A grand experiment is being conducted in the Arctic this year that may not only falsify a prediction made in 2007, but may also further distance a connection between Arctic air temperature and sea ice decline.
You may have noticed the countdown widget at the top of the right sidebar. I’ve been waiting for this event all summer, and now that we are just over a month away from the Autumnal Equinox at September 22, at 20:44 UTC., (4:44PM EDT) signifying the end of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, this seemed like a good time to start the countdown. If there is still significant ice (1 million square kilometers or more as defined by Zwally, see below) in place then, we can consider that this claim by Maslowski in 2007 to be falsified:
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
What is most interesting though, is that Arctic temperatures seem to be in early decline, ahead of schedule by about 30 days compared to last year’s record melt:
Figure 1A: Overlay of temperature plots for 2012 and 2013 from the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Note that in Figure 1A, for 2013 the temperature has fallen below that which is needed to freeze seawater (approximately -1.8°C according to Peter Wadhams) at 271°K (-2.15°C). It is also approximmately 30 days ahead of the date that the temperature fell to the same value last year, and so far, the current situation with early colder temperature seems to be unique in the DMI temperature record back to 1958. However, it is worth noting that DMI has a caveat not to take the actual temperatures too literally.
…since the model is gridded in a regular 0.5 degree grid, the mean temperature values are strongly biased towards the temperature in the most northern part of the Arctic! Therefore, do NOT use this measure as an actual physical mean temperature of the arctic. The ‘plus 80 North mean temperature’graphs can be used for comparing one year to an other.
As if on cue for that caveat, shortly after I prepared figure 1A, DMI updated their plot to show a bit of a rebound:
Figure 1B DMI plot for today.
But there are other indications, for example this plot from NOAA ESRL, showing air temperatures well below freezing in the region:
Figure 2: Surface air temperatures in C Source: NOAA ESRL – Click the pic to view at sourceAnd, extent this year is ahead of extent for this time last year and within the standard deviation range (grey shading):
Figure 3: Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) – Centre for Ocean and Ice – Click the pic to view at sourceAfter a new record low in Arctic sea ice extent in 2012, the phrase “Nature abhors a vaccum” comes to mind as indicators suggest this melt season may end earlier than usual. The earliest that a turn in Arctic melt season was recorded in the satellite record was on September 2nd, 1987. With 14 days to go, will we see an earlier turn?
If we do, it might suggest (as many believe) that sea ice melt is directly tied to air temperature and the effects of increased CO2 on air temperature via the polar amplification we are often told about where the Arctic is the fastest warming place in the world.
Figure 4: The map above shows global temperature anomalies for 2000 to 2009. It does not depict absolute temperature, but rather how much warmer or colder a region is compared to the norm for that region from 1951 to 1980. Global temperatures from 2000–2009 were on average about 0.6°C higher than they were from 1951–1980. The Arctic, however, was about 2°C warmer. Based on GISS surface temperature analysis data including ship and buoy data from the Hadley Centre.
Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_amplification
If the melt continues, and turns around the normal time, which is usually +/- 5 days of the Autumnal Equinox on September 22nd, then we can assume other forcings are dominant this year, such as ocean currents and cycles like the AMO, winds, and ocean temperature below the sea ice. There’s also the unanswered question of the effects of black carbon soot.
If in spite of the early drop in temperatures, the Arctic sea ice extent ice drops below 1 million square kilometers, as NASA’s Jay Zwally famously predicted (with an assist from AP’s Seth Borenstein): “…the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012″ then most certainly all bets are off.
But if we see an early turn, it will falsify Maslowski’s and Zwally’s forecasts. Also, if the melt marches on despite the colder temperatures, it will force a reconsideration of what is really driving Arctic melt patterns.
Interestingly, the final ARCUS sea ice forecast has been published on August 16th,and the ranges of predictions are quite broad, spanning 2.2 million square kilometers from the most optimistic NOAA’s Msadek et al. at 5.8 msq/km to the perennially gloomy “Neven” whose Artic Sea Ice blog poll predicts 3.6 msq/km.
See http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2013/august
They write:
The Sea Ice Outlook organizers decided, with input from contributors and readers, to skip an August report this year in favor of a more thorough post-season report.
