinehours1 said:
“Still the fastest in percentage terms.”
Who cares? The percent increase of sea ice extent at day 31 after that year’s minimum is a number without any significance. As the minimums approach zero the percent increases will approach infinity. If there were no ice at minimum, any ice that formed afterward would constitute an infinite percent increase. This is all a way to fool people into thinking that the ice is just fine, and that the volume of ice is not still at a record low (since May).

richardscourtney
October 19, 2012 9:05 am

Gary Lance:
At October 19, 2012 at 8:38 am you predict

In a few years, you’re going to run out of things to cherry pick, because that arctic sea ice isn’t going to be there in the summer and will be absent during a longer period each year.

Although I am certain you are wrong, I sincerely hope you are right.
My hope is explained in my post at October 19, 2012 at 2:52 am. Perhaps you could address that by expressing your rejoicing at the good news which you predict is imminent?
Richard

October 19, 2012 9:06 am

Sure, glaciers, snow cover, arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets and permafrost are all in retreat, but you think getting an antarctic sea ice maximum, because of extra wind and precipitation, means something besides it’s all going to melt away.
Tell me why there are two Patagonias, when there used to be one with the third largest ice sheet in the world!
The world will keep melting and when it runs out of ice, it’s going to start really heating things up in the arctic, lowering the temperature difference between the equator and the arctic. That will change the jet stream and exceptional weather will become a new reality.

October 19, 2012 9:09 am

Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 8:38 am
“By June, the snow cover loss in the Northern Hemisphere was three times the area of that arctic sea ice, further south and with plenty of time to cause heating during the summer. ”
At high Lat, open water reflects about half incoming solar http://sun.iwu.edu/~gpouch/Climate/RawData/WaterAlbedo001.pdf
So it get’s less heating than most expect.

highflight56433
October 19, 2012 9:11 am

vukcevic says:
October 18, 2012 at 11:05 pm
“Big (fresh water) ice melt = large volume of fresh water added
large volume of fresh water present = faster freezing”
Exactly – fresh water from the mainland melt is floating on the saltier sea surface as well as the snow accumulation which is also fresh water that when melted floats on the sea surface.

Steve Garcia
October 19, 2012 9:12 am

The low value doesn’t mean anything at all, not if it recovers/refreezes to a ‘normal’ range. The so-called worry/claim seems to be that at some point there won’t be any Arctic ice at all. And that is a LONG way from ever happening.
If it dips low at any time in the cycle but then comes back, none of this matters at all. The low point – whoop dee freaking doo. It’s a tempest in a teapot that has no significance.
Steve Garcia

October 19, 2012 9:18 am

Crispin in Yogayakarta says:
October 19, 2012 at 8:16 am
Can we please see the CO2 level in the vicinity of the freeze? Freezing ocean water expels CO2. That means the CO2 concentration in the area should rise faster than eh-vah. Yes or no?

Check out what happens at Point Barrow in Oct-Dec (below)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/barrsio.co2

October 19, 2012 9:20 am

I can address the fact that you have to look at the full picture when wishing for the world to not have arctic sea ice and if your climate changes for the worse and does so rather quickly, then maybe you don’t live in Greenland, upper Canada or Siberia.
There is enough positive feedback in our warming trend to make major climate changes, like turning our bread basket into a Dust Bowl. The warming will continue for years.

October 19, 2012 9:44 am

Phil. says:
October 19, 2012 at 9:18 am
Crispin in Yogayakarta says:
October 19, 2012 at 8:16 am
Can we please see the CO2 level in the vicinity of the freeze? Freezing ocean water expels CO2. That means the CO2 concentration in the area should rise faster than eh-vah. Yes or no?
Check out what happens at Point Barrow in Oct-Dec (below)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/barrsio.co2
CO2 low is when there’s the most open water. Cold water, which arctic water is, absorbs more co2 than warm water or I have to assume than ice and snow do. That’s why co2 rises as more and more of the arctic turns to ice, blocking cold water from absorbing co2.

October 19, 2012 10:11 am

Gary Lance says
There is enough positive feedback in our warming trend to make major climate changes, like turning our bread basket into a Dust Bowl. The warming will continue for years.
Henry says
that is not going to happen, unless it happens because of global cooling.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-15-arctic-refreeze-fastest-ever/#comment-1113982
Otherwise, here on wuwt we challenge scientists to actually show their results, or, at the very least, show us the results of someone you believe in, so we can have a look at those, and challenge their conclusions, made from those results.
I have not seen anything from you, Gary?

October 19, 2012 10:22 am

Rob Murphy: “Who cares? The percent increase of sea ice extent at day 31 after that year’s minimum is a number without any significance”
I care. The refreeze has been fast. In terms of area 8th fastest. In terms of percent, the fastest.
Part of the reason for the post was to mock the NSIDC excuses for Antarctica.
You don’t care because your ilk kept quiet about the recovery in the Arctic Maximum in 2012 so you focus on the irrelevant minimum caused by the cyclone.

Crispin in Yogayakarta
October 19, 2012 10:25 am

Thanks Phil. There is clear evidence in spring and fall/winter that the ice melt is absorbing the CO2 and expelling it again when it re-freezes. I am amazed that I have never read anything about this. So, obviously this feeds into my calculation that if the ice on Greenland (3.5 m cu km) and surrounding lands melts, it will absorb roughly 320 ppm CO2. Without repeating the details on this thread, that is about as much CO2 as mankind ever emitted. Based on the ice available – about 25 m cu km – the CO2 concentration is self-levelling. As CO2 causes ice to melt (they claim) then that meltwater absorbs CO2 with no effort on our part at all, and I am talking about thousands of gigatons.
Let’s see the alarmists weasel their way out of that one.

Tim Clark
October 19, 2012 10:28 am

I’m disappointed Anthony. You missed the opportunity for the title to read…
worst refreeze evarrr.

highflight56433
October 19, 2012 10:33 am

Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 9:20 am
“I can address the fact that you have to look at the full picture when wishing for the world to not have arctic sea ice and if your climate changes for the worse and does so rather quickly, then maybe you don’t live in Greenland, upper Canada or Siberia.”
“There is enough positive feedback in our warming trend to make major climate changes, like turning our bread basket into a Dust Bowl. The warming will continue for years.”
Funny how our “warming trend” is so scary, worrisome, etc., yet this interglacial period has seen much warmer times in the past with a consequence that assisted our ability to flourish. Furthermore, is there evidence that during those periods of warmer temperatures that the mid-west US was a dust bowl? Keep in mind the driest desert on the planet is located in Antarctica and warmer air holds more moisture…and when to all the floods happen in the mid-west? ( http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lix/?n=ms_flood_history ) I believe if you check, there is no lack of mid-west flooding during the WARM period of the 1930’s. If anything, you will maybe see less flooding during colder periods.
Additionally, warmer or colder is not a change in climate. The northern hemisphere generally has air flow from west to east. That is the primary maker of the northern hemisphere climate, followed by where oceans in relation to continents. As pointed out previously; climate is tropical, subtropical, dry continental, marine, polar and so forth. Being warmer or colder is not climate change. The seasons exhibit temperature changes in weather which are a result of the air masses from which climate drives.

October 19, 2012 10:39 am

Phil. says
Check out what happens at Point Barrow in Oct-Dec (below)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/barrsio.co2
Henry says
Come on, Phil.
that data goes only until 2007.
Where is the rest?
i.e. the rest. from 2007-2012, must show cooling,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-15-arctic-refreeze-fastest-ever/#comment-1113982
i.e. a decrease in CO2,
which they all keep hiding…..(to try and save their jobs?)

Roger Knights
October 19, 2012 10:42 am

R Korbs says:
October 19, 2012 at 12:25 am
Wont it be wonderful when it all melts in summer and we can slap ourselves on the back about the infinite % increase in cover as it freezes in autumn.

Not likely, because:

garymount says:
October 19, 2012 at 1:10 am
I have a hunch that the closer you get to the pole, the harder it is in an exponential fashion to melt the ice. The warmists seem to be calculating a linear trend when predicting the no ice condition even though the area of concern sits on a sphere.

October 19, 2012 10:48 am

“I care. The refreeze has been fast. In terms of area 8th fastest. In terms of percent, the fastest.”
But it doesn’t mean anything. In a week it might be the 5th, or the tenth. Next month it might be an average recovery from the minimum. What matters is the minimum is trending down, and fast. As is the volume -it’s still at record low volume and has been since May. This years minimum volume is about 80% lower than what it was 30 years ago. As the minimum extents approach zero, the “percent increase” after the minimum will approach infinity. The ice that has come back is a thin layer.
“Part of the reason for the post was to mock the NSIDC excuses for Antarctica.”
It looks more like you are mocking “skeptics” by having them fall for such a silly claim. I really thought you were pulling people’s legs with this, but I sadly see you were serious.
“You don’t care because your ilk kept quiet about the recovery in the Arctic.”
It isn’t recovering in the Arctic. I think you meant to say Antarctic. The “recovery” lasted a day or two and is insignificant.
“so you focus on the irrelevant minimum caused by the cyclone.”
The Arctic minimum is far more important than the Antarctic maximum. It was probably going to be a new record this year with or without the storm that came through anyway.
Your post shows the desperation that “skeptics” feel. I pity you.

October 19, 2012 10:52 am

“Being warmer or colder is not climate change.”
It sure as hell is. What a silly thing to say.

Crispin in Yogayakarta
October 19, 2012 11:06 am

@MICro
“CO2 low is when there’s the most open water. Cold water, which arctic water is, absorbs more co2 than warm water or I have to assume than ice and snow do. That’s why co2 rises as more and more of the arctic turns to ice, blocking cold water from absorbing co2.”
I am pretty sure the ocean is in balance with the partial pressure of CO2 within a few minutes. The ice is not blocking uptake, it is expelling CO2. Let me put it this way:
CO2 low is when there’s the most melted water. Cold water, which arctic water is, warms in summer when the ice melts expelling CO2 but the absorption my melted water overwhelms it. That’s why co2 rises as more and more of the arctic turns to ice, as sea ice has zero CO2 in it. The same applies to snow and ice all over the northern hemisphere. When it melts in spring, the CO2 is re-absorbed, and very rapidly. The ocean is not an endless sink for CO2, it rapidly equilibreates at 320 ppm.

October 19, 2012 11:06 am

The minimum is trending down slow because of the AMO.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/amazing-graph-of-amo-vs-arctic-sea-ice-vs-antarctic-sea-ice/
The maximum did recover in 2012. For about 50 days it was 97/98% of the 1980’s average.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/arctic-ice-2012-a-little-perspective/
Have a little perspective. The cyclone skewed 2012.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/great-arctic-cyclone-2012-caused-the-record-low/
I pity you. You and your kind are like chicken little, forever proclaiming the sky is falling.

October 19, 2012 11:10 am

Rob Murphy says
Your post shows the desperation that “skeptics” feel. I pity you.
henry says
Your post shows how little you understand of the real physics (that will make make more ice)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
I pity you. Better get yourself some extra warm cloths for this winter and the next 6 winters to come…..

