I’ve often wondered if carbon soot plays a role in this. See our recent WUWT story about how black carbon’s role has been underestimated, and note that Arctic melting is listed as one of the effects. See also the tag I’ve added to the story at the bottom about what melt ponds start out as: Cryoconite holes, which form from “…particles of dust, soot or even small rocks deposited on glaciers or ice caps…”.
From the Alfred Wegener Institute (here) where they have trouble spelling the Arctic:
Melt ponds cause the Artic [sic] sea ice to melt more rapidly
Bremerhaven, 15 January 2013. The Arctic sea ice has not only declined over the past decade but has also become distinctly thinner and younger. Researchers are now observing mainly thin, first-year ice floes which are extensively covered with melt ponds in the summer months where once metre-thick, multi-year ice used to float. Sea ice physicists at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have now measured the light transmission through the Arctic sea ice for the first time on a large scale, enabling them to quantify consequences of this change. They come to the conclusion that in places where melt water collects on the ice, far more sunlight and therefore energy is able to penetrate the ice than is the case for white ice without ponds. The consequence is that the ice is absorbing more solar heat, is melting faster, and more light is available for the ecosystems in and below the ice. The researchers have now published these new findings in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Melt ponds count among the favourite motifs for ice and landscape photographers in the Arctic. They are captured glistening in a seductive Caribbean sea blue or dark as a stormy sea on the ice floe. “Their colour depends entirely on how thick the remaining ice below the melt pond is and the extent to which the dark ocean beneath can be seen through this ice. Melt ponds on thicker ice tend to be turquoise and those on thin ice dark blue to black”, explains Dr. Marcel Nicolaus, sea ice physicist and melt pond expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute.
In recent years he and his team have observed a strikingly large number of melt ponds during summer expeditions to the central Arctic. Virtually half of the one-year ice was covered with melt ponds. Scientists attribute this observation to climate change. “The ice cover of the Arctic Ocean has been undergoing fundamental change for some years. Thick, multi-year ice is virtually nowhere to be found any more. Instead, more than 50 per cent of the ice cover now consists of thin one-year ice on which the melt water is particularly widespread. The decisive aspect here is the smoother surface of this young ice, permitting the melt water to spread over large areas and form a network of many individual melt ponds”, explains Marcel Nicolaus. By contrast, the older ice has a rougher surface which has been formed over the years by the constant motion of the floe and innumerable collisions. Far fewer and smaller ponds formed on this uneven surface which were, however, considerably deeper than the flat ponds on the younger ice.
The growing number of “windows to the ocean”, as melt ponds are also referred to, gave rise to a fundamental research question for Marcel Nicolaus: to what extent do the melt ponds and the thinning ice alter the amount of light beneath the sea ice? After all, the light in the sea – as on the land – constitutes the main energy source for photosynthesis. Without sunlight neither algae nor plants grow. Marcel Nicolaus: “We knew that an ice floe with a thick and fresh layer of snow reflects between 85 and 90 per cent of sunlight and permits only little light through to the ocean. In contrast, we could assume that in summer, when the snow on the ice has melted and the sea ice is covered with melt ponds, considerably more light penetrates through the ice.”
To find out the extent to which Arctic sea ice permits the penetration of the sun’s rays and how large the influence of the melt ponds is on this permeability, the AWI sea ice physicists equipped a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV “Alfred”) with radiation sensors and cameras. In the summer of 2011 during an Arctic expedition of the research ice breaker POLARSTERN, they sent this robot to several stations directly under the ice. During its underwater deployments, the device recorded how much solar energy penetrated the ice at a total of 6000 individual points all with different ice properties!
A unique data set was obtained in this way, the results of which are of great interest. Marcel Nicolaus explains: “The young thin ice with the many melt ponds does not just permit three times as much light to pass through than older ice. It also absorbs 50 per cent more solar radiation. This conversely means that this thin ice covered by melt ponds reflects considerably fewer sun rays than the thick ice. Its reflection rate is just 37 per cent. The young ice also absorbs more solar energy, which causes more melt. The ice melts from inside out to a certain extent,” says Marcel Nicolaus.
What might happen in the future considering these new findings? Marcel Nicolaus: “We assume that in future climate change will permit more sunlight to reach the Arctic Ocean – and particularly also that part of the ocean which is still covered by sea ice in summer. The reason: the greater the share of one-year ice in the sea ice cover, the more melt ponds will form and the larger they will be. This will also lead to a decreasing surface albedo (reflectivity) and transmission into the ice and ocean will increase. The sea ice will become more porous, more sunlight will penetrate the ice floes, and more heat will be absorbed by the ice. This is a development which will further accelerate the melting of the entire sea ice area.” However, at the same time the organisms in and beneath the ice will have more light available to them in future. Whether and how they will cope with the new brightness is currently being investigated in cooperation with biologists.
