Image Credit: Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group
By WUWT Regular Just The Facts
Global Sea Ice Area, shown above, has remained quite average this year. However, this is not due to a recovery in Northern Sea Ice Area;
or Arctic Sea Ice Extent;
which are both still trending below average. Rather Global Sea Ice Area appears to be average due to the fact that Antarctic Sea Ice is trending well above average;
having been above average for much of the last two years:
It is difficult to draw any concrete conclusions from this, as we only have a 34.5 years of satellite sea ice measurements;
on an approximately 4,540,000,000 year old planet. However, there are some things that we can infer, for example in this Change in Maximum, Mean and Minimum Sea Ice Extent graph;
there is a large decline around minimum, with a much smaller decline around maximum. The reasons for the large decline around minimum according to Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University are as follows:
“The average thickness of the pack ice has fallen by roughly half since the 1970s, probably for two main reasons. One is a rise in sea temperatures: in the summer of 2007 coastal parts of the Arctic Ocean measured 7°C—bracingly swimmable. The other was a prolonged eastward shift in the early 1990s in the Arctic’s prevailing winds, known as the Arctic Oscillation. This moved a lot of ice from the Beaufort Gyre, a revolving current in the western Arctic, to the ocean’s other main current, the Transpolar Drift Stream, which runs down the side of Siberia. A lot of thick, multi-year ice was flushed into the Atlantic and has not been replaced.” The Economist
There is ample evidence to support influence of Atmospheric Oscillations on sea ice, however it is that “summer of 2007 coastal parts of the Arctic Ocean measured 7°C—bracingly swimmable” that jumps out at me, because of this current Northern Hemisphere Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly map:
which shows large coastal temperature anomalies in the Arctic. Does anyone know why is it so warm along the Arctic coasts? Per the large anomaly in the Western Hudson Bay, is that a sensor failure or is there another cause? And what’s going on along the coast of Russia along the Kola Peninsula and near the White Sea? If you look at these satellite images;
that bright blue area really doesn’t look natural. Kola Bay, which is to the West of the bright blue area, is “Contaminated with Hydrocarbons”;
Kola Bay of the Barents Sea is seriously polluted with oil products. That has been demonstrated by satellite monitoring of coastal areas of the Kola Peninsula and the Kola and Kandalaksha Bays areas, both of which are passageways for oil product transportation and in which near-shore zone facilities for hydrocarbon reloading, transportation and storage are located. According to the satellite-based monitoring data from the second half of 2011, oil slicks were detected on 60% of images of the Kola Bay. Spill-International.com
and a couple years ago in:
Kandalaksha Bay in Russia’s far northern Kola Peninsula, some 400,000 square meters of the coast and 200,000 square meters of the bay’s basin area had been polluted with oil products as a result of the May 7, 2011 accident – including a range of islands that are part of a local nature reserve. The oil slick spreading from Belomorskaya (or White Sea) oil bulk plant, a coastal facility in the town of Kandalaksha in Murmansk Region, was threatening hundreds of protected wild species inhabiting the Kandalaksha National Park, only a kilometer and a half away. Belonna.org
Does anyone know what the cause of the current bright blue area off of the Kola Peninsula is? Has anyone seen any studies on the potential impact of anthropogenic effluent, waste heat and oil slicks on Arctic Sea Ice?
To see more information on sea ice please visit the WUWT Sea Ice Reference Page.
Well, the (NCEP) Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch (MMAB) image is wrong. How can sea-ice be between 0 and 1C?
RACookPE1978 says:
August 2, 2013 at 11:49 pm
RACook,
Very interesting analyses of antarctic ice increases – Thank You!
MtK
The polar sun is at its zenith June 21. Sea ice has retreated by about 1.4 million square kms in June, and 2.4 million in July (linear trends) since 1979. That’s sea ice loss greater than the size of Alaska for both months combined. Would that have an impact?