P. Solar
October 19, 2012 11:11 am

Gary says, There is enough positive feedback in our warming trend to make major climate changes…The warming will continue for years.
Well I’m sure you’re sincere in all these comments , this is the panic mode western media and a good proportion well-meaning, “concerned” scientists have been feeding us for the last 20 years.
The good news is : you are misinformed.
Here’s what you don’t see on the evening news (or anywhere else that I’ve seen).
Rather getting obsessive about one day out if the Arctic year if we look at all 365 days of data we get a more honest look at what is happening.
Take the length of the melting season from winter max to summer minimum:
http://i45.tinypic.com/27yr1wy.png
That would indicate there was a turn around in 2005, pretty clear it isn’t positive feedbacks, tipping points and run away global warming.
Atlantic temps and cyclone energy level off at the top of the 60y cycle that has been going on as long as we can detect it.
http://i48.tinypic.com/29ni90i.png
the big slide in Arctic ice extent has stopped
http://i48.tinypic.com/dzj70k.png
Look at that in rate of change as well, a very clear change of mode in 2005 and a period of actual recovery (positive rate of change):
http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
rate of change of lower tropo air temp. there’s a clear down ward drift since 2000
http://i45.tinypic.com/j60q36.png
MiCro says:
October 19, 2012 at 8:40 am
“So the implication that open water would have a greater cooling effect that ice cover is not obvious. Can anyone provide evidence or logic for that statement?”
You are right it is not obvious and vague arguments either way are not very informative. So take a look a some data. Take a look at rate of change of Arctic sea ice in relation to AMO (North Atlantic sea temps)
http://i46.tinypic.com/r7uets.png
Warmer waters have caused a lot of ice to melt , sea temps (inverted in this plot) have turned the corner and ice has stopped the accelerating decline we saw from 1997-2007. It seems to have reached a new equilibrium with the warmer water.
It’s still a bit early to be sure about where the new mode will settle but current evidence of such an equilibrium suggests the newly exposed water has a countering effect.
I’m not saying that is firm proof but you asked if there was any evidence and logic for such a proposition and there you have some.
One thing is certain in all that is the message is getting clearer and it is not saying positive feedback , run away warming and catastrophic melting of the Arctic.

P. Solar
October 19, 2012 11:19 am

henry says
Your post shows how little you understand of the real physics (that will make make more ice)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Henry , your post and that plot shows how little you understand of the real physics and about curve fitting and about how and why you construct a model to fit to data.
Don’t be so derisive of others.

October 19, 2012 11:22 am

[snip. Read the site Policy. — mod.]

October 19, 2012 11:32 am

HenryP says:
October 19, 2012 at 10:39 am
Phil. says
“Check out what happens at Point Barrow in Oct-Dec (below)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/barrsio.co2
Henry says
Come on, Phil.
that data goes only until 2007.

So what, the question was, “Can we please see the CO2 level in the vicinity of the freeze? Freezing ocean water expels CO2. That means the CO2 concentration in the area should rise faster than eh-vah. Yes or no?”
That dataset answered the question perfectly, there’s no reason to suppose that freezing water no longer expels CO2.
Where is the rest?
i.e. the rest. from 2007-2012, must show cooling,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-15-arctic-refreeze-fastest-ever/#comment-1113982
i.e. a decrease in CO2,
which they all keep hiding…..(to try and save their jobs?)

Must it Henry, you’re sure about that?
Hiding it in plain sight apparently!
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/flask/month/co2_brw_surface-flask_1_ccgg_month.txt

October 19, 2012 11:33 am

“henry says
Your post shows how little you understand of the real physics (that will make make more ice)”
I understand it just fine. Certainly I wouldn’t make the mistake of using a made up statistic like “percent recovery of the ice at day 31 since minimum” as in indicator of well, anything. It means nothing. It’s a desperate attempt to pretend that the ice isn’t melting fast, and has been for a while now. If the extent had been 1 million km^2 at minimum and it added 2 million km^2 by the 31st day, that would have been a 200% increase. That would make it clearly the biggest “recovery” on record! The ice is just “fine” so-called “skeptics” would say. If the ice had melted completely, and there was 1 million km^2 by day 31 after the minimum, the percent increase would be infinity! Can’t get more of a recovery than that!
The statistic is useless, except for fooling gullible people.

October 19, 2012 11:35 am

It’s a joke to ask for a scientist to point out that arctic sea ice has volume, so extent isn’t what is melted. Sea ice has an extent when 15% of an area is sea ice over a five day running average. That means 85% of that area can be liquid ocean. The amount of heat that is needed to melt ice at 0 degrees C to water at 0 degrees C is enough to warm 4 times that amount of 0 degrees C water to 20 degrees C. That means when there is no ice to melt, that heat can rapidly change temperatures and climate.
There is evidence throughout the world of obvious warming, so what feedbacks can prevent it? Adding more greenhouse gases isn’t a negative feedback to warming and it’s already calculated we have added 7% more water vapor. I pointed out 2012 had nearly 6 million square kilometers less snow cover in June and that is nearly three times the minimum sea ice area or area of Greenland. That much albedo change is significant positive feedback and permafrost loss increases methane releases. Aerosols don’t last long in the atmosphere and the trend is to remove them, which will also cause warming. Lossing ice from sources that were year round ice means that heat doesn’t have to melt ice that isn’t there to melt.
The signiture for greenhouse warming is the arctic and troposphere warming and the stratosphere cooling. The signiture of denial is to ignore the obvious and isn’t being skeptical. The signiture of climate change is to be totally indifferent to what someone believes, so thinking it isn’t happening will never save you. A drought doesn’t check a person’s ideology to determine which crop to ruin and the consequences of climate change aren’t something in the future. Putin was welcoming climate change saying it would help his northern country and that year a scientist checked the weather in Moscow and it said smoke. We don’t know where the excessive weather will strike, but we know it will strike and become the new norm.
People who deny climate change are in their last few years just like that arctic sea ice. Neither have a future.

highflight56433
October 19, 2012 11:44 am

Rob Murphy says:
October 19, 2012 at 10:52 am
“Being warmer or colder is not climate change.”
“It sure as hell is. What a silly thing to say.”
…right…the difference between day time highs and night time lows is climate change…climate is the general weather conditions usually found in a particular place, warmer or colder is only one aspect of climate. Example: Desert is dry regardless of being a warm desert or a cold desert, still the climate is desert. 🙂

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 11:49 am

Rob Murphy,
Like Gary Lance, you avoid the fact that the IPCC’s prediction was for both hemispheres to lose ice. That has not happened, thus the conjecture is falsified. But by all means, continue moving the goal posts. It is amusing to true scientific skeptics watching you turn your failed arguments into pretzels.

October 19, 2012 11:49 am

Crispin in Yogayakarta says:
October 19, 2012 at 11:06 am
“I am pretty sure the ocean is in balance with the partial pressure of CO2 within a few minutes. The ice is not blocking uptake, it is expelling CO2. Let me put it this way:”
The surface of the ocean may be in balance, but it’s already depleted some of the co2 near the water (reducing measured concentrations during the summer). Come winter, ice which doesn’t absorb co2, stops depleting surface air of co2.
“CO2 low is when there’s the most melted water. Cold water, which arctic water is, warms in summer when the ice melts expelling CO2 but the absorption my melted water overwhelms it. That’s why co2 rises as more and more of the arctic turns to ice, as sea ice has zero CO2 in it. The same applies to snow and ice all over the northern hemisphere. When it melts in spring, the CO2 is re-absorbed, and very rapidly. The ocean is not an endless sink for CO2, it rapidly equilibreates at 320 ppm.”
Ice can contain dissolved gases, that fact that you can freeze a can of pop sort of disproves this “sea ice has zero CO2”. But ignoring that.
The deep oceans at the temperature they are, can absorb 2,000-3,000 x the Co2 of the entire carbon cycle. Cold arctic waters laded with co2, sink transporting at least some of that co2 down to the colder deep water.

NZ Willy
October 19, 2012 11:53 am

Just two simple reasons for the refreeze graph this year: (1) The sun vanishes from the Arctic lands the same each year — where the sun is gone, the freeze happens. Less ice = more refreeze. (2) There is an old-ice relic north of Wrangel Island — the last piece left from the Siberia-Alaska ice bridge which melted out in the very last melt days of September. This ice has grown back out and joined the main ice cap — and that configuration means a lot of extra ice perimeter and consequently ice growth. If the Alaska end of the ice bridge had survived, the growth would have been even faster.

October 19, 2012 11:59 am

“…right…the difference between day time highs and night time lows is climate change…”
That’s not what was being discussed. The change in average temps over time is climate change. Of course diurnal changes are not climate change.
“climate is the general weather conditions usually found in a particular place, warmer or colder is only one aspect of climate.”
So you agree that the average temps in an area are part of its climate after all. If those average temps change, than by definition the climate changed.
“Example: Desert is dry regardless of being a warm desert or a cold desert, still the climate is desert. :)”
The climate of a desert includes more than just its average precipitation; it includes its temperature as well. Temperature doesn’t define an area as a desert, but it certainly is a component of every desert’s climate. That’s why we call some “warm” deserts and others “cold” deserts. Antarctica doesn’t have the same climate as the Sahara even if both are “deserts”.

October 19, 2012 12:03 pm

“Like Gary Lance, you avoid the fact that the IPCC’s prediction was for both hemispheres to lose ice.”
They have. Sea ice is only a small part of Antarctica.
“But by all means, continue moving the goal posts.”
This thread is a perfect example of moving the goalposts, using a made up irrelevant statistic and pretending it means something.

highflight56433
October 19, 2012 12:06 pm

Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 11:35 am
“People who deny climate change are in their last few years just like that arctic sea ice. Neither have a future.”
Odd how some people who have no respect for others or other opinions resort to name calling or mean spirited condescending remarks. As a matter of consideration even appear to threaten. Hurray for you. I read somewhere that there are people who are pathologically narcissistic, they tend to be controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, intolerant of others’ views, unaware of others’ needs and of the effects of their behavior on others, and insistent that others see them as they wish to be seen. I am sure your comment is not a reflection of such behavior is it Mr. Lance?

October 19, 2012 12:17 pm

Post the IPCC prediction that the antarctic would lose sea ice! The best data we have is both Antarctica and Greenland are losing mass. Antarctica actually has two ice sheets and the WAIS is losing mass. We’ve lost ice shelves there that have been there for around ten thousand years. Have you ever looked at the satellite history of antarctic sea ice? There is a little bit of multi-year sea ice in the gyres of the Weddell and Ross Seas and there used to be areas near the shore that kept some sea ice, but all those areas show a history of being flush out when the weather is right. Remember Shackleton’s crew being left with the ship and the sea ice taking them all the way to Elephant Island? That was quite a journey for that sea ice. The antarctic sea ice minimum is not showing a trend of being larger and warming will permit more snow fall in a desert too cold to snow.

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 12:22 pm

highflight56433,
The central fact that Murphy and Lance refuse to admit is that there is nothing unprecedented happening. Natural variability explains 100% of all observations. The rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 is not causing any measurable global warming. The entire ‘carbon’ scare is being debunked by the ultimate Authority: planet earth.

richardscourtney
October 19, 2012 12:23 pm

Gary Lance:
At October 19, 2012 at 11:35 am you say

There is evidence throughout the world of obvious warming

I suggest that you provide this “evidence” to the IPCC as a matter of urgency because they have failed to find any such “evidence” despite seeking it for decades and they would like to put it in the AR5.
Oh, and could you copy it to us, please, because we would like to see it to.
Richard

October 19, 2012 12:25 pm

P.Solar says
…the real physics and about curve fitting and about how and why you construct a model to fit to data.
Don’t be so derisive of others.
Henry says
Which part of where I said:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
is NOT A MODEL
did you not get?
If you try to put the original data into any kind of other fit (like a binominal with r2=0.998),
the predicted cooling only becomes worse…….
see here where the original data comes from
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/04/23/global-cooling-is-here/

highflight56433
October 19, 2012 12:30 pm

Rob, this is where I part ways with your definition: That’s why we call some “warm” deserts and others “cold” deserts. Antarctica doesn’t have the same climate as the Sahara even if both are “deserts”.
Climate of the Sahara is desert, and the climate of the Sahara is desert. One is cold, the other is warm, both have a desert climate. The west North American climate is driven the the prevailing wind. The portion from approximately California and north is Pacific marine climate where by it draws generally from the Pacific. South of California the air is dry from passing westward across Mexico and further south becoming sub-tropical. Those are climates.
If the Siberian tundra changes to sub-tropical, then that is climate change. As for now, is has not changed anymore than has Greece, which is Mediterranean climate. It appears by your definition of climate, that any given location the summer is one climate while the winter is another climate.

