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]
__________________
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Nick Stokes says:
“Seems to me you’re simultaneously criticizing them for being vague and for being “self proclaimed expert prognosticators”. I think they are just saying they are not in a position to expertly prognosticate.”
Nick: Of course climastrologists aren’t in a position to expertly prognosticate. They never have been and never will be, but that never stops them does it? This is just another example of typical climastrologist behavior (and a ‘teachable’ moment):
Predictable Climastrologist Behavior:
Step 1: Make outrageous claims based solely on model results (no empirical data whatsoever).
Step 2: Ignore empirical data as long as possible as your model projections drift further and further from reality.
Step 3: When reality forces you to acknowledge it, “update” your model projections (backpedal) such that they are even more vague and ambiguous. Push testable projections out past the end of your lifetime.
This is despicable behavior from “researchers” who don’t deserve to be called scientists! Why? Because they refuse to follow the scientific method. Every one of these “Climastrologists” deserves to get his/her nose soundly rubbed in their own BS at every possible opportunity. Stop apologizing for these charlatans! They’re giving you and every other real scientist a bad name. Go Anthony!
Jimbo, you have assembled veritable egg-on-face role call there.
Eliza, I disagree.
I also disagree with Nick Stokes but I don’t see him as insincere.
He politely argues his point and should be respected for that.
OK, Professor Wadhams’ and Maslowski’s predictions are debunked but Nick Stokes is right to say that not even every alarmist believed those guys were right.
Nick Stokes deserves to be disputed not derided.
A good way to defuse an argument and cut the legs off Warmistas is to use their own words. For example,
Nick Stokes says:
August 18, 2013 at 4:25 pm
(Bold mine.) So I looked up the word “certainty” and came up with several definitions.
The first is this:
cer·tain·ty/ˈsɜrtnti/ Show Spelled [sur-tn-tee] Show IPA 2
noun, plural cer·tain·ties.
1. the state of being certain.
2. something certain; an assured fact.
So I take no “assured fact”, to mean no facts at all (are there any facts that aren’t assured?–if so, I submit they aren’t “facts”).
Synonyms
1. certitude, assurance, confidence.
Or based on the synonyms listed, “no certainty” mean no assurance or no confidence.
The next definition, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, was this:
Certainty
First published Sat Feb 2, 2008
Like knowledge, certainty is an epistemic property of beliefs.
So “no certainty” from an epistemological standpoint, means no belief in what’s being stated!
So Nick, by your own words, you’ve admitted (depending on your definition) that you either have no facts or no belief–or both.
Why are we discussing a pure fantasy about which you have no facts and no belief?? Why are you wasting our time? Have you nothing better to do?
There’s no need to even discuss your “no unanimity” phrase–it would simply be redundant.
lurker, passing through laughing says:
August 19, 2013 at 4:48 am
Not a single AGW doom prediction that I am aware of has come true.
Those of who have been skeptical (the so-called flat earthers) have been proven right every time we have challenged the AGW hype industry.
Think on this: Not one AGW prediction of doom has come true. Not one AGW demanded policy has succeeded. Not one AGW climate treaty has done anything of any significance at all.
Unfortunately, one AGW demanded policy has succeeded, that is the reduction in the availability of cheap energy. Resulting in deindustrialization of the countries whose politicians are following the AGW mantra and condemning the third world to continuing poverty. Following the Common Purpose, any new energy source is immediately demonized and protested against, while reversion to costly, environmentally damaging and inefficient energy production is praised. The EPA in the US, the Department of Energy and ‘Climate Change’ in the UK, and the Australian government are all in the process of increasing energy poverty in their respective countries. it would appear that Frau Merkel may have seen the light in Germany but that may be due to some 600.000 German families going off grid as their electricity supply is completely unaffordable.
The Common Purpose is to achieve complete shut down of all cheap energy sources before the population at large and useful idiots understand that it is not getting warmer. But by then as is already the case in UK, it will be too late to recover and create new power generation from scratch. The concurrence of the dates of mass ‘fossil’ fueled power station shut downs with forecast date of impending cold mean that it the next few years will be unpleasant for most and deadly for many. This will be seen as success by AGW proponents.
Well. I guess if there is no ice then we’ll just have to, well, drink water.
