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

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

What did you expect after the biggest melt?
Mjk

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/

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.

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.”

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.

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/

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!

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

… 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.

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?

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?

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.””

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.

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.

@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.

@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.

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

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

“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?

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.

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….

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 😉

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

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

****
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…

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?

“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).

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[snip. Read the site Policy. — mod.]

“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.

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. 🙂

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.

“…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”.

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?

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.

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/

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.

“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.

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

“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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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
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.

@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!

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.

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

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]