P. Solar
October 19, 2012 12:34 pm

Gary says: “We don’t know where the excessive weather will strike, but we know it will strike and become the new norm.”
Right , we “know” because gore made a film and won a Peace Prize.
Gary says: “People who deny climate change are in their last few years just like that arctic sea ice. Neither have a future.”
Those who are currently in denial are the catastrophic warmists like yourself. I posted several graphs all drawn from official data sources on air temps, Arctic ice , sea temps all showing things are not shaping what we thought they were in the 1990s.
You have not even commented on that , yet continue your diatribe of misinformed assertions about climate. The evidence is presented and you close your eyes to it rather than heave a huge sigh of relief that the future is not a horrible as you had thought.
Being in denial is the psychological refusal to accept bad news despite the evidence. Paradoxically, for you, the bad news is that it’s not that bad.

October 19, 2012 12:43 pm

“Climate of the Sahara is desert, and the climate of the Sahara is desert.”
That’s only a partial definition of their climate. If you drop the temperature component, which you already admitted was a part of climate, you have given only partial information. Clearly the climate of the Sahara and Antarctica is not the same.

October 19, 2012 12:46 pm

“The central fact that Murphy and Lance refuse to admit is that there is nothing unprecedented happening. Natural variability explains 100% of all observations.”
Argument by assertion is no argument at all. “Natural variability” explains nothing; you might as well say invisible pink leprechauns explain 100% of all observations.

highflight56433
October 19, 2012 12:49 pm

Rob says: “…Antarctica doesn’t have the same climate as the Sahara even if both are “deserts”.
Actually, they just don’t have the same weather, one is warm dry weather, and the other is cold dry weather. By defining a desert climate, the weather is dry (cold or warm). The climate is desert.
D. Boehm says: “The entire ‘carbon’ scare is being debunked by the ultimate Authority: planet earth.”
Unfortunately there are more sheep than watch dogs and some wolves are more ravenous. For some odd reason Jones Town comes to mind. “Now then, everyone drink some Kool-Aid.”

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 12:49 pm

Rob Murphy,
Obviously you know nothing of the null hypothesis.

October 19, 2012 12:53 pm

[snip. Referring to others as deniers violates site Policy. — mod.]

October 19, 2012 12:58 pm

“Actually, they just don’t have the same weather, one is warm dry weather, and the other is cold dry weather.”
No, they have different climates. By your definition, you could just as easily say their climates are hot and cold, and one is dry hot weather the other is dry cold weather; that precipitation is just “weather” and temperature is what matters. They both are part of the definition of a region’s climate.
“By defining a desert climate, the weather is dry (cold or warm). The climate is desert.”
Climate isn’t just how much precipitation falls.
This attempt to decouple temperature from climate is silly. This is basic geography.

October 19, 2012 1:00 pm

“Rob Murphy,
Obviously you know nothing of the null hypothesis.”
Sure I do. It doesn’t mean “natural variability explains everything”. Just saying “natural variability explains everything” actually explains nothing. It’s a cheap hand-wave.

October 19, 2012 1:10 pm

P. Solar
I’ve never seen Al Gore’s film, but I’ve been on enough political sites to know the Gore argument is weak. Scientists don’t listen to politicians.
I know the facts about climate data and I’m not interested in your pseudo-science games. I didn’t even open the wrapper, because I’ve seen it all before. Skeptics don’t cherry pick data and denialists with an agenda do.

October 19, 2012 1:19 pm

richardscourtney
A scientist should know the difference between warming and surface temperature. Since when is a planet a surface? Since when have we had the ability to measure the surface of our planet?
A scientist knows it takes heat to melt ice and a lot more heat than to raise temperature.

Just an engineer
October 19, 2012 1:45 pm

Rob Murphy says:
October 19, 2012 at 12:46 pm
“you might as well say invisible pink leprechauns explain 100% of all observations.”
———————————————————————————————————-
And the difference between your claim about carbon dioxide and invisible pink leprechauns is what exactly?

Chrisd
October 19, 2012 1:52 pm

“Fastest refreeze EVER” seems diificult to claim as truth in the title – “fastest refreeze in the recent instrumental record” or something to that effect seems more truthful and fact based. Otherwise one commits the same sin as exaggerating alarmists.

Terry
October 19, 2012 2:20 pm

How old is the planet we live on? How long has man/woman been studying climate change/ artic ice loss/ antartic ice loss/ global weather patterns etc? Common sense tells me to at least wait a while, a long while!

October 19, 2012 2:29 pm

Rob Murphy says:
October 19, 2012 at 10:48 am
“….The Arctic minimum is far more important than the Antarctic maximum….”
There is considerably more sea-ice in the south. 19 million square kilometers versus 14 million kilometers. The antarctic ice extends towards the equator to a degree that would put sea ice around Scotland, if the north did the same. Also Antarctica is far bigger than Greenland, and reflects far more sunlight. And it isn’t important?

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 2:30 pm

Rob Murphy,
The climate null hypothesis has never been falsified. Natural variability is sufficient to fully explain the current climate. There is no need to invoke an extraneous variable like CO2.

George E. Smith
October 19, 2012 2:55 pm

I’m sorry I can’t be there in person to observe the sea refreezing; but I will make the following prediction; valid during the time that sea water is freezing to form floating sea ice.
As the sea water gives up its 80 calories per gram, of latent heat during the phase change, the Temperature will NOT increase above the ambient water Temperature near the ice growth interface.
The release of latent heat does not raise the Temperature above the phase change Temperature.
In other words, if the release of the latent heat causes the Temperature to rise above that of the phase change, the phase change process CEASES.
And if I could float up to the atmospheric zones where moist air falls to the dew point temperature, and clouds form; the Temperature will not rise above the temperature of the moist air that has risen to that altitude. The phase change does not take place, until the latent heat has been removed from the water vapor, by transferring it to a cooler material; the higher colder air; that being the direction that the second law allows a net transfer of heat; sans any work being done. If that air were to increase in Temperature the phase change would cease.

P. Solar
October 19, 2012 3:01 pm

Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 1:10 pm
>>
P. Solar
I’ve never seen Al Gore’s film, but I’ve been on enough political sites to know the Gore argument is weak. Scientists don’t listen to politicians.
I know the facts about climate data and I’m not interested in your pseudo-science games. I didn’t even open the wrapper, because I’ve seen it all before. Skeptics don’t cherry pick data and denialists with an agenda do.
>>
Well, if your earlier post and not commenting on actual data that I present wasn’t enough, you underlined my point nicely.
Without giving it any consideration or “opening the wrapper” you know it’s “pseudo-science” and know that you’ve seen it all before.
You state that whatever evidence is presented, you will dismiss it out of hand and refuse to consider it if you think it may challenge what you “know”.
That is about as clear an admission of being in denial as I can imagine.
You are a self confessed DENIER.
Still, they say the first stage to curing this sort of condition is to accept that you are doing it. Since you have no problem acknowledging that you refuse to look at the evidence I’d say your half way there already. Good look.

richardscourtney
October 19, 2012 3:08 pm

Gary Lance:
At October 19, 2012 at 1:19 pm you say and ask me

richardscourtney
A scientist should know the difference between warming and surface temperature. Since when is a planet a surface? Since when have we had the ability to measure the surface of our planet?
A scientist knows it takes heat to melt ice and a lot more heat than to raise temperature.

Warming consists of an increase in temperature.
Heating consists of adding heat.
Heating can occur without warming because the heat can create a phase change (e.g. melting or evapouration).
Every scientists knows this and I note that you say you don’t.
Global warming refers to the surface temperature of the Earth.
Global warming does not refer to the bulk of the planet. The bulk of the planet is molten.
I wonder why you make so many posts here when you do not know this.
We have been measuring the surface of our planet for millenia. If you want to know when we acquired the ability to measure the surface temperature of our planet then the International Geophysical Year (IGY) decided it was 30 years before its date in 1958.
Are there any other elementary questions you want answered to remove more of your great ignorance of the subject on which you choose to pontificate?
Richard

October 19, 2012 3:59 pm

Caleb
Minimums are always more important, because of insolation. The Earth doesn’t warm with sea ice sitting the dark. The antarctic sea ice doesn’t have a Gulf Stream directed towards it. It doesn’t make sense to compare two very different polar regions. The antarctic sea ice minimum is some sea ice protected in gyres or it would be ice free in it’s summer.
Getting back to the point of this thread, if right now you took an ice breaker down to the antarctic sea ice, you’d be destroying it, but if you took one up to the arctic, you’d be creating sea ice. It doesn’t have to be that cold to make sea ice, but it takes time to remove the heat from a column of ocean. Sea ice is a very dynamic thing in it’s increases and decreases. It’s not a one dimensional temperature factor to make or destroy sea ice.
The arctic sea ice is in a death spiral, because it has lost it’s protection and it’s thick multi-year sea ice. I’ve been following sea ice for a long time and the exits for arctic sea ice to warmer waters has changed. High pressure over Greenland speeds up the Fram Strait and it’s becoming more common. The Nares Strait doesn’t have ice bridges preventing sea ice exiting the arctic like it once did and the Canadian Archipelagos have started to leak and melt multi-year sea ice. Unless sea ice is caught in the Beaufort Gyre, it’s doomed if it wanders into all that open ocean. The gyre feeds the transpolar current, which sends the sea ice towards the Fram and Nares Straits.
There isn’t a physical force keeping all that sea ice bunched together, it’s bunched together because that’s the only place left to survive. Some have hoped the summer melt would slow as the “circumference” became smaller, but the headlines will soon read that the North Pole is ice free. The last of the sea ice will hang around northern Greenland and the Canadian Archipelagos, but it won’t be like the old days when it could pile up and be protected. There are too many exits now to send it to warmer waters.

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 4:33 pm

Gary Lance,
Arctic ice has wide natural variability. And there is no scientific evidence that the current decline is caused by human CO2 emissions. Just so you know.

highflight56433
October 19, 2012 4:34 pm

Mr. Lance, there you go again with attacks and acusations: “I know the facts about climate data and I’m not interested in your pseudo-science games. I didn’t even open the wrapper, because I’ve seen it all before. Skeptics don’t cherry pick data and denialists with an agenda do.”
Your reputation is preceeding you:
Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 12:53 pm
[snip. Referring to others as deniers violates site Policy. — mod.]
Since you know the facts and you have seen it all before, I am not sure why you waste your precious time here. We will be sure not to waste our time reading your comments since we are well beneath the level of your superior understanding.

October 19, 2012 4:56 pm

P. Solar says:
October 19, 2012 at 3:01 pm
That is about as clear an admission of being in [snip] as I can imagine.
You are a self confessed [snip].

Mods- what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!
Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 12:53 pm
[snip. Referring to others as deniers violates site Policy. — mod.]

October 19, 2012 4:59 pm

P. Solar
What you presented as links wasn’t data or science.
I believe when I see pictures of several hundred glaciers that are melting that heat is involved and the same thing with sea ice. Let me know when the ice I can see stops melting, because I don’t have to believe it’s melting to know for a fact that it is! What is the climate around Patagonia going to be like when all that ice is gone? You might also want to consider the fact that the ice isn’t infinite and the heat will be around when it’s gone. Temperatures and CO2 don’t have to increase to melt all of those glaciers, ice sheets, sea ices, snow covers or permafrosts. Positive feedback will do it with time.
The truth is scientists have understated the warming, because feedbacks are hard to estimate and scientists don’t like to go out on a limb. There is nothing in the cards to make the arctic stay cooler in the future and the Northern Hemisphere where most of the people on Earth stay is going to experience extreme climate change.

October 19, 2012 5:02 pm

highflight56433
What about the reputation of calling someone a warmist or warmista to their face, but objecting to that person using the term denialist in a general sense?
[Reply: Read the site Policy page. ‘Denialist’ is a deliberate pejorative, which refers directly to Holocaust deniers. If you post it again your entire comment will be deleted. — mod.]

October 19, 2012 5:14 pm

We’ve known for at least 40 years what our position on Milankovitch Cycles was and the radiative forcing to produce cooling can be calculated. Both warming and cooling have feedbacks that amplify, but the one with the most force gets the feedbacks. To warm a cooling Earth, all you have to do is overcome the force of a cooling trend with a force of a warming trend and it switches those feedbacks to your side.