Can’t believe I’m the first one to comment on that.
richard verney says: @ur momisugly August 19, 2013 at 1:43 am
>>>>>>>>>>>>.
What it say is the Mass Media is nothing but a propaganda tool of people in public offices or their backers who are more interested in lining their pockets and the heck with the rest of society. They could care less if they completely ruin entire countries as long as they get theirs.
Makes me spiting ANGRY! What is worse is no matter which political party you vote for they are ALL greedy S.O.B’s and there is little different between them.
In the USA, Ron Paul refused his Congressional pension and now 10 GOP [ Republican]lawmakers forgo their Pa. [ Pennsylvania] pension So it looks like the GOP has FINALLY noticed people are pretty fed-up.
(I like Rasmussen because they are up front about what the survey questions actually are.)
Seriously though,
Who would that inconvenience (polar bears are doing fine). Do farmers “look down the barrel” at melting ice every year before their crops start to grow?
Was Vivaldi “staring down the barrel” when he composed that most joyful piece of music ‘Spring (The Four Seasons)’?
Bruce,
Arctic sea Ice loss over the past 16-17 years has been greater than the previous 16 years since satellites have been giving us data. Arctic sea ice has not been following the curve of the slow-down in global temperatures. Even this year is pretty much tracking the declining linear trend so far, but even if it winds up being above the trend, one year does not a rebound make. When we’ve had three or four September minimums above the 2005 September minimum, then we might be looking at something like a rebound. It won’t take as much annual data as with surface temperatures to be statistically significant, because the variance with sea ice monthly anomalies is not quite as erratic, but you’d want to wait until at least the end of this decade to make that call.
But if you’re talking about short-term (weather) fluctuations, well, sure, Arctic sea-ice “rebounds” every winter!
If, as seems likely, this year’s September minimum is not particularly low, then we will not see the “rapid rate of recovery” that has been discussed in the last few years when sea ice grew back after very low minimums. I will be curious to see if those who argued that rapid regrowth after very low minimums indicates a meaningful “rebound” will then apply the argument equally – that a slower rate of regrowth is indicative of ice not rebounding well. 😉
Kristian says: @ur momisugly August 19, 2013 at 3:15 am
Meanwhile down in the Antarctic,…. Can someone explain this to me?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The volcanoes that was melting ice down there are no longer active so the Warmists are now ignoring the area?
20 Jan 2008 First evidence of under-ice volcanic eruption in Antarctica: The first evidence of a volcanic eruption from beneath Antarctica’s most rapidly changing ice sheet is reported this week in the journal Nature Geosciences. The volcano on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet erupted 2000 years ago (325BC) and remains active….
July 11, 2011 Huge Underwater Volcanoes Discovered Near Antarctica… A string of a dozen volcanoes, at least several of them active, has been found beneath the frigid seas near Antarctica, the first such discovery in that region.
(Remove tongue from cheek)
Caleb says: @ur momisugly August 19, 2013 at 3:55 am
.
…..It is hard not to be cynical about the current situation, however in the end Truth will prevail, because it is true.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Unless of course the Luddites manage to dump Western Civilization back into another Dark Age by removing cheap energy and we are too busy living short brutal lives to worry about little things like science.
I actually like to watch clouds, study weather maps, and view the world through the “North Pole Camera” to get away from it all. It spoils all the pleasure if you have to root for a particular political viewpoint, while doing so.
Not that I don’t root. When my garden is parched, I root for rain. When it resembles a swamp, I root for drought. When it is hot I wish it were not and when it is not I wish it were hot.
I suppose in the eyes of some this makes me a political hypocrite and politically incorrect, but I just shrug and suppose those folk are seeing the world through warped glasses.
There used to be a joke, “Everyone complains about the weather but no one does anything about it.” Apparently some Alarmists didn’t get the joke, and decided to do something about the weather.
I ordinarily don’t mind if people hold prayer meetings or dance rain dances to control the rain clouds, but as soon as they step into my garden and start telling me what I can plant and how much of a tax I must pay for planting, in order to control the rain clouds, they are stepping over a line. A 240-year-old flag flaps in the wind, and it states, “Don’t Tread On Me.”
After a good, healthy, political rave, I need to get away from it all, and go to watch the ice melt via the North Pole Camera. It has been a slow melt this year, and halted a couple weeks ago, but finally it has resumed. It amuses me that the resumption has such huge political consequences. After all, it is just ice melting. However, in the world of rain-dancing Alarmists, it may be a case of too-little-too-late.