Notes for Editors:
The original publication is entitled:
M. Nicolaus, C. Katlein, J. Maslanik, S. Hendricks: Changes in Arctic sea ice result in increasing light transmittance and absorption, Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 39, Issue 24, December 2012, Article first published online: 29 DEC 2012, DOI: 10.1029/2012GL053738 (Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL053738/abstract)
HD-capable film material is available on request. Please find printable images below and more images under this link: http://bit.ly/105eHDH
Further background information on the melt pond research project of the AWI sea ice physics working group is available at: http://www.awi.de/en/research/research_divisions/climate_science/sea_ice_physics/sea_ice_in_the_climate_system/sea_ice_properties/melt_ponds/
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From Gavin Lear, at LearLab:
(12th February 2012) The Ecology of Antarctic Cryoconite Holes
Cryoconite holes form as particles of dust, soot or even small rocks deposited on glaciers or ice caps absorb solar radiation, melting the snow or ice beneath. Over time small ponds are created in the ice. As the cryoconite holes become deeper, a permanent layer of ice may form over the liquid water, remaining in place for many decades. Consequently, these communities, which may contain abundant microbial life have become cut off from the outside world. How does the lack of immigration into these communities alter the abundance and diversity of organisms within these isolated waterbodies? We’re using a combination of DNA-fingerprinting methodologies and next-generation DNA sequencing to investigate the ecology of these unique, and poorly studied waterbodies.
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C’mon. No soot or dust needed. Arctic Ocean warming per Tisdale. AMO Gulf Stream sloshing around both sides of Greenland. Check out the 12000m animation. Nothing but hot anomaies in the upper troposphere probably stratosphere up there.
Particulate matter in the atmosphere is a reasonable thing to look at. I am OK with controlling the particulate matter content of all human caused emissions. What I am not OK with is trying to control and naturally occurring non-polluting gas that helps plants to grow. The actual environment is of concern to me, not the political version of the environment.
It will be interesting to see how a reduction of solar UV influences things. UV light penetrates deepest into ice and snow and carries considerable energy. But if a reduction of solar UV causes a reduction in ozone production, there might not be a net reduction of UV on the ground. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in a weak solar cycle.
This looks like a useful contribution to our knowledge of Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheet dynamics. The Lear add-on indicates that we cannot be overly complacent about the short airborne life of black carbon because Its effects in some ice contexts may clearly last for a long time.
Oh good, actual measurements of the light under the ice, seems the arctic biosphere is going to get a boost, more food.
This “carbon soot” meme, what other kinds of soot are in play?
It is just a nit pick, it like climate change, water wet? But given the looseness of terms in climatology, it looks like another stupid CAGW talking point.
I wonder what the ice surface was like in the other periods, of our short history, when mariners remarked on the vanishing arctic ice.
Good they’ve got a little data from a rover with an allegation of six thousand different ice conditions. Wow that’s a lot of ice conditions. For having set the rover down in ‘several’ spots.
Now, they can conceptualize more clearly, how the submarines were able to pop up through the ice when it was just a few feet thick at the north pole in the sixties, and how ships sailed so far north in the early 1900s. The photos of the puddles on the ice look astonishingly like those taken by the Scorpion or whatever submarine that was in the ’50s or ’60s.
I think there were several of those subs able to surface without any danger of damaging the submarine; wasn’t the ice about a meter thick?
Here’s the immediate Googles in Images for ‘submarine at north pole’
https://www.google.com/search?q=submarine%20at%20north%20pole&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Ryv6UJ7rC4friQLc2IGgDw&biw=1280&bih=696&sei=Tiv6UIbuGsPfiAKXuICoAw
It’s pretty much nothing at all for arctic ice to get way thinner than people tend to believe it gets. There are times when it crunches together from wind and makes really jumbled blocks of large ice chunks but I think there’s a lot of time when it’s not really all that thick at all.
An article here at WUWT : the SKATE at pole around ’58 : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/ice-at-the-north-pole-in-1958-not-so-thick/
The WUWT article’s really got a pretty good description of the pole conditions around the Arctic.
The ice spreads out and splits open, then re-freezes.
Dark objects floating on the water like bits of algae, get frozen into the ice. Anything but perfectly pure water makes a dark spot in the ice.
From that article,
…”the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick.”
The Nautilus accompanied Skate to the pole and was it’s sister ship. The article’s good, well worth looking over.