Crispin in Yogayakarta developing aerosol measuring protocols
October 19, 2012 5:19 pm

Wow. So many errors in concept and physics. Where to begin – can’t possibly cover them all. MiCro, basically that is not how it works. Yes, I see you have been reading. The CO2 in the Barrow area is dominated by water => ice expelling CO2, we have discussed this briefly before and the chart going back a few years was not about the total level, it is about the local CO2 concentration v.s. ice/snow cover (snow also expels CO2 when forming). Ice contains no CO2 – look it up. Snow pack contains tiny bubbles of air which contain CO2 which is in turn sampled by scientists. It is not ‘absorbed in the ice’ in case anyone thinks that is the mechanism.
@Gary Lance ” …and it’s already calculated we have added 7% more water vapor.” Sorry, but that is simply not so. The globe is no warmer now than it was 16 years ago (not detectably, anyway) and the water vapour content of the important part of the atmosphere (where we live) is the same all the time. The moisture in the stratosphere has been dropping for years. Because you are well-informed you knew that, right?
“I pointed out 2012 had nearly 6 million square kilometers less snow cover in June and that is nearly three times the minimum sea ice area or area of Greenland.” Area, of course, is not mass. I see the pea, I am not falling for the switcheroo. CO2 is about total mass, ice/snow cover could be discussed in terms of both. Delta mass means it melted and absorbed CO2 (the mass of frozen => meltwater involved.) The total mass of ‘all frozen water’ increased in toto – get the ice mass on Antarctica + ROW and see. To show the implications of this look at the local CO2 in Barrow during the coming months. It will rise. Is it because of all those traditional Inuit-owned seal blubber-fired power stations? Probably not.
“That much albedo change is significant positive feedback and permafrost loss increases methane releases.’ This postulation is in error. First, removing the cover means far greater vertical IR loss – BIG one. Second, methane from ‘melting permafrost’ is not at all the same as losing snow cover – apples and oranges. But since you raised it, plant growth on any newly thawed permafrost greatly exceeds in CO2 drawdown compared with the effect of tiny amounts of methane. Also the age of the permafrost greatly affects the amount of methane released, plus much of it eaten by bacteria before it leaves the ground. Tree growth is just waiting to happen as soon as it is warm enough. There used to be forests on what is now permafrost. How much CO2 will removed by that? Do the math. CO2 is not a dominant driver of polar climate.
“Aerosols don’t last long in the atmosphere and the trend is to remove them, which will also cause warming.” As a person who measures aerosols, I do not agree. Aerosols can ‘last’ for centuries or days. Depends on their size. Removing diesel PM will cause cooling. Removing woodfuel PM will increase temps. Forest fires cause net cooling. The Moscow fire was located right next a brutally cold summer from Khazakhstan to Mongolia. Do the research then the sums then post comments on the world’s most popular science blog.
“Lossing [sic] ice from sources that were year round ice means that heat doesn’t have to melt ice that isn’t there to melt.” What are you trying to say? Old sea ice is like, what, 7 years old? The open area moves around depending on the sea currents pouring heat into the Arctic basin and the local weather conditions (viz this year a storm broke up a lot of the ice). You imply a warmer cllimate melted the ice. Not so. The sea ice is mostly not not melted by the sun, it is continuously melted from below by imported heat. When the ice is broken up or stops cooling fast enough it melts. With the ice out of the way the sea can cool properly. The increased solar radiation x the albedo is a red herring, Do the math. It is not hard. Do it well and you can get a grant.

October 19, 2012 5:32 pm

What is wrong with this statement?
“The current decadal average surface temperature (2001–2010) at the GISP2 site is −29.9°C. The record indicates that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4000 years, including century-long intervals nearly 1°C warmer than the present decade (2001–2010). Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years”
Source: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049444.shtml
Hint: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 5:41 pm

Gary Lance,
From your link:
“…The record indicates that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4000 years… Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability…”
There is nothing wrong with that statement.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
And the climate null hypothesis has never been falsified.

October 19, 2012 6:20 pm

Crispin in Yogayakarta developing aerosol measuring protocols
What am I trying to say? I said ice and that means all ice. Permafrost doesn’t go all the way to the surface in the summer in many places, so removing it doesn’t increase IR loss from what it originally was. Permafrost can be a hundred feet thick in some locations.
http://weatherblog.kshb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Snow-Cover.jpg
http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/arctic_snow_cover_anomalies_6-12.png
If you look at that snow cover chart for June, you will notice losing large amounts of snow cover is a recent trend. The second image shows you where it was lost and that’s important because the snow cover in forested areas has a different albedo change than areas of tundra, barren or wetlands.
Glaciers or alpine areas are limited when compared to snow cover near six million square kilometers in June.
Polar areas are important in the summer and once that arctic sea ice is gone, that heat will be around to warm the Arctic Ocean and the land surrounding it. Eventually, there won’t be sea ice present in June.
If that snow cover remains near the 2012 level next year, expect to see another 150 year Greenland meltdown.
Aerosols are hard to accurately estimate for their radiative effect, but most of our aerosols are gone in a week and are only there because they are constantly replaced. According to the EIA, we were down to 36% of our electricity being produced by coal in their last reported month and 38% for the last 12 months. We have the EPA wanting pollution standards enforced and natural gas is much cheaper to use as a fuel. It isn’t that hard to convert a boiler from coal to natural gas. The trend for aerosols in the US is in decline and that means more warming.
Antarctica and Greenland are both losing mass, but the albedo changes are nothing like losing 6 million square kilometers of snow cover. The antarctic sea ice minimum goes back to the same each year and that’s were the albedo effect is important.
CO2 is important in the long run and it’s hard to remove from the atmosphere, but the additional forcing caused by emissions is small compared to all the other forcing. We already have enough to mess up the world.

October 19, 2012 6:33 pm

D Böehm
There is nothing wrong with the statement, according to you, except there is no data in the entire time of before 4,000 years and up to more than 5,000 years where data shows less that 30 degrees.
The GISP2 data starts at 95 years before present and present is defined as 1950. I’ve seen Greenland ice core data compared which has yearly rings and is available in some locations. The temperature data varies from location to location by a large amount. The temperature data is a O18 proxy, so how can someone accept it to even make such wild claims?

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 6:59 pm

Gary Lance,
You don’t agree with R.B. Alley because his conclusions do not support your belief system. Typical of the alarmist crowd’s ‘catastrophic AGW’ religion.
This simple animation puts the current global temperature into perspective:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif

October 19, 2012 7:42 pm

D Böehm
BTW, this chart you posted says it’s before present (2000) and deceptively uses a red line to record data contained in the Alley, R.B report, but that red line actually connects the latest sample analyzed at 95 years BP and BP is 1950, so the chart ended in 1855 and not 2000.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
Here again is the data:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Here is how you can find all NOAA Paleoclimatology Ice Cores Data Sets:
http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/pls/paleox/f?p=517:1:2659353468376959:::APP:PROXYDATASETLIST:7:

October 19, 2012 8:17 pm

D Böehm says:
“You don’t agree with R.B. Alley because his conclusions do not support your belief system. Typical of the alarmist crowd’s ‘catastrophic AGW’ religion.”
Alley, R. B. doesn’t agree with you. His take is the temperature on Greenland varied a lot over time, much like the dates commonly claimed to be the MWP, LIA or any other period of interest.
If you had a good point using GISP2 data, why does everyone doctor the charts? There are about 20 different bogus charts for GISP2 and anyone who has discussed climate change knows it. If you know it, why do you use it?
I gave you a link to all Paleoclimatology Ice Cores Data Sets. Do I have to go to NOAA and get a comparison of yearly ice cores for the present, I was just looking at them yesterday? I told you why I didn’t accept the data and it’s because the present day O18 data from ice cores doesn’t match to a couple degrees, so why should one ice core be accepted as gospel? If you can’t get the present temperature to match using O18, why should the thousands of year old samples be accurate to a degree of temperature? You said the present temperature for the last decade was 29.9 C and that’s lower than the entire Medievel Warm Period. Do you know what was used to get present day data? I know they analyzed many modern ice cores, which could be accurately dated to the year, with visible rings and fallout. It’s not like the data after 1855 does exist and the data has to be better with more samples to average. Between 2000 and 2009, there was probably instrument measurements for that data.

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 8:23 pm

Gary Lance,
There has been no statistically significant warming since before 2000, so it doesn’t matter what happened between 2000 and 2009.
Next, ice cores from both hemispheres are in agreement.
Finally, the planet itself is falsifying all the catastrophic AGW nonsense. Who should we believe, the alarmist crowd? Or Planet Earth?

Richard M
October 19, 2012 8:31 pm

Rob Murphy says:
October 19, 2012 at 12:03 pm
“Like Gary Lance, you avoid the fact that the IPCC’s prediction was for both hemispheres to lose ice.”
They have. Sea ice is only a small part of Antarctica.

If you were keeping up with the latest measurements you would know the most recent data from ICESat shows Antarctica adding 47 GTs of land ice per year in addition to the record sea ice.
You were saying?
In addition, as mentioned earlier the sea ice is most important in terms of albedo. It reaches the lowest latitudes and hence has the greatest cooling effect. The small amount of changes in land ice have no impact on albedo. Neither do changes in ice volume but we constantly hear whines from alarmists about ice volume.
I’m quite disappointed in the level of knowledge of our latest alarmists. They don’t even know the very basics of their own side’s arguments.

October 19, 2012 9:25 pm

D Böehm
Do you know what the true meaning of statistically significant warming is and how it’s possible to apply it to a decade? All the warmest years on record are the last years and ice is still melting. When that ice is gone, that heat will start significantly raising temperatures.
I’m not an alarmist, because I have enough sense to know the days of pretending global warming doesn’t exist are near the end. What people think doesn’t matter much, the important thing is what governments think. Governments know there is global warming and Russia, the US and UK have had nuclear submarines under that arctic sea ice, so there is thickness data going back much further than satellite data . Heat melts volumes of sea ice and not sea ice extent.
So what environmental groups do you think collect that NSIDC and NOAA data? Perhaps you have guessed it, because the whole world knows what great environmentalist the United States Navy and Department of Commerce are! You should know about the Navy, because people try to use NIC data that is only gathered to give immediate advice to their shipping interests, before it’s properly analyzed.
“Finally, the planet itself is falsifying all the catastrophic AGW nonsense. Who should we believe, the alarmist crowd? Or Planet Earth?”
The planet behaves like it had a strong El Nino in 1998, then a string of La Ninas and the next strong El Nino will crush that record data if a La Nina doesn’t beat it to it. The planet behaves like it can warm without showing consistent yearly increases in surface temperature, which aren’t even recorded all over it’s surface. The planet behaves like it’s burning up ice, like we burn up fossil fuels and guess what, it’s going to run out of ice before we run out of fossil fuels?
I have studied what makes planets function, before there were global warming concerns. We aren’t going to get away with a 2 degree C rise in temperature when this is done without geoengineering. The feedback mechanisms haven’t all kicked in yet. A planet mostly covered with water can easily hide warming.

October 19, 2012 9:33 pm

I know when that sea ice volume runs out, there is no extent. I also know the albedo of slush is different than the old sea ice extent.
The latest data I’ve seen has Antarctica losing mass. WAIS will be having problems in the near future.

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 9:45 pm

Gary Lance says:
“All the warmest years on record are the last years and ice is still melting.”
Well, all my tallest years are the most recent years. And…
“I have enough sense to know the days of pretending global warming doesn’t exist…”
I have never said there is no global warming. The planet has been naturally warming since the LIA, along the same long term trend line. Global warming has not accelerated. The long term warming trend has been the same, whether CO2 is low or high. Therefore, CO2 does not have any measurable effect.
And you have no scientific evidence showing that it does.