Over the next few days they should be a increase in air temps and ice melt in the Arctic.
Because it looks to me that the atmosphere seems to be losing heat at a greater rate then what is expected. But l need to see this backed up by what’s going on in the global climate.
barry says:
“That’s sea ice loss greater than the size of Alaska…”
Impressive! But what is that converted to Olympic-sized swimming pools?
barry says:
August 3, 2013 at 9:52 am
Your statement (claim ?) might be true, but only if you believe in Hansen’s flat-earth Mercator projection flat earth.
Well, as any good teacher should do, I’m going to instruct the student (in part) by asking the student to begin by answering his own question.
What area is the Arctic Sea Ice “average” “supposed” to be at on today’s date? (That is, does it matter if the Arctic Sea Ice is simply melting at the same rate as it always does every summer?
Clearly, you think that is not the case, so what is the “difference” between what you want Arctic Sea Ice to be on this date this summer, and what area Arctic Sea ice actually is present on this date in particular this summer?
What latitude does your “desired Arctic Sea Ice area” correspond to?
So, it’s a deal: You tell me the latitude you “want” the Arctic Sea ice to be on today’s date, and I’ll tell you what size state we will end up reducing your Alaska-size chuck of sea ice down to. Deal?
What weather do you want to use? Thin high cloudy skies, absolutely clear skies, or dark gloomy clouds? Default atmospheric conditions and measured atmospheric turbidity OK when we calculate how little solar energy gets through down to the surface of your (rapidly shrinking) state of Alaska?
Remember: The more clouds, the smaller “state” of Alaska you end up with. On the other hand, the clearer the clouds, the more direct solar energy is reflected from the water at low solar angles and the smaller your final state becomes. Your final “state” becomes smaller if want more wind speed (because more heat energy is lost from the exposed sea surface by convection), but the water albedo becomes smaller as well with higher wind speed so more solar energy could be absorbed from the sun and make your “:state” of Alaska a little bit larger.. However, more wind implies more clouds, so there is less solar energy that can get through the clouds and your “state of Alaska” will shrink.
We are here to serve your every need. 8<)8<)
dbstealey, the PIOMAS model says there will be only one olympic-sized swimming pool of ice left in September 2015 (see lowermost green curve in Manfred’s link above). That’s over 2 million martini glasses of ice after it is crushed.
Here’s a paper that estimates the ice loss albedo feedback:
http://www.npolar.no/npcms/export/sites/np/en/people/stephen.hudson/Hudson11_AlbedoFeedback.pdf
Bottom line is 0.3W/m2 planet-wide equivalent. The albedo for clear sky over open ocean shown in figure 2 seems pretty low to me, especially with a high zenith angle (low sun angle since zenith is the angle from vertical). They cite this pay-walled paper http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004JD005308/abstract for that data. Although not mentioned in the abstract, I suspect there are some hefty errors for albedo of open ocean at high zenith angles.
AndyG55 asked upthread, but I didn’t see any answer.
In summary, the extent graphs are still going down, although at a slower rate, but the area graph actually shows an index over ten days or so.
I can understand why an extent graph might show some odd reversals, depending on how the wind blows, but I wouldn’t expect it from an area graph (maybe if the temp were just below zero in calm weather, a large area might pick up a skim of ice, but that isn’t the case now, the temps are generally a bit above zero.) What is going on?
Sorry, the areas graph shows an INCREASE
The other Phil, my guess is that the ice got spread out a bit. It’s only a guess and my only evidence is a good sized storm north of Alaska last week and some ice that showed up in the Barrow ice cam that wasn’t there before.
eric1skeptic says:
August 3, 2013 at 12:32 pm
I read that one as well.
Several problems with it: One of them is the assumed albedo vs solar elevation angle as you point out. Measured values from open ocean water platforms at both high and low solar angles differ strongly – both above and below the assumed values for their program (model) .