Like a wave up onto a beach even as the tide goes out, a final flood of “mild” air has rushed up to the pole from Scandinavia. However it has already created a sort of undertow, as sub-zero-Celsius air sneaks in underneath it along the Siberian Coast, sub-minus-five-Celsius pours south over the northernmost Canadian Islands, and a “homegrown” pool of sub-minus-five-Celsius air appears at the edge of the ice pack over towards Bering Strait.
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/the-big-chill-sea-ice-version/
Supercomputers….GIGO superfast.
barry says:
August 19, 2013 at 6:06 am
Barry, if you need to twist people’s words and put up straw men in order to argue against them, chances are your “argument” fails.
Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration
August 19, 2009
The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.”
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.
“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” he said.
Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration
Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.
And get this …
The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” and using “exaggeration and alarmism.”
Ha! Pot, kettle, black.
Leipold’s admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements. (Though, they are strangely reluctant to publish the data.)
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of “emotionalizing issues” in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3% to 8% cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
“We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,” Leipold said. “If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary.”
This contrasts sharply with the grim future for the Bering predicted by Greenpeace. Thirteen years ago in 1999, when they had this to say:
“The first regions to be affected will be ice-dependent seas near but outside the Arctic Ocean proper, including the Bering Sea … These areas are currently covered in seasonal winter ice, which could vanish altogether with continued warming.
Walruses, which travel long distances on floating sea ice that allows them to feed over a wide area may be particularly vulnerable …
Many species of seal are ice-dependent, including the spotted seal, which in the Bering Sea breeds exclusively at the ice edge in spring; the harp seal, which lives at the ice edge all year; the ringed seal, which give birth to and nurse their pups on sea ice; the ribbon seal and the bearded seal.
Polar bears would be threatened by any decline in ringed seal populations, their main food source.”
Strangely, this prediction has been deleted from their archive. It used to be found here http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/arctic99/reports/seaice3.html
But you can still watch the full BBC interview with Leipold (or should that be Liepold?) here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/8184392.stm
So there you have it. All the “Ice free Arctic” stories are hogwash. They are nothing to do with the Arctic being ice free at all, and everything to do with another completely unrelated agenda.
The ice at the North Pole is mobile, it moves in response to oceanic and atmospheric conditions. In 2010, for example, there was an unusual Arctic dipole anomaly that resulted in the negation of the normal Arctic Oscillation and instigated opposing cyclonic conditions that caused widespread dissipation of the ice-mass.
Because of this mobility, even the multiyear ice isn’t that old. There are different electromagnetic properties between new and multiyear ice and this enables remote sensing satellites to track both types of ice. I don’t think anyone could say just how old the oldest piece of ice is but a figure of 10 years seems a reasonable average age.
At the precise point of the North Pole, the oldest piece of ice has to be less than 71 months old as the North Pole itself was ice free in July 2007. Also bear in mind that there isn’t actually a precise point for the magnetic north pole as it constantly moves. Each day it goes on an 80km journey, roughly in a loop but never quite returning to the same point it started from, hence there is a 40km drift each year and thus it’s necessary to allow for magnetic declination when taking accurate compass or cartographic readings.
The Arctic was last free of ice more than 700,000 years ago. There is nothing in any scientific research, reconstruction or paleoclimatic evidence to suggest the Arctic has been completely ice free at any point in this time. It was probably ice free some 4 million years ago, it may be more recent than that. It was almost certainly ice free between 15 and 25 million years ago, the same time at which the Antarctic was comparatively ice free and it was last completely ice free about 50-55 million years ago.
Typically, the flat parts of the Arctic ice are just a few feet thick with multi-year ice being up to about 9 feet. New ice is 1 to 3 feet thick but can often be just a few inches. Where the ice buckles and ridges form it can be up to 15 feet thick.
Unlike Antarctica and Greenland, the Arctic ice isn’t land-based. This means it forms as a thin frozen layer of sea-water and is eroded from both above and below. It’s this vulnerability that allows for rapid melting of the ice in summer and refreezing in winter. In the past the maximum winter sea-ice extent was about 15 million km², in recent years this has receded to about 14 million km². During the summer months the ice rapidly melts, it used to retreat to about 11 million km² but in recent years it has been down to about 6 million km².