October 19, 2012 10:33 pm

D Böehm
I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince someone that adding greenhouse gases to a planet heated by the sun and back radiation will cause warming. Pretend you are on Mars, Mercury or the Moon, I don’t care. Governments have better sense and they will figure out when they have gone too far.
I expect another watered down IPCC report and the world will have it’s share of misery if it spends 5 more years for a reasonable analysis. If they blow their feedback calculations like they blew that arctic sea ice free estimate, it will be Hothouse Earth. As it is, I don’t see anything natural for negative feedback, except the chance of a large volcanic eruption.
“And you have no scientific evidence showing that it does.”
You have the calculations on radiative forcing and greenhouse gases don’t have much error. Back radiation can be measured and it isn’t a theory, it’s a fact.
China’s health problems will cause them to reduce aerosols. Paying people to build scrubbers is easier than building cities without populations.
Things don’t naturally warm without a mechanism to make it warm. Nature is a word and concept that behaves according to the laws of Physics. You posted a chart that ended in 1855, which claimed it ended in 2000. There is obviously an effort to distort science, but with the majority of scientists on the payroll of industry, can you explain why they can’t discover this natural mechanism to warm a planet? Big oil has it’s share of Geologists and you have to take a course in Physical Geography to be a Geologist. Don’t you think it’s odd all those Geologists can’t discover a natural mechanism for our present climate change, like they have for past climate change?
The problem with your analysis is, scientists have looked at everything and greenhouse gases are the only thing they found. The equivalent of setting off 400,000 Hiroshima bombs each day sounds like a lot energy to me.

D Böehm
October 19, 2012 10:53 pm

Gary Lance says:
“You have the calculations on radiative forcing and greenhouse gases don’t have much error. Back radiation can be measured and it isn’t a theory, it’s a fact.”
Wrong. If you believe you have measurements showing that CO2 causes warming, post your chart here. Post it right here, instead of your baseless opinion.
The fact is that you have no such chart. There is no scientific evidence showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. NONE. But there is ample evidence proving that ∆T causes ∆CO2.
The alarmist crowd has cause and effect completely reversed; that is clear from empirical [real world] evidence. No wonder you arrive at the wrong conclusions. You people are running off in the wrong direction, as the scientific evidence proves. That is why your Belief system is being falsified by Planet Earth. Because you are operating on a religious belief instead of science, you will not change. You do not see it, but that is a fact.
Nothing unprecedented or unusual is occurring. The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. And the “carbon” scare is based entirely on money, not on science. Word up, because that is reality.

Joe
October 19, 2012 11:25 pm

@Gary, Rob et al:
Serious question – why does the minimum extent matter so much?
The lower albedo of open water can’t have any warming effect because, by the time it’s reached, the sun ain’t shining up there and won’t be again until march next year. So there is NO sunlight to be reflected. Albedo means nothing when it’s dark.
From the point of view of thin v thick ice, thin ice is pretty much as reflective as thick so, as long as the cover extent (NOT volume) has returned by the time the Arctic sun rises again in March, there isn’t any positive feedback to worry about.
In fact, because the open water in those initial dark months is better at radiating heat (because it’s warmer and has better heat transport properties than ice does), a low minimum extent will have a net cooling effect provided it recovers by next March (when the sun rises again).
If you look at the annual graph, you’ll see that’s exactly what keeps happening. Regardless of the minimum, by the next spring equinox (when the polar sun rises), the cover is invariably back very close indeed to it’s long-term average.
If there’s a flaw in my logic there then please explain where it is? Remember, this is a SERIOUS question and I’m quite willing to be convinced that I’m wrong if you can put your case as (hopefully) clearly as i’ve put mine. Please note that appeals to authority, sarcastic comments and personal attacks are NOT “putting your case”.
I’m not a climate scientist, just a lowly computer science BSc who mends clocks and watches for a living, so I’d prefer a clear, step-by-step logical argument as I’ve offered you. There’s a long-standing tenet that I’ve always subscribed to: if you really understand what you’re saying, you should be able to distill it in this way for non-experts to grasp. Please demonstrate and share your understanding!

October 19, 2012 11:50 pm

So you want to use science to prove that back radiation isn’t caused by greenhouse gases and that’s why it’s called pseudo-science. Increasing greenhouse gases has to increase back radiation and can be proven whenever the humidity changes. Back radiation is a fact that can be measured, because water is a greenhouse gas that is variable in the atmosphere and those variations can be measured. Those measurements for solar irradiance and the Earth’s energy budget are averages of many measurements. How do you explain back radiation being nearly twice the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the Earth’s surface? Science isn’t science is not an explanation! The same energy budget was in college textbooks 40 years ago, before global warming concerns and no one was objecting to greenhouse gases then.
http://www.grin.com/object/external_document.248321/0d091796114c87fbf55f3bff5253e3ae_LARGE.png
Just how do you explain Venus being the hottest planet with it having such a high albedo, that it’s called the Morning and Evening Star? What besides greenhouse gases could cause that Earth size planet to get so warm, when so much of it’s sunlight is reflected?
http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/IPCCRadiativeForcing.jpg
The margin of error in estimating the radiative forcing of global scale, high LOSU greenhouse gas is very small and measuring aerosols isn’t.
Climate change isn’t something that can be put off for the future and it will be at your door whatever you believe. Climate change isn’t weather, it’s changing the world you have to live in and it will make itself known. There is no place you can live in America and avoid it.

wayne
October 20, 2012 12:31 am

http://i46.tinypic.com/2m6ofg6.png
I would take that as a slight positive for the 2012 Arctic melt season. If the freezing area of 2013 even approaches that of 2012 there most likely will be much less open water per average day in the next season, probably along the lines of 2006, 2008 and 2010.

richardscourtney
October 20, 2012 12:33 am

Gary Lance:
Concerning the AGW scare, at October 19, 2012 at 9:25 pm you write to D Böehm saying

What people think doesn’t matter much, the important thing is what governments think.

It is pleasing to see you are at last starting to get a clue.
Governments abandoned the AGW-scare at the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009.
I said then that the scare would continue to move as though alive in similar manner to a beheaded chicken running around a farmyard. It continues to provide the movements of life but it is already dead. And its deathly movements provide an especial problem.
Nobody will declare the AGW-scare dead: it will slowly fade away. This is similar to the ‘acid rain’ scare of the 1980s. Few remember that scare unless reminded of it but its effects still have effects; e.g. the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) exists. Importantly, the bureaucracy which the EU established to operate the LCPD still exists. And those bureaucrats justify their jobs by imposing ever more stringent, always more pointless, and extremely expensive emission limits which are causing enforced closure of UK power stations.
Bureaucracies are difficult to eradicate and impossible to nullify.
As the AGW-scare fades away those in ‘prime positions’ will attempt to establish rules and bureaucracies to impose those rules which provide immortality to their objectives. Guarding against those attempts now needs to be a serious activity.
Richard

garymount
October 20, 2012 1:03 am

Joe says:
October 19, 2012 at 11:25 pm
—- —-
The following description may be helpful when thinking about polar regions and albedo (surface reflectance) / insolation (sunlight)
The Arctic / Antarctic circle is that region that is entirely cast in darkness at the point in time of the winter solstice. The 24 hr/day shadow then grows smaller for the next 3 months as the leading edge slowly moves its way toward the pole. The pole itself sees 6 months of continuous darkness, and as you move away from the pole the amount of complete darkness reduces in length till you have reached the arctic circle where it will have only had a moment of darkness, if you will. (Did I just say the same thing twice?).
I can describe the summer condition as well, but I think it becomes obvious what happens in the polar regions when you think enough about it.
An helpful program that I used to use, and have just downloaded it and installed it once again is a program called HomePlanet that shows the current shadow on a map of the earth:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/
For Windows. Source code is even provided for your use as you please if you like.

P. Solar
October 20, 2012 2:06 am

Phil. says:
October 19, 2012 at 4:56 pm
>>
P. Solar says:
October 19, 2012 at 3:01 pm
That is about as clear an admission of being in [snip] as I can imagine.
You are a self confessed [snip].
>>
There is no policy forbidding use of the words deny , denial or other derivatives thereof. The ban is on using denier as an offensive slur with implicit connotations of holocaust denier.
My whole point , that I state clearly in such terms is that Gary Lance is displaying clear evidence of being “in denial” in the true psychological sense. ie refusing to confront the evidence that may challenge what he believes.
In his reply he does it yet again:
Gary Lance says:
October 19, 2012 at 4:59 pm
>>
P. Solar
What you presented as links wasn’t data or science.
I believe when I see pictures …
>>
http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
http://i48.tinypic.com/29ni90i.png
http://i48.tinypic.com/dzj70k.png
http://i45.tinypic.com/j60q36.png
http://i46.tinypic.com/r7uets.png
Well, sure looks like data. All from official sources.
Sorry, I don’t do “pictures”.

P. Solar
October 20, 2012 3:06 am

Joe says: Albedo means nothing when it’s dark.
No. Albedo (reflectivity) is the complement of absorptivity (a=1-r) and at a specific wavelength, absorptivity is equal to emissivity. So what reflects less absorbs and emits more. That does matter during the 6 months of the polar night.
What is also important is that open water evaporates. Both those effects will act as negative feedbacks to a reduction in ice cover caused by warming of the Arctic environment.
One of the graphs I’ve linked is interesting in this respect:
http://i46.tinypic.com/r7uets.png
It shows the increase in North Altantic SST (inverted in this graph) was accompanied by an accelerating change in ice cover. Now that the AMO has levelled out the big slide has stopped an returned to it’s previous oscillatory mode.
Thus rate of change is again oscillating around zero change but with a much reduced ice coverage.
This is not formal proof but is evidence of a net negative feedback, not the positive feedback a lot of people are suggesting will happen. There is NO evidence of tipping points etc in this data, what we see here is an adjustment of sea ice cover to he warmer sea temps.
That does not preclude Siberian permafrost melting , belching massive methane reserves etc. in the future but the evidence of current climate change in the Arctic is one of a stable system controlled by negative feedback.
Now if the media continue to focus on one day per year and ignore the data of the other 364.25 days we should not be surprised if a lot of people flip out and believe irrecoverable runaway processes are already happening.
That is the aim of such propaganda.
Anthony’s one day per year presented here is no more or less valid than the minimum. I think that is his point in posting this.
The graphs I have produced here use ALL the available data. The result, not surprisingly, is much more informative

Richard M
October 20, 2012 4:09 am

Gary Lane: “The latest data I’ve seen has Antarctica losing mass. ”
Hence proving you are completely out-of-touch with the current data. It appears you don’t even understand that the IPCC predicts the Antarctic will initially gain ice volume so you are completely out-of-touch with your own sides claims.
However, don’t get all excited now as the reason there has been ice gain is not in line with the IPCC’s claims.

J Martin
October 20, 2012 4:55 am

Mpemba effect ?
The increased ice melt which is largely driven by warmer Arctic currents, then re-freezes at a faster rate. Are we seeing the Mpemba effect in action here ?
Whilst we have figures for Arctic air temperature and graphs for sea ice extent and area, we seem to lack data for Arctic water temperatures to allow a fuller discussion of future Arctic behaviour.
With warmer Arctic currents set against a background of solar cooling we may see wider oscillation between record low ice extent in summer and increasing (perhaps record) ice extent in winter.
The Mpemba effect is where warmer water will freeze before the same amount of cooler water. An experiment easily carried out at home, and one for which it is claimed that no scientist has yet satisfactorily explained.
From Wikipedia;
The effect is named after Tanzanian Erasto Mpemba. He first encountered the phenomenon in 1963 in Form 3 of Magamba Secondary School, Tanganyika when freezing ice cream mix that was hot in cookery classes and noticing that they froze before cold mixes. After passing his O-level examinations, he became a student at Mkwawa Secondary (formerly High) School, Iringa, Tanzania. The headmaster invited Dr. Denis G. Osborne from the University College in Dar Es Salaam to give a lecture on physics. After the lecture, Erasto Mpemba asked him the question “If you take two similar containers with equal volumes of water, one at 35 °C (95 °F) and the other at 100 °C (212 °F), and put them into a freezer, the one that started at 100 °C (212 °F) freezes first. Why?” only to be ridiculed by his classmates and teacher. After initial consternation, Dr. Osborne experimented on the issue back at his workplace and confirmed Mpemba’s finding. They published the results together in 1969.[4]

kadaka (KD Knoebel)
October 20, 2012 5:06 am

From Gary Lance on October 19, 2012 at 10:33 pm:

I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince someone that adding greenhouse gases to a planet heated by the sun and back radiation will cause warming.