However, we provided this webpage to post and share individual contributors¹ August outlooks; the individual outlooks are below.
Since ARCUS didn’t plot them, I’ve plotted all the participant forecasts below.
Figure 5: plot of September Arctic Sea Ice Extent Mean forecasts submitted to ARCUS in August 2013.
Interestingly, I discovered that Robert Grumbine has participated in two forecasts (Wu and Wang) as a co-author, each with a different prediction, so that seems rather odd to me.
WUWT’s value is based on a weighted calculation of the top five vote getters in our poll here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/sea-ice-news-volume-4-3-2013-sea-ice-forecast-contest/
The most popular value picked by WUWT readers was 5.0 msq/km 8.9% (94 votes), though it wasn’t a runaway vote, hence I opted for a weighted average of the top 5 vote getters.
Most importantly, none of the ARCUS forecasts participants suggested an ice-free Arctic, which is bad news for Maslowski’s prediction.
No matter what happens, we live in interesting times.
As always the WUWT Sea Ice reference page has interesting plots of data at a glance: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
UPDATE: Commenter “jimbo” adds in comments –
Here is a compilation of ice-free Arctic Ocean / North Pole predictions / projections from scientists for the past, present and future.
Xinhua News Agency – 1 March 2008
“If Norway’s average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away, which is highly possible judging from current conditions,” Orheim said.
[Dr. Olav Orheim – Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat]
__________________
Canada.com – 16 November 2007
“According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015.
“And it’s probably going to happen even faster than that,” said Fortier,””
[Professor Louis Fortier – Université Laval, Director ArcticNet]
__________________
National Geographic – 12 December 2007
“NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.” ”
[Dr. Jay Zwally – NASA]
__________________
BBC – 12 December 2007
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,”…….”So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
[Professor Wieslaw Maslowski]
__________________
Independent – 27 June 2008
Exclusive: Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole this summer
“…..It is quite likely that the North Pole will be exposed this summer – it’s not happened before,” Professor Wadhams said.”
[Professor Peter Wadhams – Cambridge University]
__________________
Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Vol. 40: 625-654 – May 2012
The Future of Arctic Sea Ice
“…..one can project that at this rate it would take only 9 more years or until 2016 ± 3 years to reach a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. Regardless of high uncertainty associated with such an estimate, it does provide a lower bound of the time range for projections of seasonal sea ice cover…..”
[Professor Wieslaw Maslowski]
__________________
Yale Environment360 – 30 August 2012
“If this rate of melting [in 2012] is sustained in 2013, we are staring down the barrel and looking at a summer Arctic which is potentially free of sea ice within this decade,”
[Dr. Mark Drinkwater]
__________________
Guardian – 17 September 2012
“This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates“.
[Professor Peter Wadhams – Cambridge University]
__________________
Sierra Club – March 23, 2013
“For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean….”
[Paul Beckwith – PhD student paleoclimatology and climatology – part-time professor]
__________________
Financial Times Magazine – 2 August 2013
“It could even be this year or next year but not later than 2015 there won’t be any ice in the Arctic in the summer,”
[Professor Peter Wadhams – Cambridge University]
__________________
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You are all missing the obvious. There is no ice in the arctic. Any and all reports to the contrary are obviously fabrications from the well funded and organized denial machine.
/sarc
This comments/reply section sure has a large share of idiots who know next to nothing and seem to care less. Is it really a status symbol to be ignorant and show it!
The consensus is the Arctic will become ice free within the next decade. It is a huge big deal. It has not happened in 3 million years. To those that think it isn’t, stick around and watch how super extreme the weather can become. This year, weather patterns favored the ice in the middle of summer when the melting should have been maximized. The highest Arctic has had a great deal of heavy cloud cover which really saved the ice. The next few summers, the ice may not be lucky.
REPLY: Despite the fact that you are rude and condescending to everyone else on this thread, I’ve allowed this comment. How do you know it hasn’t happened in 3 million years? Show the proof of that. Can you explain what happened in the Arctic in 1922 with the observed loss then?
– Anthony
Donald K. Chilo,
Anthony is right. Here is a peer reviewed paper indicating that the Arctic was ice-free during the current Holocene, between 6,000 – 7,000 years ago.