With one year old ice covering most of Arctic sea ice one cannot imagine that soot deposited would be more than a year old, thus not major accumulations.
Most of this is just basic physics that’s been obvious to some of us for at least 10 years. But it’s good to see it getting some attention.
Yeah, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is due to turn negative in 10 years or so;
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo
Maybe they should start spreading coal dust on the Arctic ice now to see what effect it has. Since they were advocating it in the 1970’s and doubtless the same stupid idea will come around in 2040 or so.
I don’t believe that there has been any anomalous melting of the arctic at all with or without soot etc. Knowing the “adjustments” that the AGW proponents constantly perform including CT, there is no doubt that the “borders” of each arctic region have been adjusted over time to give the desired result… but of course there is a limit to what they can do, and now extent is “lower”, but not changing (as with global temps).
I am not clear on why everyone seems to think it is dustier/dirtier now than in previous centuries. Very,very large grass and forest fires burned each year all over the globe. The idea that snow and ice are ‘extra dirty’ seems to me, misplaced.
OT but surely this is the biggest story yet
1. NASA admits sun is major driver of Climate
2. NASA admits we are on the verge of a possible Maunder type Minimum, basically drastic cooling.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/
wonder if I will ever get a HT from this site
@Eliza, thanks but we already covered the story here. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/09/nasa-on-the-sun-tiny-variations-can-have-a-significant-effect-on-terrestrial-climate/
I posted this to a different thread, but it is more relevant to this one about arctic ice:
Um, the assertion that a smaller polar ice cap is evidence of ‘warming’ is weak. It ignores that there is a “polar see-saw”. On a very long term basis, the relative warmth of the Arctic and Antarctic poles ‘swaps’. ( IMHO due to a long lunar cycle on tides as the moon moves above / below the midline of Earth in our orbit – so pulls water more north or more south.)
As this cycle is on the order of the length of data we have for both poles, we can’t know if the present melt is just like prior melts – offset by a larger accumulation of cold and snow at the other pole. At a minimum, the sum of the two must be taken to get the real trend minus that see-saw effect. (Though even there, due to one being land and the other sea, it may not be a linear offset).
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/d-o-ride-my-see-saw-mr-bond/
http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/13308/
So along with the evidence that CO2 and temperatures were moving all on their own 16,000 years ago, we also have that when one pole warms, the other tends to cool. All naturally.
So unless you have correct and complete polar data from both poles the “Global” average of what you do have doesn’t mean “jack”… and we don’t have correct and complete data from both poles for anywhere near long enough to say anything about trends.
Oh, and the ‘pace’ can be different in the two hemispheres. Same time, but different rate. That, too, would cause a ‘false trend’ in averaged thermometer data:
http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/SeeSaw_Seen_N&V.pdf
Also, with a lag, CO2 rises…
So, IMHO, you need to allow for the bipolar see-saw in any discussion of CO2 levels and warming of the Arctic.
As we have just come out of a long warming from the bottom of the LIA, it looks to me like we have all the makers of a natural cycle.
The problem I have with the black carbon notion is that they are still trying to find something that accounts for the warming of the climate that happened for about 30 years in the 20th century. The problem is that there hasn’t been any historically unusual warming. Yes, there has been warming but there has often been the same amount of warming at the same rate in the past. They keep looking for “solutions” but have yet to show that there is a problem. We have no evidence that the current state of the Arctic ice cap is unusual, either. We simply haven’t been looking at it long enough to know.
How much “black carbon” is put into the air annual from coal seam fires around the world? I do know that they are responsible for a huge amount of CO2. Putting out the world’s coal seam fires would reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions estimated as equal to the removal of ALL automotive traffic from the US.
Cut me a check for travel and expenses and I’ll skinny dip in some of those ponds and get samples that you can have analysis done on, Anthony. We could even have some side bets on the composition. I’m too, too hot to handle, perfect for the job.
Cryoconite holes nothing new.
http://scholar.google.se/scholar?q=Cryoconite+holes+greenland+nordenskiold&hl=sv&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=gEH6UK76OcmB4gSFvIDIDA&sqi=2&ved=0CCgQgQMwAA
The really interesting question here is whether this is a once in a geological time event or whether it’s actually something which happens in a cyclical manner. That might be every 500 years, it might be every 2000 years, I don’t know.
The implications, though are significant: if this is a cyclical event, then clearly the climate system has means to return to the former state without us humans getting stupendously worried about it.
If it truly is an event that has NEVER happened before, (I frankly doubt that, but data will answer that better than my gut), then perhaps we ought to give thought to other things.
First test will be to see what happens when the AMO goes negative – will the arctic ice in the Norwegian/Russian sector recover or not?