Which is a good thing, as the Earth is not heated by back radiation. The source of the heat is overwhelmingly the Sun, with the contributions from human energy generation and that released from the Earth itself negligible. Our planet is heated by the Sun, period. The back radiation from the greenhouse effect comes from a slowing of the loss of energy to space, it does not heat the planet.
From Gary Lance on October 19, 2012 at 11:50 pm:

How do you explain back radiation being nearly twice the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the Earth’s surface?

Better still, how can you explain it? The solar radiation delivered is primarily visible light and short-wave infrared. Back radiation is long-wave infrared, with said LWIR generated from the absorption of visible light and SWIR.
So how can back radiation possibly be twice the amount of energy absorbed from the Sun? Let us say the Sun delivers 10 Joules which is absorbed. From this, 10 Joules are released as LWIR. That is 10 Joules that can be returned to the surface by an impossibly-perfect greenhouse effect as back radiation. You are telling me that 20 Joules are returned instead. Where did the extra 10 Joules come from?
At 10:33 pm again:

The problem with your analysis is, scientists have looked at everything and greenhouse gases are the only thing they found. The equivalent of setting off 400,000 Hiroshima bombs each day sounds like a lot energy to me.

Yes, it was quite amazing. Their imaginations ran out of possible reasons, they programmed computer models to show warming from GHG’s, primarily CO₂, and voila, the models showed there was warming from GHG’s, primarily CO₂.
It seems you need a firmer grounding in GHE theory. Ira Glickstein PhD wrote a nice accessible series for WUWT, Visualizing the “Greenhouse Effect” that explains it very well.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/28/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-atmospheric-windows/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/29/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-molecules-and-photons/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/07/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-light-and-heat/
The effect is real, and frequently misunderstood.
That said, CO₂’s future contribution is highly overstated by such as you. Its GHE response is logarithmic, and evidence is mounting CO₂’s effect is saturated. Any further increases from current atmospheric concentrations, in any range or rate of increase possible by mere mankind, would yield a negligible temperature increase at best, easily overwhelmed by natural forces.
Moreover, the very first 20ppm accounts for over half of the GHE resulting at pre-industrial CO₂ levels. Anything beyond the “absolute minimum” ~180ppm levels of the recent glaciation episodes to current amounts is practically negligible.
So when someone on this site says ‘CO2 doesn’t cause warming’, it’s likely they are not denying that CO₂ is a GHG, they are saying increases will not cause significant warming at the expected levels.
Now back to the imagination-deprived scientists.
Do you agree that the Sun is the ultimate source of warming? What possible reason could account for modern warming other than GHG’s? Less solar radiation being rejected thus more being absorbed, of course. D’oh!
Start here, where it is noted:

As climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer has pointed out his book,

“The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.”

With constant incoming energy, whether there is cooling or warming is changed by how much of the energy is allowed in, which is controlled by cloud cover. Spencer posited a mere 1-2% variation accounts for most to all of the warming blamed on “anthropogenic” causes, namely increased CO₂. At the linked piece, a peer-reviewed paper examining China reported “Significant decline in cloud cover with trend of −1.6%per decade during 1954–2005 was derived.” The authors also found the decrease wasn’t related to man-made aerosols thus likely a natural phenomenon.
Which leads to this piece: Some confirmation of Spencer’s cloud hypothesis – it is getting less cloudy and warmer at the same time:

A new paper just published in the Journal of Climate finds that global cloudiness has decreased over the past 39 years from between 0.9 to 2.8% by continent as shown in the figure below:
[graph]
The period of the study is from 1971 to 2009. The authors say that:

“Global average trends of cloud cover suggest a small decline in total cloud cover, on the order of 0.4% per decade.”

Taken together, global cloud cover decreased and average of 1.56% over this 39 year period.

Reduce the cloud cover, more solar energy is absorbed, global warming happens.
You might want to read this short piece by Dr. Spencer, A Primer on Our Claim that Clouds Cause Temperature Change. Very informative.

beng
October 20, 2012 5:16 am

Even w/all the embarrassing hand-wringing on this thread by a few ice-alarmists, there still isn’t a single reasonable explanation of why less ice is harmful. Remarkable. It’s like stepping back into the Dark Ages. Ghosts & goblins.

October 20, 2012 5:50 am

richardscourtney
You just don’t get it do you? Governments aren’t going to be giving the AGW-scare, they’re going to be getting it along with everyone else. The days of living in a world with weather as usual are over and a few years of it will convince governments it isn’t going to get better.

October 20, 2012 6:30 am

P. Solar
If you want to discuss data, post original charts with sources and not more of those tampered charts with cherry picked data!
Try to keep in mind the physics of warming a planet involves more than surface temperature! Think of it like a well insulated house filled with hugh blocks of ice! Are you trying to say a warming event in that house has to immediately show up always as a yearly temperature increase and melting those hugh blocks of ice isn’t showing warming? Why isn’t melting an average of 800 cubic kilometers of arctic sea ice away during the sea ice minimum a sign of warming? Why isn’t having all those arctic temperature anomalies as predicted a sign of warming? How much warming can be hidden in our oceans that could never be detected within the accuracy of global temperature measurements?
Try this litmus test! When ice throughout the whole world stops melting and starts increasing in volume, let us know about it. Don’t try cherry picking data for a super cold desert and claim added precipitation is inconsistent with warming! When a space craft can measure water underground in an aquifer, don’t dismiss it can measure ice sheets above ground. There is plenty of data including pictures of losing ice shelves in WAIS and glaciers speeding up, to suggest mass loss is presently happening in Antarctica, but the fact is Antarcitica is so cold that warming it enough should increase the chance of precipitation and add mass. Ice sheets don’t usually melt from the top, they melt from the sides. They are so large, they influence their own climate. Ice definitely has fluid properties and I’ve seen glaciers move quickly enough to keep people busy staying ahead of them.

beesaman
October 20, 2012 6:33 am

Sooo, if there is extra heat energy in the Arctic, why is the ice recovering? If that extra energy has escaped to the atmosphere why is it not showing up on the AMSU charts or DMI? If it has flowed into the oceans, either Pacific or North Atlantic why is it not showin up as both are cooling. So where’s the heat?

October 20, 2012 6:38 am

P. Solar
The albedo effect is a large scale effect of changing the reflectivity of the surface and how that surface handles solar radiation. It isn’t about cosmic rays in the dark or a neutrino happening to strike it.

October 20, 2012 7:09 am

Richard M
Why should I ignore satellite data the IPCC didn’t have and take the observations of scientists projecting the arctic sea ice would melt in 2100 seriously? Grace is the best system we have to measure ice sheets and the most recent data has WAIS losing mass, EAIS gaining mass and the net Antarctica losing mass. You don’t want to accept the data, because you want to cherry pick what you think suits your position. The fact is and you have been told, increased antarctic mass isn’t inconsistent with global warming. You’ll see the signs of Antarctica losing mass, because the ice shelves buttressing glaciers will break away first. You would think losing Larsen B that has been there at least 10,000 years would tell you something. The glaciers that fed Larsen B are behaving like all glaciers do when the lose what is blocking them. They always speed up.
You have to be desperate to try to use Antarctica to refute AGW. Look at all the recent changes in the Antarctic Pennisula! Look at the changes in it’s nearest continental neighbor! Patagonia, the third largest ice sheet on Earth is quickly melting away and so are those Andes glaciers. The Southern Hemisphere just has much more water to buffer global warming, but it still shows signs.

October 20, 2012 7:21 am

kadaka (KD Knoebel)
It very simple how back radiation can be nearly twice as much as incoming solar energy absorbed by the surface of the Earth, because it’s been measured.
If you can’t accept that as science and that the total amount of energy has nothing to do with it’s wavelength, then you don’t know anything about the science of electromagnetic waves.
Without back radiation from greenhouse gases, this Earth would be frozen solid.

richardscourtney
October 20, 2012 7:33 am

Gary Lance:
I copy your post to me at October 20, 2012 at 5:50 am so everybody can get the laugh again. It says to me

You just don’t get it do you? Governments aren’t going to be giving the AGW-scare, they’re going to be getting it along with everyone else. The days of living in a world with weather as usual are over and a few years of it will convince governments it isn’t going to get better.

If the AGW-hypothesis were a scientific issue then it would have been long-forgotten by now. $billions have been spent each year for decades in attempts to find some – any – evidence of AGW. But no evidence of AGW has been found and much evidence which refutes the AGW-hypothesis has been discovered.
From its very beginning the AGW-scare was always political. And governments abandoned the scare at Copenhagen in 2009. The AGW-scare is an “ex-parrot”.
The Earth has been refusing to warm for 16 years and no unprecedented weather has happened. But you claim of AGW that we are all “going to be getting it”. No, we are not “going to be getting it” unless the the Earth stops refusing to obey your imaginings, and there is no reason to think the Earth will change in response to your imaginings.
You and the others who tried to spread the AGW-scare have lost. The scare is fading away and it cannot be recovered. But some minions of the major scaremongers have yet to recognise how they have been misled and misused so they continue to rant while the Earth refuses to warm.
It seems you are one such minion. I feel sorry for you.
Richard

J Martin
October 20, 2012 7:38 am

If the Arctic is entering a period of oscillation from record low extent in summer to (record) high extent in winter, could this presage a phase change, perhaps to a glaciation ?
The Gary Lance’s of this World are wrong. Too many people want to oversimplify the World they live in. The chance that one single factor, co2 in this case, can dominate a system as complex and long lived as climate is simply not credible.
Oceans and Ice Caps have considerable inertia and can show warming / melting for a time even though the background situation has shifted to a colder regime.
co2 does not generate heat, we survive on this planet courtesy of the sun, and the sun has shifted to a colder phase, temperatures are currently buffered by inertia in the system from the previous high solar cycles which remains with us, we are also at a solar peak, though a low one, the outlook is increasing cold.
Which means that the Gary Lance’s of this World will still be able to happily worry about temperatures, just the opposite of the one they currently expect.

Richard M
October 20, 2012 7:42 am

Gary Lance says:
October 20, 2012 at 7:09 am
Why should I ignore satellite data the IPCC didn’t have and take the observations of scientists projecting the arctic sea ice would melt in 2100 seriously? Grace is the best system we have to measure ice sheets and the most recent data has WAIS losing mass, EAIS gaining mass and the net Antarctica losing mass.

Sorry, repeating incorrect information does not make it true. Grace has been shown to be wrong. The latest paper released in July 2012 analyzes ICESat data and computes an increase in overall ice mass. This paper is from NASA and was covered on WUWT last month IIRC.
So, given that you won’t accept the most recent data why should anyone believe anything you say? It appears you are the one that loves to pick and choose the data that fits their belief system and ignore everything else.
In addition, the southern ocean has been cooling as has the Antarctic for many years. I see you also ignore these facts in your desperation. This is the real reason for increased sea ice. Once again it appears the facts do not support your belief system.