At it’s annual peak, the Arctic ice expands to cover an area the same size as Antarctica and forms a frozen mass between Canada, Greenland and Russia.
We’re very close to the time of year when minimum sea-ice extent is reached, (usually in about 11 days time) and at the moment there’s just under 5.9 million km² of ice in the Arctic. This recent decline in ice extent has opened up new shipping routes enabling vessels to sail around the north of Canada and the north of Russia.
In Greenland the ice cap has a maximum depth of 3,207 metres (10,519 feet) and the oldest ice here is about 100,000 years old. That’s not to say there was no ice 100,000 years ago. The Greenlandic ice is effectively one giant glacier, slowly creeping towards the surrounding seas and oceans.
As the snow falls it compresses under the effects of gravity and beneath overlying snow deposits, compressed enough it becomes ice and starts it’s long journey to the sea. There’s a constant cycle of ice calving into the sea and being replaced by new formations of ice.
The same thing happens in Antarctica but being much larger and generally at a lesser incline than Greenland, the ice takes a lot longer to flow to the sea. The oldest ice here is about 1 million years old, the oldest so far extracted from cores is 850,000 years old. The maximum thickness of Antarctic ice is 4,776 metres (15,670 feet).
Real World
“Using supercomputers, paid by taxpayers hard earned dollars, to crunch through possible future outcomes has become a standard grand game played by climate scientists in recent years spear-headed by the University of Colorado in the United States.”
(now that’s more accurate BBC)
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 19, 2013 at 4:22 am
Regarding Arctic sea ice before 1979 (aka start of satellite record),
…..
There is something else that looks very important in that graph. By my eyes, it is showing there was as much a drop from 1969 to 1979, as there was from 1979 to 2009.
So over a mere ten years, the extent dropped as much as it did over thirty years.
I would like to know why, after all the warnings about the dangerous rate of Arctic sea ice loss during the satellite age, they have not made special notice of The Ice Being Lost THREE TIMES As Fast in the decade before. How do they explain the slow down in ice loss?
Interesting and curious observation. A gap in the AGW hymn-sheet, everything is supposed to be accelerating catastrophically “worse than we thought”.
(“Than we thought” is not saying much for some of these folks.)
What I’d like to know is what is where is the research on the “new” open Arctic waters (like the Chukchi Sea)? Is there phytoplankton growth? Are whales migrating into & feeding in those recently opened areas? Are researchers purposely ignoring these aspects so as not to detect “good” effects?
Bruce, how did I twist your words? I quoted you, replied to the point and made another, which I attributed to other people. It’s way too premature to say Arctic sea ice is “rebounding” or “stabilising” less than a year after the lowest minimum extent and thrity four years of decreasing sea ice. We’d need a few more years worth of growing ice to say the trend has changed with any degree of confidence.
beng,
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=phytoplankton+ice+loss+chukchi+sea
Always worth checking google scholar if you’re curious about what is being studied.
I would like to speak with Dr. Viner about children not knowing what snow is. My two year old knows and the first one he knew was a record 8.5″ snowfall in OCTOBER. Our area averages a trace of snow in October. I also had him out in the snow on March 26, just a few days before Easter. My kid will see snow in May before he would forget what snow is.
We don’t hear much about the arctic not melting this year but we are hearing plenty about a “heat wave” this week that may push the eastern US megalopolis UHI areas into the low 90s. Oh no! (Normal high is in the mid to upper 80s).
Everyone may want to prepare themselves for the alarmist spin next March if there is a shallow minimum melt this September: “winter Arctic refreeze smallest since 2006″…there isn’t as much to refreeze if it didn’t melt in the first place!
RE: Sasha says:
August 19, 2013 at 7:23 am
A very interesting comment, especially the part about the discomfiture of Greenpeace, however I’ll debate you on this statement:
“The Arctic was last free of ice more than 700,000 years ago. There is nothing in any scientific research, reconstruction or paleoclimatic evidence to suggest the Arctic has been completely ice free at any point in this time….”
I feel I’ve seen plenty of evidence to the contrary, including pictures in geologist’s studies showing beaches formed by ice-free waves on arctic shores. I’m sure other’s will point out other evidence, but one thing that fascinates me is the phenomenon of cross-polar-flow, which gives us our cruelest and most bitter blasts of arctic air, even as far south as here in New Hampshire.
