From the Nature abhors a vacuum department comes this note from RealScience showing that Arctic sea ice has made a stunning rebound since the record low recorded in the late summer of 2012.
With a few weeks of growth still to occur, the Arctic has blown away the previous record for ice gain this winter. This is only the third winter in history when more than 10 million km² of new ice has formed.
Source data: arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.anom.1979-2008
Of course, this is only a record for the satellite era data back to about 1980, and just like the much ballyhooed record low of 2012, we have no hard data to tell us if this has happened before or not.
Here’s the current Cryosphere Today plot, note the steep rebound right after the summer minimum, something also noted in Sea Ice News Volume 3 Number 14 – Arctic refreeze fastest ever:
![seaice.recent.arctic[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/seaice-recent-arctic1.png?quality=75)
Source: Cryosphere Today – Arctic Climate Research at the University of IllinoisThe Arctic ocean is well filled with ice right now:
![cryo_latest[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/cryo_latest1.jpg?quality=83)
Source: Cryosphere Today – Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois
In other news, the Antarctic seems to be continuing on its slow and steady rise, and is now approaching 450 days of uninterrupted above normal ice area according to this data: arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.south.anom.1979-2008…which shows the last time the Antarctic sea ice was below normal was 2011.8932 or 11/22/2011.
![seaice.recent.antarctic[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/seaice-recent-antarctic1.png?quality=75)
This continued growth of ice in the Arctic Antarctic make the arguments for ice mass loss in Antarctica rather hard to believe, something also backed up by ICESAT data.
As always, you can see all the sea ice data at the WUWT Sea Ice Reference Page.
Does the DMI and NSIRDC consider the Hudson Bay, Denmark Straits, and Bering Sea and North Sea “part” of the Arctic sea ice extents in all of the sea ice page charts?
I wonder what it would take to ice over the GUIK gap? And how that would affect the Arctic vortex? I watched the wind fields this winter as Hudson Bay iced over. Once it iced over, this allowed much colder air to form and stabilize over Canada. I imagine that full ice cover over much of the GIUK gap would do the same thing. The Arctic would have a much larger reservoir of cold air to push around – and this would intensify the cooling of the mid-latitudes due to MPHs?
Has anyone plugged something like this into the current weather forecasting models to see what pops out?
Is this a tipping point?
@MangoChutney says:
“…all this “unprecedented” stuff has happened before.”
When? Not since 1900 http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/images/ice_extent.gif
“..we have no hard data to tell us if this has happened before or not.”
Have you tried the US Naval Oceanographic Office (formerly US Naval Hydrographic Office)? They likely have historical arctic sea ice extents dating long before satellite data was available. In the American Practical Navigator (1966), it mentions USNHO publication of monthly charts showing the average extent of various degrees of navigability in the northern and southern hemispheres throughout the year. Figure 3609 page 754 is an example.
An interesting observation for a 1966 publication, “There is evidence to indicate that the polar regions are becomming warmer. Nearly all the glaciers are receding; the ice shelves of the northern Canada and Greenland are breaking up; shipping off the Siberian has become possible; cod are found farther north along the Greenland coast.”
@PaulID says “take a look at global sea ice and you will see we are at either near normal or at record high levels.”
You mean this week? So what??? Were u asleep last september? Or sept 2007?
@RACookPE1978 — if you think losing arctic summer ice cools the artic, show the proof. rss and UAH both show a warming arctic LT.
A good reminder that claims of “lake effect type snow” in the northern hemisphere are bogus at least since January.
Um…the greater the area of open water at the summer minimum (~Sept 15), the greater the recovery once the sun goes down, which would start on Sept 21 at the North Pole. More than anything, this graphic is an illustration of summer ice loss, as the entire Arctic Ocean re-freezes every winter. There are declines in maximum extent driven at the southern margins (mainly), but, in general, the more that is lost in the summer, the more that is gained in polar night.
This appears to have eaten my previous comment–
Um…this graphic is really a proxy for maximum summer ice loss. The more that is lost at the northern margin the more that is gained in polar night. After all, the entire Arctic Ocean refreezes every winter (and will until the cows come home). Declines in maximum ice extent are driven at the southern margins in the Atlantic and Pacific. So the big gain after this summer’s lows, thanks to the refreezing of the Arctic Ocean is hardly surprising.