October 20, 2012 8:15 am

beng
It’s been spelled out to you many times on this thread. Life as we know it in the Northern Hemisphere is dependent on have that sea ice in the arctic. The temperature difference between the arctic and the tropics determines the jet stream.
The first point is that arctic sea ice is toast without geoengineering to keep it around. Toast means it’s gone in the summer, but even before it’s gone, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere has changed. If you think it hasn’t been that bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. Extreme weather has become the new norm.
The timeline is something like this. In 2015, the arctic is ice free in the summer and each year that period of being ice free gets longer. If we are lucky and weather helps us out, it’s in 2020, but that five years isn’t going to help. Long before then, including past years, the jet stream begins to meander further south and north, often freezing itself over an area causing repeated weather. The results are droughts, floods, heat waves and when cold waves get fixed during a winter, you can claim there isn’t global warming, by ignoring the simple fact that an equal amount of warm has penetrated the higher latitudes. Those 150 year Greenland melts become yearly events.
Winter in the Northern Hemisphere has snow cover that covers most of China, Siberia, Europe and the US, but that snow cover starts going away sooner each year. Warm air masses are roaming the Northern Hemisphere earlier each year and are willing to spend that warmth on any ice they find. All the glaciers are in massive retreat. As growth spreads to the northern latitudes, the more southern latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere become arid. Eventually Illinois has the climate of Louisiana.
It’s possible that warming permafrost can cause massive methane releases, but we don’t know how much methane is there and how fast it can be released. We do know there is a major chance of losing a bread basket, it could be us, Russia, China or Europe. The relationship between large scale climate change and desert formation is well established. People will be starving before their major coastal cities are drowned, but the UK and the US will need a new capital.
That is the warning of someone who studies science and doesn’t ignore it. The data to prove this is happening now is available for people wanting to see what is truly happening in their present world.

October 20, 2012 8:41 am

“beesaman says:
October 20, 2012 at 6:33 am
Sooo, if there is extra heat energy in the Arctic, why is the ice recovering? If that extra energy has escaped to the atmosphere why is it not showing up on the AMSU charts or DMI? If it has flowed into the oceans, either Pacific or North Atlantic why is it not showin up as both are cooling. So where’s the heat?”
The heat is in the ocean where it likes to be and quickly forming extent sea ice is just sea ice rapidly forming to trap that heat. It takes -1.8 degrees C to form sea ice and that isn’t very cold for an arctic winter.
What part of volume gets so confusing to people on this site and what part of having sea ice with nearly no sunlight is confusing? People who study the arctic sea ice used to pay little attention as it refreezed, but many are watching it now. People who study arctic sea ice know a quick refreeze with large drift will make that sea ice more vulnerable next melt. If the sea ice traps heat, that heat can melt away sea ice that has survived to become thicker, so sea ice lucky enough to survive the summer melt is mixed in with some of that new sea ice that doesn’t have a chance of surviving next year’s melt.
Sea ice extent is not going to preserve the volume of arctic sea ice. There is no good news in this years refreeze, be it extent, drift or salinity.

October 20, 2012 9:01 am

gary lance posted this “Without back radiation from greenhouse gases, this Earth would be frozen solid.”
think about that please, you are saying the direct sunlight does NOT warm the earth at all it is “back radiation” that does the warming……..CLUE = without the earth warming first from the sun there would be NO radiation to be reflected back, which doesnt happen anyway.
there is NOTHING in co2 that would make it reverse the flow of IR from the surface towards space.

October 20, 2012 9:02 am

richardscourtney
I’ve said all along I don’t care what you people think, because what you think isn’t going to prevent what will happen. The days of thinking climate change are something you can avoid in the distant future are over and we all are going to have to live with it now.
Scientists have done the people a favor by warning them and what favor have you done the people by pretending science isn’t science? You tried to save yourself a nickel by sabotaging policies to prevent climate change and costed yourself a dollar or more to do it. You made the choice to spend years being on the wrong side of an issue, so live with the consequences!
The governments will wake up when they realize the new world’s game is making them spin the wheel of misfortune. If you think 2012 was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.

richardscourtney
October 20, 2012 9:09 am

Gary Lance:
For the first time in this thread at October 20, 2012 at 8:41 am you write something that is true; i.e.

There is no good news in this years refreeze, be it extent, drift or salinity.

Indeed, so. The refreeze suggests we will NOT be getting the ice-free Arctic ocean which would have been such a blessing.
As you say, not getting an ice-free Arctic ocean is not good news. It is very bad news.
Richard

richardscourtney
October 20, 2012 9:22 am

Gary Lance:
In your ludicrous rant addressed to me at October 20, 2012 at 9:02 am you say to me

If you think 2012 was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.

I don’t “think 2012 was bad” (although it would have been better without the financial crisis).
2012 has been good so far. More people and less starvation than ever before. The usual minor wars around the world, but no global conflict. The usual minor natural disasters, but no major ones such as a Hurricane Katrina, a ‘Boxing Day’ Tsunami, or a Pompeii-type volcanic eruption. No pandemics. etc.
Why do you “think 2012 was bad”? If you can answer that then perhaps your answer will explain the cause of your delusions about AGW.
Richard

J Martin
October 20, 2012 9:41 am

Gary Lance. What is your point ?
Are you saying that we should stop being such naughty people putting co2 into the atmosphere ?
The fact is that nothing you or anyone else says is going to stop that, so I suggest you take whatever measures you think you need to take to adapt to the future you think is going to happen and move nearer the North pole.
Myself, I think that temperatures are going to go down relentlessly and I will be moving nearer the equator.

October 20, 2012 9:49 am

Kadaka KD Knoebel says
Reduce the cloud cover, more solar energy is absorbed, global warming happens.
henry says
It is here where I think a few of may have got it the wrong way around. I am not saying that you are not right about needing some kind of cosmic particles to start a cloud. But first, to start a cloud you also need cooling.
My analysis of the results on maxima coming from 47 weather stations shows that maximum temps have been dropping. In fact the best fit that I can make for it is a sine wave, wavelength 88 years.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
(this is not a model, but a logical conclusion from 47x365x38=651890 measurements; i.e. where else must the blue curve go, but to drop further down? Also note that the average change in energy-in over 88 years is simply 0.0 degrees K per annum, does everybody get that?)
Before they started with this carbon dioxide nonsense they did look in the direction of the planets, rightly or wrongly, to explain an apparent 100 year weather cycle, if you study the height of the flooding of the Nile over time. See here.
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
To quote from the above paper:
A Weather Cycle as observed in the Nile Flood cycle, Max rain followed by Min rain, appears discernible with maximums at 1750, 1860, 1950 and minimums at 1670, 1800, 1900 and a minimum at 1990 predicted.
(The 1990 turned out to be 1995 when cooling started!)
So, indeed one would expect more condensation (bigger flooding) during and at the end of a cooling period and minimum flooding during and at the end of a warm period. This is because when water vapor cools (more), it condensates (more) to water (i.e. more rain). At the same you would also have more clouds, naturally, so to speak.
Now put my sine wave next to those dates?
1995 end of warming – minimum
1950 end of cooling – maximum
1900 end of warming – minimum
Not too bad, heh?
Why all climate scientists keep looking at the average global mean temps. also puzzles me.
Earth stores energy in its waters, vegetation, chemicals, even in currents and weather, etc.
On top of that we have earth’s own volcanic actions which also provides heating/cooling, depending on whatever. Ice, more or less of it, also becomes a factor.
So whatever comes out as average temp. is bound to be confusing.
Maxima is a much better parameter to look at as it gives us a sense of energy in. There must be some lag between energy out and energy in, so I am more inclined to believe in a 100 year cycle consisting of 2 x 50 year cycle (44 + ca.5 ; remember 7 x 7 + 1 jubilee year?)
So far, I do not exclude a gravitational or electromagnetic swing/switch that changes the UV coming into earth. In turn this seems to change the chemical reactions of certain chemicals reacting to the UV lying on top of the atmosphere. This change in concentration of chemicals lying on top of us, in turn causes more back radiation (when there is more), hence we are now cooling whilst ozone & others are increasing.
Hope this helps a few people.

October 20, 2012 10:00 am

“J Martin says:
October 20, 2012 at 7:38 am
If the Arctic is entering a period of oscillation from record low extent in summer to (record) high extent in winter, could this presage a phase change, perhaps to a glaciation ?”
Why is that, because you can just say so?
The arctic sea ice doesn’t have a good place to expand and there is no data showing the maximum extent will be larger. The maximum extent doesn’t matter anyway, because it all melts away. The antarctic has two large gyres which usually protect a minimum of sea ice, but the arctic just has northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelagos (CAA). The CAA has been falling apart and it really collapsed in 2012. All those straits are leaking sea ice and they are leaking the multi-year sea ice necessary for the arctic sea ice to survive. The only way we could buy that arctic sea ice some time would be to plug up the CAA and Nares with ice bridges and prevent the escape of multi-year sea ice. That obviously isn’t going to happen this refreeze season and I don’t anticipate the governments being proactive enough to do anything about it in the near future.
Amplification isn’t something easy to quantify and it’s hard for people without a scientific background to understand. Our planet has feedbacks that were slowly making it colder, until a force overwhelmed the cooling trend and gained control of those feedbacks. The force doesn’t have to be strong, because the radiative force of cooling from Milankovitch Cycles is very weak. Any warming force strong enough to match it and then some gains control of the same feedbacks that were assisting it.
Nature requires a mechanism to work and there is no mechanism to reverse the present trend. Can you see these June snow cover anomalies and picture the magnitude?
http://scitechdaily.com/images/snow-cover-anomalies.jpg
Greenland doesn’t have quite 2 million square kilometers of ice sheet. If we continue to lose that much snow cover in June, Greenland is going to regularly melt like it did in 2012.
Our present warming is like a sigmoid function that starts slowly and accelerates. That past 30 or so years where we saw all those rapid changes is the last stages of the slow beginning of that function. The time series starts back around a 13 degree C global temperature Earth and ends with a 22 degree C Earth. The ice free arctic is just a road sign letting you know the speed limit has changed.
The only thing nature has to stop that function is man geoengineering his way out of it, while it is still within his power to do so.

October 20, 2012 10:58 am

Richard M
I don’t accept cherry picked data and I’ve told you over and over the antarctic ice mass has nothing to do with global warming. When a scientist looks at data, they look at all the data. When a scientist sees someone posting charts that deceive or flat out lie about dates, then they know the person isn’t interested in science. Science is the sum of knowledge about a subject and it doesn’t exclude data. If I wake up from a coma and are told we have a strong La Nina, I know the SST has declined and so has sea level. I don’t need to look at the data to make that conclusion or the opposite conclusion for an El Nino. Unless someone is willing to look at the whole history to discern long term trends, they are being deceptive to cherry pick certain starting points and presenting long term trends that way.
“The latest paper released in July 2012 analyzes ICESat data and computes an increase in overall ice mass. This paper is from NASA and was covered on WUWT last month IIRC.”
You claim you have recent IceSat data and IceSat collected data for 7 years, before it shutdown in February 2010. The consistent trend reported for Antarctica shows mass increase in EAIS and decrease in WAIS. The latest report is a mass reduction for the whole. Ice sheet data also includes fly overs.
It’s too cold in Antarctica to snow, so the more it warms, the more likely it will be to gain precipitation and mass, as long as the glaciers don’t remove the mass. I’ve told you Antartica has two ice sheets and the WAIS is the one that will melt. If Antarctica helps us a little on sea level rise, then so what? The world will starve to death before it will drown.
Is there anyone on this site who has taken college courses about the Earth, like a Physical Geography course that explains all the Earth’s features? Where is the logic in opposing greenhouse gas legislation and claiming that back radiation doesn’t exist, or that the scale has been tipped to cause warming instead of cooling? Since when is rejecting nearly 200 year old established science called science? When you see Greenland melting again in the coming years, don’t worry about drowning your coastal cities in the future, worry about the world of hurt you are going to have to deal with in the now! These aren’t going to be the Happy Days.

beesaman
October 20, 2012 11:27 am

Sooo, if the heat is in the Arctic ocean, why the huge refreeze? Funny sort of heat, maybe it’s that sort of heat that produces the snow and cold that we were never going to see again?

kadaka (KD Knoebel)
October 20, 2012 11:28 am

From HenryP on October 20, 2012 at 9:49 am:

Kadaka KD Knoebel says
Reduce the cloud cover, more solar energy is absorbed, global warming happens.
henry says
It is here where I think a few of may have got it the wrong way around. I am not saying that you are not right about needing some kind of cosmic particles to start a cloud. (…)

You can stop right there. While things like Svensmark’s galactic cosmic ray theory (hypothesis?) have a certain allure, I’m not going that far. By Dr. Spencer the late 20th century global warming can be explained by cloud cover variations without invoking CO₂, whose GHE is saturated anyway, the required amounts of cloud cover variations have been found, and that’s where I’m stopping, which is far enough.
Mechanisms for the cloud cover variations can wait for later, and I doubt it’ll be any specific one. Likely there’ll be several possibilities, with interconnections… And it can be written off as within “natural variability” once we look at timescales longer than the professional career of a grant-seeking climate scientist.