During the long arctic night air gets colder due to radiating away heat into the starry sky. The longer the air sits up there the colder it gets, however usually it is nudged out as a high pressure area. If it moves south it reaches sunlight and starts to warm and moderate, however if it moves the other way, from the Siberian arctic over the pole to Canada (or vice versa) it has far longer to radiate away heat, and can get colder than cold. That is how temperatures can plunge to the extreme levels of fifty to eighty below zero.
However, if the Arctic Sea is unfrozen, rather than that air getting colder it gets warmer as it crosses, (at least at the start of winter, until “baby ice” forms.) A warmer, ice-free Arctic Ocean would create a new source of maritime air.
I think this was the case when the Vikings settled Greenland and raised over 2000 cows and over 100,000 sheep and goats. Why? Because, during a cold winter here in New Hampshire one of the biggest battles is making sure my goats get enough water. It always freezes and you have to bash through the ice in buckets (or buy electronic gadgets to keep the water thawed.) The sheer amount of ice-bashing involved, to allow 100,000 sheep and goats to drink, would dull the toughest Viking’s ax and leave him exhausted. Therefore winters must have been considerably warmer, and the only way for it to be that much warmer would be to have an utterly transformed north wind, from a relatively ice-free Arctic ocean.
I rest my case.
Well, so much for Sereze’s much-hyped “arctic sea ice death spiral” of massive media attention and spin!
Today, sea ice area (not “sea ice extents” for you fans of the Sea Ice Page graphs) is higher than 2012 (not surprising – that’s what we’re laughing about in this thread), but it is also high than 2011 (on this date.)
Today’s 2013 sea ice area is also higher than 2010, 2009, 2008, or 2007 were on this date. That’s 6 year’s of “first year thinner ice” that have been re-frozen over and over again.
Granted, I cannot use this year as a claim for anything but “the death spiral is disproven” but ….One thing at a time.
l see the air temps in Greenland are well below average.
lf this lasts into the winter then l will dread the winter to come if a blocking high decides to sit over southern Greenland/lceland. This will draw this cold air down across the UK and Europe and could set us up for a other winter like1962/63.
Endless recycling of old and debunked claims ABOUT THE ARCTIC MELT DOWN.
No chance the Arctic will “just melt away”.
This is just empty talk from certified morons and useful idiots like Professor Peter Wadhams and his colleagues.
“The Maslowski Countdown to an ‘ice-free Arctic’ begins” provides a great header to make the subject look more interesting but the reality is that we are watching a Soap Box Derby where the competing car has squire wheels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_Box_Derby
It’s incredibly boring
We will win the countdown and the whole argumentation takes off again when the subject is recycled for the onehundredandsixtysix’th time.
Maybe we should look for the switch that stops the money flow that enables this laughable circus and ignore the BS (Bad Science) produced by a bunch of traitors.
We will see how this turns out. Exactly when it happens, nobody knows for sure but the ice has reached a critical point in the past few years where it is much thinner and is vulnerable to total break-up in the summer over the next decade given the present trend. The Arctic has gotten warmer for whatever reason. An ice-free Arctic has been extremely rare over the past few million years. Based on the complex solar and orbital cycles we should actually see cooling in the Arctic now, so what is troubling atmospheric scientists like myself is why are we seeing the opposite. The evidence is overwhelming that the Arctic has been on a warming trend. The question now, is why? Less ice in the Arctic does change the weather patterns.This author has observed much more looping and blocking patterns resulting in more unusual extreme weather as the polar vortex has been displaced further south. Maybe more heat flux through much less ice destabilizes the polar vortex over the ocean allowing the cold core low to favor the northern parts of the continents. This in turn, shifts the weather patterns far removed from the Arctic in a ripple effect to create more chaotic weather patterns. This manifests itself in anomalous weather events that are almost always extreme weather events of great intensity. These are usually very destructive and bad for humanity no matter what the cause, Little or no Arctic ice is a problem now, and into the future that deserves further investigation.
If there is a better explanation based on scientific evidence,the dialog is welcome, otherwise refrain from personal political tantrums on this post as it does NOTHING to further the investigation of this phenomenon.