But they are assuming top-of-atmosphere values in their model. NOT actual measured top-of-sea ice values for albedo and water , for clear sky and cloudy sky direct and diffuse solar radiation. BIG difference.
By the way, they did NOT exam any part of the albedo changes due to increased antarctic sea ice areas – which, as I am trying to point out are very, very different at each latitude in question.
Most important, by looking ONLY at the top of atmosphere albedo changes, they ignore completely the rest of the heat transfer problem above and below the Arctic Sea Ice.
Open water loses heat to the atmosphere by convection with the air above the water, by increased (or decreased!) long wave radiation into the daytime sky and nighttime sky, and by evaporation.
Ice-covered water also loses heat: but there is no evaporation heat loss to the air, the ice insulates the water from the very cold air (so convection losses differ between water and ice to atmosphere, long wave radiation losses change (because the top-of-ice temperature is much colder than the previous the top-of-water temperature!), and the “blanket” of sea ice reduces heat loss to the air (all heat going to the atmosphere must first go through the sea ice cover between water and air.
So: wrong values for what few albedoes they are studying, not using measured values for those values, , not using top-of-ice/top-of-water values, ignoring all other heat losses from the ice and water, and (deliberately) NOT looking at half of the world. About typical for a reference for the CAGW community and its journal editors.
RACookPE1978,
Are you suggesting that air temperatures over the Arctic would be warmer over ice than over the exposed ocean?
Ice reflects 90% of solar radiation. Oceans absorb 90%. Why wouldn’t increased heat loss from exposed ocean heat the atmosphere further?
A straightforward test would be to take average temperatures for exposed sea surface and ice covered Arctic at the same latitutde band and compare (averaged over time to iron out weather effects, perhaps selecting Autumn months). A further test might be to estimate trends for the those masks for the satellite period. I’m not sure how to collect and arrange the data to do this. I’m reasonably confident we would discover that the ice-covered areas would be cooler than the exposed ocean on average and over time. According to DMI, air temps just above the ice never get above freezing, but I imagine the exposed ocean would (or there would be ice there).
I think it is a salient point you make – increased cloudiness over the Arctic could reduce albedo, damping out the albedo increase from ice loss.
Tamino does a good post on insolation changes (clear-sky analysis).
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/sea-ice-insolation/
While it doesn’t take into account heat transfer through the atmosphere, it does take into account latitude and orbital variation. And the analysis does include Antarctic albedo.
Regarding the defecits you have pointed out, have you attempted an analysis to make up for them? Or do you know of any literature on it?
The study also has some unusual declines in Albedo when the solar angle increases from 78% to 85% for example. I don’t think it is reliable because this is the make or break value range.
In addition, they did not account for cloud changes which appears to have solid evidence behind it. Cloud cover increases when sea ice declines. The paper notes that a 15% increase in cloud cover when the ice melts (maybe a high number but the impact at 15%) provides for an actual increase in total sky Albedo versus the expected decline. In other words, the ice melts but Albedo actually goes up instead.
When I run the numbers (and I have spent much time on various scenarios) I get a slightly lower number than 0.3 W/m^2 as this study has but it doesn’t particularly matter. Temps only increase by 0.18 C/W/m^2 according to Stefan-Boltzmann to 0.75 C/W/m^2 in Hansen’s monster feedback world. So overall, between 0.06C to 0.2C impact. Why would anyone freak out about that. The error margin and month to month climate variability is higher than that. Nobody could even notice a less than 0.2C change in temps.
In other words, this is the only change in the main climate variables that the warmers can point to. A decline in Arctic sea ice in the late summer. All together at the most extreme impact, this could cause a 0.2C impact. Which is what your backyard increases every 10 minutes in the morning. Disaster and global warming. In the only key climate variable out of 13 that is changing as the theory predicts. It’s just a crap theory obviously.
RACookPE1978 says:
August 3, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Great work, Sir! Thanks for all the info and its clever and energetic presentation.