Phobos says:
February 12, 2013 at 12:39 pm
@MangoChutney says:
“…all this “unprecedented” stuff has happened before.”
When? Not since 1900 http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/images/ice_extent.gif
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It’s too bad NOAA doesn’t include error bars on that graph. Ice extent data prior to the satellite era is iffy at best and the data prior to WWII is little better than pure speculation.
1. check volume.
2. check sat views of the condition of this ice.
3. go figure, lots of open water, lots of H20 given up to the atmosphere to fall in the NH in as snow in massive quantities.
4. faster ice buildup, but thinner and weaker than in the past.
2013 fall.. start predicting now
Anthony: We are aware that there was a bad storm that broke up the Arctic Sea Ice between 4th-9th Aug last year.
Question: Do we know the ice extent in the days leading up to the storm?…..if so how did it compare with previous years?
Thanks,
James
Phobos says:
February 12, 2013 at 12:44 pm
I was very specific in my statement, and in the LIMITS of that statement: “You” are the one extending it to the “Arctic” as a whole, and to the “summer months” as a a long period of time!
I said above, and will repeat – at the of MINIMUM Arctic Sea ice extents – at the LATITUDE of the EDGE of the Arctic sea ice at its MINIMUM sea ice extents, losing an additional 2 million sq kilometers of sea ice increases net heat loss from the Arctic Ocean.
You asked about temperature records: The only records that exist for that latitude show exactly the trend I mentioned: And, in fact, they do show that the daily DMI Arctic air temperature record for 80 north latitude shows NO warming since records began in 1959 during the summer months (the only time when direct solar radiation “might” be affected by increasing CO2 levels), but rather, the summer air temperatures at 80 north latitude have steadily DECREASED over the past 15 years as sea ice extents near 80 north have decreased – just as the calculations show they should.
Both Hansen’s NASA-GISS and the RSS/UAH “warming Arctic” reports are for the CENTRAL CANADIAN TUNDRA and forests around Great Slave Lake and the Hudson Bay at 60 degrees latitude! – NOT the Arctic Ocean sea ice edge between 72 degrees north and 80 north latitudes. You are trying to extrapolate NASA’s central Canadian temperature -which HAS increased due to the much lower albedo of 18 to 28% greater forest, bush, grass, and tundra growth as CO2 increased the past 60 years – 1800 kilometers north across the Arctic Ocean where the only temperature record that does exist shows cooling! Look again at Hansen’s “red blanket” of his supposed Arctic warming: the “blip” that is the station he is extrapolating from is in the middle of the “greenest” depths of the Arctic.
Look again at what I wrote about the increasing Antarctic sea ice extents: At THAT LATITUDE of the Antarctic Sea Ice Maximums, sea ice DOES reflect more solar energy and the net heat balance DOES cool the ocean. But this effect does NOT at the edge of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Were there apprciable sea ice in the Arctic at 62 north in mid_September, losing sea ice would increase the heat gain. But there is NO Arctic sea ice that far south in September, hence the “problem” (crisis ?) of Arctic Sea Ice amplification does not – and cannot – exist.
Except in the minds of the CAGW theists.
Phobos says:
February 12, 2013 at 12:44 pm
@RACookPE1978 — if you think losing arctic summer ice cools the artic, show the proof. rss and UAH both show a warming arctic LT.
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Likely a result of the open arctic water shedding heat to the atmosphere. The oceans have a much higher thermal mass than the atmosphere. There isn’t enough energy in the atmosphere for the atmosphere to drive ocean temps.
Sea surface temps for the arctic during the summers would be interesting to look at. It’s too bad ARGO doesn’t cover the arctic.
Phobos,
your chart conflicting with historic evidence
From 1957:
“Northpole ice has decreased by something as 40% in volume…this has been going on for 30-40 years”
Also predicting no ice in year 2000 if trend continues
http://i680.photobucket.com/albums/vv161/Radiant_2009/popularmechanics1957-2.jpg
From 1947
“The Arctic is melting says scientist”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/22429983?searchTerm=climate%20change&searchLimits=
From 1922
“The changing Arctic”
“The Arctic seems to be warming up…all point to a radical change in climatic conditions
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
Various more references here:
http://www.real-science.com/new-giss-data-set-heating-arctic
Matt says:
February 12, 2013 at 1:03 pm
From the sea ice reference page, look at the very, very small standard deviation for the 50+ years of DMI temperature data since 1959. Day-to-day variations over the entire period are less than 1/4 of one degree!