Hmm.
So I imagine that the ice melt in the warm 30s and 40s was due to soot, and that soot and dust causes ice to grow at the south pole.
@Rhys Jaggar:
Cyclic and natural. See the links above in the prior post about lunar et al and this one:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/arctic-melting/
that details some of the fossil trees, coal seams, and other stuff, on many time scales, that show the Arctic has melted (some during the Holocene).
As soon as the Arctic FAILS to melt we enter the next glacial. That’s how the cycle works. We only get an interglacial when there is enough sun north of 65 to melt the Arctic ice cap. We are now below that level of sun, so as soon as the ice cap stays whole all summer, we enter a non-recoverable plunge into the next glacial.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/annoying-lead-time-graph/
The folks bleating about the lack of “multi year ice” are like the dog chasing a car. They WILL try to sink their teeth into that tire – and then really really regret it if they do…
The gulf stream looks to have a 1500 year (average) occurrence of a slowdown / halt that causes dramatic cold and wet in Europe and drought in the middle east. At that time the heat backs up in The Gulf of Mexico and Florida gets a bit warmer, the desert southwest a bit wetter, and the “midwest” had hot drought. (Rather like the present status, only more so…) When that happens, we can start building lots of Arctic ice. (As during the Little Ice Age).
Given that right now we have only barely got Arctic melt and we are at the absolute top of a lunar tidal driven hot turn, we are only barely staying out of the ice cycle. Yet every decade the sun up north becomes less. So next cycle, we won’t melt this much. That’s likely the unrecoverable entry to the glacial. (Or, another way to see it, the L.I.A. was almost the plunge into the glacial, but we barely pulled out of it. Next one, not so much…)
The 1/2 period Bond Event also shows cold cycles, so you could add 700 to 900 years to the start of the L.I.A. and that’s about when we “have issues”. As that was about 1250 – 1300, I get about 2000 to 2200. So this cycle, or the next 180 year out Grand Minimum. Either one.
Driven largely by orbital resonance driven synchronized lunar tidal shifts and solar changes.
If you have ever walked on the snout (or toe) of a melting glacier you have seen the darkened, almost asphalt-looking, surface. The melting can be experienced first hand, or better yet, if you are wearing rubber boots. This involves common physics.
Large area fires would be a source of soot. Also, many are in the Northern Hemisphere. For example here is a partial list of Canadian fires:
http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/ja03/indepth/timeline.asp
They missed this one:
http://the-red-thread.net/dark-day.html
An official report here:
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/078/mwr-078-09-0180.pdf
Wind direction is a consideration. The Sept. 1950 fires filled the sky and made afternoon appear as night in western Pennsylvania. Although I don’t remember any soot on the ground, there must have been. There hasn’t been a glacier there since.
The spell of cold weather has enabled me to confirm something I believe pictures of the ice melt has shown for some time. The pattern of the ice melt in most of the pictures shows that the ice has melted from heat provided from below the ice not from heat from above. What reminded me was when I was a child seeing a barge man borrow a compressor to pump air under the ice to release his barge. It produced precisely this sort of combination of cracking and melt patterning which even heat does not.
The patterns match a hot air gun output below finding weak spots to get a flow and melt round the released warmer gases rather than a patio heater above.
It seems to me that the so called scientists are all trying to find explanations to fit their theories rather than explanations to fit the facts and to do all the measurements and investigations needed to do real science once more.
Even at minus two degrees a black disk more than ten cm below the surface ceases to have any melt effect. This is a home level experiment at the moment so I regard this theory as clear cut bovine excrement.
At the sort of temperatures in the Arctic there a cm or two would easily bury it without trace.
I think we all should be ready for the climate changing, it’s a part of the natural selection.
Those scientist are not rely the bright ones I think. If I was them I shut up and went home for a very long sabbatical.
They want to claim that human do something whit the earth so its warming. But as you look at the story you find hardly any point where human are to blame.
From science point of view there is no way that water or heat melt the ice. So there must be something different, so now its black carbon. But nobody seems to think about how it gets there in the first place. Black carbon are particles whits don’t flight that far so the source of the black carbon must be reasonable nearby Volcanoes can produce black carbon and small rocks witch could land there and do the trick. But even then there is no way that all that is a big source to melt all the ice.
And they say it there selfs the only thing that cane do so is the sun. And the graphic shows this well. When in march the sun comes up the ice starts to melt and in September when the sun comes down the ice grows again.
The scientist want to proof that humans are tho blame for warming thats not there. But howe stupid must you be to be leaf that?
ps sorry if the English is a bit off