I wonder if the Noctilucent clouds which have continued to baffle NASA are beginning to have a cooling effect.
Sun delivers less UV:
1) The 60-80 kilo atmospheric region doesn’t melt the ice crystals.
2) Noctilucent clouds get thicker, last longer and expand the area where they reside.
3) A positive feedback loop causes additional reflection of the Sun light preventing it from reaching the ocean surfaces.
4) A sudden colder change in Arctic and Antarctic temperatures occurs.
Maybe measuring how far these Ice Crystal clouds move toward the Equator are a simple way to determine whether less UV Solar energy is allowing the Earth to cool.
David Schofield says:
August 2, 2013 at 5:08 pm
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
August 2, 2013 at 11:32 am
Slightly related post… Here in England we’re getting a great summer. However, when the sun is out it is VERY hot. As soon as the clouds roll in it ‘cools’ down to 24c. ……………………
I’ve noticed this as well. Does seem different from previous hot summers.
————————————————————————————————–
I have noticed similar this year. I would swear that the influence of the sun is slightly different than from the past.
barry says:
August 3, 2013 at 5:44 pm
Well, I’m going to neither guess about what the final numbers will tell us, nor will I make claims about what direction heat flows at what time of day on which day of year at what latitude nor when heat flow reverses (from Arctic air to Arctic Ocean (top 1 meter at least) . That’s why each number and each question YOU ask needs to be specific about what day-of-year? What latitude? What hour of the day? (From these, you get a specific solar angle, cloud probability, sky temperature, air temperature. From the date, you can estimate a wind speed and an ice albedo. From the date and latitude, you can determine the minimum and maximum air temperature range, and the probable air temperature for each hour of the day.
Across three weeks in the Antarctic, one ship measured different sensible and latent directions day-to-day and week to week. So yes, The air will heat the ocean. Sometimes. the ocean will heat the air. Sometimes.
Don’t throw random numbers out: Don’t throw numbers out based on “everybody knows” levels. Commonly used constants are neither common nor constant. Base everything on specific day-of-year, time of day, and latitude of the world experimental results. I just looked back through my collection of 23 peer-reviewed published articles about sea ice albedo measurements. None show your numbers.
Sea ice albedo changes little with solar elevation angles, but varies greatly with day-of-year. It is lowest (in the Arctic) during July and August at 0.48 – 0.50, rising up again during September back to 0.83 through November – January and up until late June as new snow covers the new ice that has formed over the previously open water. I like Curry’s numerous measurements of sea ice albedo and weather measurements from a year inside the Arctic ice cap as her ship drifted from month to month up above 75 and 80 north latitude, and will likely use them directly: Those were a little higher albedo from June 30 through August 15 at 0.57, but were 0.83 January to June and lower from September to January 0.77 She has not given me an answer yet about the winter and spring differences: Probably snow amounts on top of the sea ice.
Open ocean water albedo depends greatly on solar elevation angle, wind speed, and to a less degree related to wind speed, wave height. BUT ONLY FOR DIRECT SOLAR RADIATION. Calm water, low angle measured direct radiation albedoes from the open ocean have been has high as 0.49 at 10 degrees elevation angle, 0.56 at 8 degrees, and 0.70 at 6 degrees elevation angle. Others have measured 0.60 at 4 degrees, 0.48 at 6 degrees elevation angle, and 0.40 at 8 degrees. (Kuzman, Anstrom, Hansen)
Diffuse open ocean albedo is however, generally confirmed as a true constant at 0.06 under calm, light, and moderate winds. However, to get diffuse solar radiation, you need to first lose 70% of the “potentially available” inbound solar radiation by reflecting it off of clouds and through clouds to get it down to the ocean water to be absorbed.
So take your pick: you can have no clouds and thus have calm water and get most of your energy reflected from the water (at low solar elevation angles) or you can get reflect and diffuse your energy in the clouds, and then get some of the remaining energy absorbed by the water.