Plot the summertime temperatures (winters do show a large change from day to day!) and you’ll see the declining daily temperatures at 80 north I mentioned.
At time of minimum Arctic sea ice extents, the Arctic sea ice is now varying between 7 million km square and 4 million km square: this corresponds to a “beanie” over the Arctic from the Pole down to [76.5] degrees latitude (at 7 million km sea ice).
Today, with a 3 million km square sea ice cap, the southern edge of the sea ice is right at 81 north latitude. [At 4 million km square sea ice, the southern edge is at 79.8 latitude.]
But.. but… but…. it’s a death spiral! A tipping point. Irreversible catastrophe. Ice-free Arctic will be the new normal. These are the alarms we have been inundated with – how dare you actually look at raw data?
Presumably (for what it’s worth) the new ice is not yet covered with black-carbon aerosols, the previous accumulations having been rinsed into the ocean.
After AMO, black carbon is the main driver of arctic sea ice and northern hemisphere glacier melt:
Reasons:
1. Bond et al 2012 landmark study doubled black carbon forcing to 1.1 W/m2
2. Surface effect on snow and ice average is 0.13 W/m2, but is much stronger on northern hemisphere multi year ice due to accumulated pollution. Multi year ice melt is central to glacier and sea ice variation.
3. James Hansen: “BC on snow warms the planet about three times more than an equal forcing of CO2″
4. P.K. Quinn: :Black carbon emissions from northern Eurasia, North America, and Asia have the greatest absolute impact on Arctic warming.”
5. However, black carbon emissions actually occurring within the Arctic (such as hords of NGOs and climate scientists travelling the arctic) have a disproportionately larger impact per particle on Arctic warming than emissions originating elsewhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon
Forcing estimate black carbon on multi year ice > 3 W/m2
http://judithcurry.com/2013/02/08/open-thread-weekend-8/#comment-293710
You couldn’t add that this is to be expected because of the record melt?
Phobos
The USS Skate surfaced at or near the north pole several times during the summer of 1958. There are photos that show the Skate in open water and other pools of open water in the area. In the 1930’s, the British navy was reporting the rapid reduction in Arctic sea ice. Then in the 60’s & 70’s, the projection was we were heading into another Ide Age. There are natural cycles that produce temperature changes on decade, Millenia and longer time periods. Only looking at the past 30 years of data is like reading the last page of a book and believing you know the whole story.
Remember, the Arctic and Antarctic were ice free all the time some 3.5-4 million years ago before the formation of the Ismus of Panama blocked a deep ocean current and started the glaciation cycles. Geologist believe that Earth has come close to complete glaciation twice: 600 million and 2.4 billion years ago. CO2 concentration changes are a lagging indicator of Earth’s temperature swings, they are not a forcing, no matter what the CAGW crowd says!
Bill
And you can probably add 10% to the ice extent simply because, with an CAGW bias, there is room in the data to choose from a band of data. It is like IPCC and temp – they are not going to underestimate; they are going to choose the highest “sensitivity” they can get away with.
I can only assume this post is some sort of post-ironic joke. Of course the entire Arctic basin is going to refreeze every winter. Nobody expects anything else, at least for a good few decades yet. The only reason the area of new ice formed is a new record is that there was so much open water to start with! You’re just measuring last year’s summer minimum another way, and spinning it as a gain!
In re vacuum; There is no such thing as a vacuum, only very low pressure. Mean free path and molecules per cm^3 in interstellar space are >10^4 km and 1 cm^-1 (@STP are 66 nm and 2.5 x 10^19 cm^-3).
Even in intergalactic space, volume density of matter is not zero. Then there is ‘vacuum energy’.
I used a thousand cubic foot thermos of LN2 with a small diffusion pump to maintain ~0.1 Torr, ten orders of magnitude higher pressure than on the Moon.