You should stop wasting your time wherever you are getting your misinformation. This site has the correct info. You should also be aware that nothing either unusual or unprecedented is happening in the Arctic, or anywhere else. What we observe now has all happened before, and to much greater extremes.
Donald K. Chilo says:
August 18, 2013 at 9:35 pm
OK. I’ll bite. Out of 128 comments, just one (you claim) has got it right, and is therefore correct about worrying about this year’s arctic sea ice extents.
Now, please tell me exactly what the “problem” is with a decline in arctic sea ice, and what the result will be if it continues to decline for several more years.
After all, you (the CAGW community as a fund-raising whole!) is worried almost to death about it, so there must be a reason for that concern.
numbers only please! No hand-waving or drama. Just numbers of what you think the result will be if sea ice continues to decline. (Record low temperatures in the southeast US today, yesterday, this month by the way.
@Donald K. Chilo
We’ve had scientists telling us in 1817, 1922, 1947, 1957 and 1969 that the Arctic would be gone .
(For example: “…the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two” – New York Times, February 20th, 1969).
Nothing unusual what is happening in the Arctic at the moment.
Even the IPCC (In 1990) had satellite data which showed that Arctic was much lower in 1974.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
As for the Arctic not been ice free in 3 million years.
What……?
You have no idea have you?
Consensus?
Are you seriously suggesting science should be based on consensus?
How do you calculate a 30 year average from 1979 to 2000?
Maybe, just maybe, the computer models are wrong.
Shouldn’t there be some requirement for demonstrating that a model actually has predictive value before it becomes the source of alarmist claims in the media?
dbstealey says:
August 18, 2013 at 10:09 pm
Donald K. Chilo,
Anthony is right. Here is a peer reviewed paper indicating that the Arctic was ice-free during the current Holocene, between 6,000 – 7,000 years ago.
————————–
You do not need to go that far back. Additionally, the Insolation (incoming solar radiation) then was much higher at high latitudes, so that comparison is biased.
But the Medieval Warm Period also had obviously less or no ice as well, And here, current climate is biased towards less ice due to black soot.
So, it would be just back to normal after the outlier of the little ice age.
http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=11227&mn=8369&pt=msg&mid=12317983
I think we need a CAGW predictions page. One section for Al Gore one for NIDC and other scientists.
Hoser said @ur momisugly August 18, 2013 at 10:26 pm
Easy peasy 🙂 You just add on another 9 years of data from 2001-9. I seem to recall this being done in a paper published ~2000 but I cannot recall which one. IIRC M Mann was one of the co-authors.
What strikes me is the similarity between these “scientific” Arctic prognosticators and current Viagra commercials.
They know their science, confident in their predictions. “This is the age of knowing how to get things done.”
Then came the commercial with the overheating classic Camaro. Guy pulls into service station, then buys a large bottle of chilled water, which he pours into the radiator.
That got noticed. You don’t have to be much of a mechanic to know you never pour cold water into a hot engine block, the thermal shock can crack the block. Plus, I will add, he had to have taken the cap off a hot radiator, also a big no-no.
And yet, two years after the glaring error, that commercial still shows up in the rotation.
Latest Viagra commercial has a guy trying to start a campfire on a beach. His fancy all-weather lighter breaks.
So he heads to the toolbox, and amid the hardened steel tools, he picks out a cheap pocket knife with brass pieces on the ends (bolsters). He carefully strikes the brass on the butt of the knife against a rock, to get the sparks to ignite some tinder. (With the campfire subsequently flaring up like the propane was turned on…)
Except brass tools are used when you don’t want sparking. That’s been known for, oh, centuries. And bolster brass ain’t that hard, most likely the rock scratched it, no sparks. The hardened steel tools would have been much better choices.
Confident Arctic sea ice “experts”, Viagra commercials, both about “knowing how to get things done.” Both doing it WRONG.
Does demonstrate one thing well. Get yourself “puffed up” and confident you know what you’re doing, you might not be thinking as clearly as you think.
Also shows a lot of people really don’t care about the details, as long as it looks good on TV.