October 20, 2012 11:42 am

“Bill Taylor says:
October 20, 2012 at 9:01 am
gary lance posted this “Without back radiation from greenhouse gases, this Earth would be frozen solid.”
think about that please, you are saying the direct sunlight does NOT warm the earth at all it is “back radiation” that does the warming……..CLUE = without the earth warming first from the sun there would be NO radiation to be reflected back, which doesnt happen anyway.
there is NOTHING in co2 that would make it reverse the flow of IR from the surface towards space.”
First of all I said solar radiation absorbed by the surface of the Earth and you changed it. Here is the image:
http://www.optocleaner.com/images/Solar-Radiation-Budget-650.jpg
It’s the same concept of Earth’s energy budget that predates global warming concerns. Now, because you want to fight against a carbon tax, you reject science that is older than when most people had their ancestors immigrate to America. Your agenda doesn’t change reality.
Don’t you know all the scientists who study the planets know that without greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, this would be a frozen planet? Nitrogen and oxygen can’t make this Earth warm enough to keep CO2 a gas, because the gases are transparent to the longwave radiation leaving the Earth’s surface. There are places in Antarctica where it is cold enough to form dry ice, based on instrumental records. It works the same on Earth as it does on another planet. There is no scientific debate about the greenhouse effect. Your model of the Earth is like Mars which has such a slight atmosphere, it’s almost like not having one.
The surface of the Earth absorbs 168 watts per square meter from incoming solar radiation and it absorbs 324 watts per square meter from back radiation. An energy balance requires the amount entering the whole Earth to be the same as the amount leaving it and the same applies to the surface. Warming or cooling comes from changing the amounts and that’s why adding greenhouse gases change back radiation. The change only has to be enough to counteract the long term cooling change of our present position in Milankovitch Cycles and anything more will cause warming that is amplified by feedback.
That isn’t a model, it’s data.

J Martin
October 20, 2012 11:45 am

Gary Lance and other co2 converts,
will nothing ever change your mind ? How much cold will it take ? If we get something close to a Maunder minimum, is that enough ? or will you still say it was caused by co2 and call it another sign of global warming ?
The effects of co2 are logarithmic, co2 has done it’s best or worst and can provide no further significant warming.
If Livingston and Penn turn out to be correct, sunspots will be history round about 2020, the last time that happened we had a frozen Thames in London. Finland lost between one third and one half of it’s population, over a million people died in France, harvests failed throughout the Northern hemisphere.
The Arctic ice has been melted from below, not from above where temperatures have remained below zero C for most of the year. Ocean currents can take years, sometimes hundreds of years to meander. Side effects of an ice free Arctic in the summer will be beneficial not some disaster as you imagine. Increased snow in the Northern hemisphere will happen, but that will not have been caused by the Arctic, since the Arctic will be frozen as usual during the winter.
Runaway warming cannot happen, runaway cooling is just a matter of time, and quite likely we will start to see that within the next 5 to 10 years.
Are you aware that the sun is behaving in a way never previously witnessed by science ?
co2 is merely a symptom, the Sun is the cause.

October 20, 2012 12:07 pm

“richardscourtney says:
October 20, 2012 at 9:09 am
Gary Lance:
For the first time in this thread at October 20, 2012 at 8:41 am you write something that is true; i.e.
There is no good news in this years refreeze, be it extent, drift or salinity.
Indeed, so. The refreeze suggests we will NOT be getting the ice-free Arctic ocean which would have been such a blessing.
As you say, not getting an ice-free Arctic ocean is not good news. It is very bad news.
Richard”
The problem with that is you obviously never checked the data on salinity, drift, SST, weather and all the other common data on a daily basis to have an informed opinion. I did and I was doing it long before the minimum.
What you are being told is the patterns aren’t good for making good sea ice that will last a melt. The salinity is too high and all you have to do is check the archives back a couple years to see it. The drift was mixing up multi-year sea ice and I already was watching for a quick refreeze to keep it mixed up. You can check archives of that too. A quick refreeze locks the multi-year sea ice in place while it’s scattered, so it isn’t a good sign for things to come. Much of that multi-year sea ice drifted away from the CAA and if it’s caught in the Beaufort Gyre, there is a good chance of it going to open water and melting next year. If it makes it through the gyre, it still has the Fram and Nares Straits to deal with.
I also pointed out a quick refreeze can trap heat and if multi-year ice is mixed in, that heat can melt the depths of that thicker multi-year sea ice. It’s better for the heat to vent to the atmosphere, because it won’t be around next year.
If you want to know what happens to sea ice, you have to look at all the factors and not just the surface extent. Sea ice that is just putting on a surface show will be wiped out next year.

October 20, 2012 12:42 pm

“richardscourtney says:
October 20, 2012 at 9:22 am
Gary Lance:
In your ludicrous rant addressed to me at October 20, 2012 at 9:02 am you say to me
If you think 2012 was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.
I don’t “think 2012 was bad” (although it would have been better without the financial crisis).
2012 has been good so far. More people and less starvation than ever before. The usual minor wars around the world, but no global conflict. The usual minor natural disasters, but no major ones such as a Hurricane Katrina, a ‘Boxing Day’ Tsunami, or a Pompeii-type volcanic eruption. No pandemics. etc.
Why do you “think 2012 was bad”? If you can answer that then perhaps your answer will explain the cause of your delusions about AGW.
Richard”
It sounds to me like your whole world is only you.
Where were you when the exceptional drought hit in 2012 or when the financial crisis hit, five year ago? You don’t remember the Mississippi running dry or all those forest fires, this year, crop failures, people selling off all their livestock, because they couldn’t find feed? Maybe you will remember it when you have to pay for it in the grocery store and we all will.
I remember this old woman in Arkansas who took years building her herd of cattle and I think those cattle were more than money to her, when she had to sell them all off, because she didn’t have grass and couldn’t buy hay.
I don’t know how many farmers I saw showing off their pathetic corn.
Now, imagine a spin of the wheel of misforturne makes next year a drought for them, again! A good piece of our bread basket still has exceptional drought, so it isn’t over. Two years in a row will put a lot of farms under, like the Dust Bowl days. The country isn’t going to starve from it, but it will pay for it and those on the front line will pay the most, which could be all they own.
I don’t have delusions that I didn’t warn people about climate change and there is a link between exceptional weather and climate change. You’ve been told exceptional weather is going to be the new norm, but you didn’t listen. These facts have been documented, so the record of these predictions exist.

October 20, 2012 12:44 pm

Kadaka KD Knoebel says
Mechanisms for the cloud cover variations can wait for later, and I doubt it’ll be any specific one.
Henry says
I showed you the mechanism. Looks to me you doubt it.
Priceless:
to find I am the only one who made the connection.

kadaka (KD Knoebel)
October 20, 2012 1:18 pm

From Gary Lance on October 20, 2012 at 7:21 am:

kadaka (KD Knoebel)
It very simple how back radiation can be nearly twice as much as incoming solar energy absorbed by the surface of the Earth, because it’s been measured.

That is the mewling of a science simpleton. You can’t explain why it could be true, but a measuring device gives you that reading, so that’s your explanation why it is true. I wouldn’t trust you to take voltage measurements, you’d be certain a 120V AC line has 170V spikes.

If you can’t accept that as science and that the total amount of energy has nothing to do with it’s wavelength, then you don’t know anything about the science of electromagnetic waves.

As I said, 10 Joules from the Sun are absorbed, 10 Joules are emitted from what did the absorbing, you’re saying there’ll be (nearly) 20 Joules of back radiation. What do those amounts of energy have to do with their wavelength?
Meanwhile people who actually know science look at the energy emitted by the planet. Energy out equals energy in, once equilibrium has been established. No one who actually knows science would claim the back radiation is really twice the amount absorbed, when the amount absorbed is the amount emitted into space.
But if you had looked at even the first Ira Glickstein article I linked to, you would have known why it appears to be true.

Without back radiation from greenhouse gases, this Earth would be frozen solid.

If you would have bothered to look at the logarithmic response link, you would have noticed that, yes, without GHG’s the Earth would be about 30°C colder, even 30K colder. But the overwhelmingly predominant GHG is water vapor. All the CO₂ in the atmosphere only provides about 3°C of warming.
I’m sorry, but your vociferous ranting is quite tiring. You are going on and on about the catastrophic consequences of global warming, and how you are expecting those consequences very soon, some within a few years.
But you are terrified to admit the next stop of your thought train, that it is already too late to do anything about it. By the thermal inertia of the world’s oceans, if more atmospheric warming will cause cataclysms within mere years, then that heat must already be absorbed into the oceans, and will be released, those cataclysms will happen. It is inevitable.
The rate of atmospheric CO₂ increase will not be noticeably reduced for decades at least. There is no worldwide carbon limiting treaty currently in the works. If one is passed, there will be decades of carbon credit trading with little effective reductions, if any. The excess CO₂ in the atmosphere alone will require many decades to be absorbed. And the warming oceans will release more CO₂, and the melting permafrost will release potent methane which will become more atmospheric CO₂. ETC.
If you think we must act NOW to avoid catastrophe, we have only a few years left, then you must admit it is already too late.
From you on October 20, 2012 at 11:42 am:

The surface of the Earth absorbs 168 watts per square meter from incoming solar radiation and it absorbs 324 watts per square meter from back radiation. An energy balance requires the amount entering the whole Earth to be the same as the amount leaving it and the same applies to the surface.

And there you have just said the surface of the Earth absorbs 492 watts per m² total. And only one third of that is coming from the Sun, which is THE source of energy for Earth’s climate. You might as well be saying you put gas in your car’s tank at a rate of 30 miles per gallon which yields 90mpg.
You must be having lots of fun accusing us of being anti-science, which you make easy on yourself by ignoring the real science we’re trying to present. If you bothered to pay attention, you might even notice we’re accepting science that you are SCREAMING that we are denying.
As it stands, if we wanted to point at a moron who can’t even be bothered to get the science right before proclaiming HE KNOWS IT ALL and EVERYONE ELSE HERE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE KNOWS…
Heh heh. You put on a real funny show for a Saturday, I’ll grant you that.

October 20, 2012 1:21 pm

“J Martin says:
October 20, 2012 at 9:41 am
Gary Lance. What is your point ?
Are you saying that we should stop being such naughty people putting co2 into the atmosphere ?
The fact is that nothing you or anyone else says is going to stop that, so I suggest you take whatever measures you think you need to take to adapt to the future you think is going to happen and move nearer the North pole.
Myself, I think that temperatures are going to go down relentlessly and I will be moving nearer the equator.”
We should have been working to fix this problem over 30 years ago and there were solutions, like Thorium MSRs.
Temperatures don’t go down based on someone’s will without action. If you want to reverse the warming trend, you have to push the Earth towards cooling and remove that carbon from the atmosphere or the Earth will switch back to warming on it’s own. It will take years of effort to remove that CO2. If we let that arctic go ice free and wait, we may not be able to get the sea ice back during the summer.
We could stop the cooling trend with stratospheric sulfate aerosols, but we run the risk of the Earth double downing us with a large volcanic reaction and those consequences. Another major problem is we would have to keep using aerosols until the CO2 is removed.
We could plug up the exits for sea ice at the Nares Strait and the CAA. We could pump ocean water to the surface in the refreeze to make thicker sea ice. We could even destroy some first year ice forming during the refreeze with ice breakers to allow the heat to escape the ocean. It would take a massive effort to save that arctic sea ice.
We could remove carbon with biochar and use it in fields to increase crop production.
We are heading down the road to cause mass extinction and it isn’t just going to be species we wipe out. Maybe people should check the details of past mass extinctions and stop trying to imitate it!

G