Re-read the above. You will find that “water” reflects more energy that “ice” when the two are actually measured in the Arctic.
Philip Bradley (at 5.44)
Re: hot sun radiation on cloudless days:
Funny you should say that, as we’re not getting red sunsets. Very often here in England we get a red sunset that portends a sunny day (Raleigh scattering). But we haven’t been getting them lately – suggesting a lack of atmospheric dust particles (perhaps?).
It will be VERY interesting to see what happens to Arctic ice this year, as I have often said that the UK’s weather is linked with the Arctic. For the past few years when Arctic ice has been low, we’ve had rotten summers. Now we’ve had a good summer, what about Arctic ice?
NZ Willy says:
August 2, 2013 at 1:01 pm
“I think those “temperature anomalies” are because they are comparing surface water temperature to the surface *ice* temperature of the control data (which has ice in those places), so the “anomaly” is simply the temperature above freezing.”
I agree. Furthermore, as soon as the sun gets down to a point where it sits on the horizon, those areas become areas that reflect more sunlight than rough snow and ice, because when the angle sunlight hits approaches 90 degrees, the amount reflected soars and passes that of ice, so that the the albedo of water surpasses that of ice.
Lastly, as soon as the sun sets those areas of open water lose heat more readily than the water that is insulated from the cold by ice. In conclusion, open water on the Arctic Sea may be a powerful negative feedback, once the sun gets low.
Well, I reckon everybody apart form this guy is wrong…
http://www.sierraclub.ca/en/AdultDiscussionPlease
Seriously, he’s studying for a PhD in ‘abrupt climate change’…
[“My prediction above was based on understanding of the inter-related Artic/climatic system obtained through in-depth research conducted as part of my Ph.D. studies on abrupt climate change, and through my academic work as part-time professor in climatology/meteorology at the University of Ottawa.”]
I reckon he still has a chance of hitting it spot on!
/sarc
I have speculated about this before. What happens if the Antarctic bulge of sea ice growing towards the southern tip of South America makes it all the way and connects to it? What will the quite cold circumpolar Antarctic Current do? Will it fully invade the Atlantic and eventually cool the gulf stream down? Will it end the invasion of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic thus cause a return of normal to above normal Arctic ice extent and area? Will it be the beginning of another interglacial catastrophic decades long extreme cold spell?
What if this Antarctic sea ice bulge is what causes the Arctic to return to normal levels of ice or worse, what if this bulge is what has caused the devastating historical interglacial cold spells recorded in history?
And the most far-fetched question: What if this cold current invades the Pacific and cools it down so much that we have a new ice age? Since weather in the Northern Hemisphere is very much a west to east phenomenon, and the largest body of water these weather systems cross is the Pacific, and the Pacific has turned witch-teat cold, I speculate that ice will begin growing further and further into lower latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere as drought and extreme cold causes lakes and rivers to freeze solid over much of the year. And it happens year in and year out.
Possibly, it would be a double whammy if the strait were to be blocked by sea ice. The relatively cold west to east surface wind driven circumpolar current would invade the Pacific in all its cold glory and the very cold subpolar east to west current would upwell and invade the Atlantic. A one-two knockout punch. Drought and cold could be global.
Open for discussion, enlightenment, and thought experiments.
l made a bit of a pigs ear of my last post so l will start again.
At the moment the Polar jet has split and parts of it are flowing over the Arctic circle. This should be flushing the Arctic of cold air and sending it south. Which should increase the temps and the ice melt in the Arctic. lf it does not then l suspect that they is something going on with the atmosphere over the Arctic. That is making it lose heat at greater rate then is expected.
The sea’s around the Arctic are mostly warm, yet the air temps in the Arctic here been below average during the summer. The Polar jet splitting and flowing around the Arctic circle has helped with the cooling but it does not explain it all.