Greg M said @ur momisugly August 18, 2013 at 10:28 pm
If the model has predictive value, then it’s not alarmist and it would be foolish to ignore such. The models that interest the media are either not worth paying attention, or are depicted on page 3 😉
Nick Stokes on August 18, 2013 at 2:40 pm
“If there is still significant ice (1 million square kilometers or more as defined by Zwally, see below) in place then, we can consider that this claim by Maslowski in 2007 to be falsified:”
Well, Maslowski did update his forecast. As the BBC report of that says,
“The original prediction, made in 2007, gained Wieslaw Maslowski’s team a deal of criticism from some of their peers.”
We’ll be sure to attach as much credence to this prediction as his last.
“How do you calculate a 30 year average…?”
One way is to take the mean extent for each day of the year over 30 years and plot a curve from those values. Can’t recall if that’s how NSIDC do it.
this AREA/EXTENT is still tracking below the long-term mean. And again, this says nothing about VOLUME trends. Cryosat is the only means we have currently of measuring this.
If you REALLY want to understand this subject, track down the history of the ice cover BEFORE 1979. The satellite record goes all the way back to 1961, via recently unclassified images. You might be surprised at what you find. And yes I have helped to compile some of this data….
To put things in context, the quotes cited in the top article refer to the soonest possible estimates (they often say ‘maybe’, or ‘possibly’ or ‘could be’) for an ice-free Arctic. One cite only refers to the North Pole area, not the whole cap. The AR4 models have singificantly underestimated ice loss, and their best estimate was ice-free Arctic in summers by the end of the century. The leaked AR5 report estimates ice-free summers during the second half of the 20th century.
You could be forgiven for thinking that ice-free summers by this year is the best estimate that modelers gave, but it’s not. If you track back on most of the cites in the top article, most give the best estimates no sooner than about 2030. Sooner estimates were the outliers. But that’s what the press sensationalises, which becomes fodder for both sides of the debate.
Typo – “The leaked AR5 report estimates ice-free summers during the second half of the 21st century.”
Cryosat is the only means we have currently of measuring this.
I’ve looked at the Cryosat website http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat and can’t find graphs of arctic ice volume change – could someone say where they are?
If you REALLY want to understand this subject, track down the history of the ice cover BEFORE 1979.
I’d like to see that too – any guidance where to look?
“Réaumur says:
August 19, 2013 at 12:08 am”
I would be interested in seeing those too. In the meantime, I found this;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/02/cache-of-historical-arctic-sea-ice-maps-discovered/
FYI –
one week ago, the sea in front of this webcam situated in the middle of the west coast of Greenland http://www.hotel-arctic.gl/index.php?pageid=25 was completely free of ice, except for some small ice floes, which were calved by the glacier in that Fjord.
But now look at this: http://www.hotel-arctic.gl/om_hotel_arctic/webcam/
You can literally WATCH the sea surface freezing between the ice-floes.
It seems to be really cold up there.
Cheers!
Any explanations as to why it is colder than average at the pole this year?
Less cloud cover?
Greater albedo?
Less warming winds?
Explaining this year’s significantly cooler season might explain a great deal about Arctic climate.
.
Just as some trivia for you…
The name ‘Arctic’ comes from the Greek arktos, meaning ‘bear’.
And no, this does not refer to the Poly Bear, this is the Great Bear in the heavens above – Ursa Major. Ursa Major is the northern constellation, and so the north became the Arctic. So there has always been a bear in the Arctic…. 😉
.
Just so that we can really rub it in to the BBC’s Jonathan Amos, why doesn’t WUWT supply the daily Arctic ice VOLUME:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2_CY.png?%3C?php%20echo%20time%28%29?
It is just so gratifying (maybe even approaching sexual ecstasy) when one gets the opportunity to show someone who ‘think’ they know what they’re talking about that, in fact, they are talking out of their rear end. That pleasure is all the more heightened when it is a BBC journalist (and if you’ve ever met one you’ll understand why).
Here is David Barber of rotten ice fame.
Look at the IPCC graph on the following page. See 1974.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/arctic-ice-growth-since-1971/
See also the Arctic situation in the 20s and 30s.
http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/wuwt-attacks-wtd-i-learn-the-only-thing-to-fear-from-the-sceptics-is-your-own-fear/#comment-43622
Is it mostly just part of a cycle? Would reduced soot in the Arctic have an effect? Can natural climate cycles dominate man made ‘warming’ in the Arctic? Could we see a recovery? I don’t know but we live in interesting times.