Remember these stories?
and
Follow up: the bogus ‘North Pole becomes a lake’ story
There was a lot of worry about ‘open water’ at the North Pole which turned out to be camera drift. WUWT reader “jimbo” just found this story of open water ‘near’ the North Pole reported in 2000. The second link contains a correction but not about the main claim.
New York Times – August 29, 2000
Open Water at Pole Is Not Surprising, Experts Say
…..Dr. Serreze said an examination of satellite images from July 15 showed what looked like a large body of ice-free water about 10 miles long and 3 miles wide near the pole……
“The fact of having no ice at the pole is not so stunning,” said Dr. Claire L. Parkinson, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “But the report said the ship encountered an unusual amount of open water all the way up. That is reason for concern.”
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20000829tuesday.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/20/weekinreview/august-13-19-it-s-melting.html
and…
Published on Monday, September 4, 2000
Climate Change Has The World Skating On Thin Ice
by Lester R. Brown
If any explorers had been hiking to the North Pole this summer, they would have had to swim the last few miles. The discovery of open water at the Pole by an ice-breaker cruise ship in mid August surprised many in the scientific community.
It seems that history repeated itself.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
jdallen says:
August 24, 2013 at 10:32 am
Thank you for your time here: I too disagree with the apparent “confusion” between minimum area and minimum volumes you used above.
In particular, there are many million sq km of “Arctic sea ice” that the NSIDC includes that will always melt every year, and have always melt every year. Your 16,000,000 includes the Bering Straits, Bering Sea, Hudson Bay, and Chukchi Sea that will always freeze, and will always melt every summer. Rather, you cannot extend or compare any “maximum” Arctic sea ice trend unless you acknowledge the utter maximum of only 14,000,000 sq km’s of the Arctic ocean itself. Thus, any comparison of “sea ice trends” needs to be consistent: if the maximum Arctic Ocean size is 14,000,000 sq km’s, then what happens to sea in for example the Baltic is irrelevant to the north coast of Alaska, Siberia, or the north pole itself six months later.
And, likewise, the impossibility of of any sea ice “loss” past today’s 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 minimums is impossible. Make sense?
Arctic sea ice CANNOT continue to decrease below zero, so – at most, at its most extreme effect, we cannot lose more than what is already melted at mid-September last year. Since, a record low of sea ice last year did NOT cause any additional melting this year (rather the reverse happened!) nor did it cause any increase in sea water or air temperature this year (rather, the reverse happened) your “fears” of any additional Arctic sea ice loss are wrong. They are not “arguably wrong, or debateably wrong” or conceptually-theoretically wrong. They have been proved wrong in the real world.
You may, for example, examine a decline of 1,000,000 from today’s minimums. Or a decline of 2,000,000 from today’s minimum Arctic sea ice extents. But that’s it: It can’t go any lower from last year’s 3,500,000. Ever. There is an absolute lower bound to your nightmare. There is NO upper bound to my concern about Antarctic sea ice extents growing.
Therefore, I ask again: What do you fear about any potential or probable or continued loss of Arctic Sea ice?
Do your calculation, a real calculation about location and latitude, day-of-year, time-of-day, area of sea ice lost that shows what you fear. Just how much energy do you fear will be added if your nightmare occurs?
Show, by your calculations, that there can be an “arctic death spiral” if sea ice loss continues.
My numbers of the complete thermodynamics of sea ice in the high Arctic, all based on real-world measurements in the arctic from your much-praised “peer-reviewed literature”, show that as more sea ice is lost from the Arctic under today’s real-world conditions, the more the Arctic region will cool.
Further, as the DMI data at 80 north shows for all years from 1958 through 2013, the high Arctic IS getting cooler as more sea ice is lost.
And worse, as more Antarctic sea ice expands at both minimum and maximum extents, the cooler the southern hemisphere gets.
It is good to see the exchange of ideas going on here. My personal view is that a lot less is known about the arctic than many think. We have seen a little over half of what seems to be a sixty year cycle, and while our knowledge of factors involved with decreasing ice levels is decent, our knowledge of factors involved with increasing ice levels is poor, simply because we haven’t had a chance to watch it with all the neat satellite gizmos and gadgets, and various buoys measuring water at different depths, that we now have.
One interesting concept is that when there is no ice or slush at the surface, then the entire column of water from the surface to the pycnocline, roughly 400 feet down, must be chilled to the freezing point of salt water before ice can form, whereas when ice is at the surface only the water touching the ice needs to be chilled to that degree. It therefore follows that an ice-free ocean could get far colder than an ocean that was fully or partially ice-covered to begin with. It’s ice might be thinner, but the following spring its water would be colder all the way down to 400 feet. That may explain this summer’s colder temperatures.
Secondly, we may be witnessing the processes that rebuild the ice in the Beaufort Gyre, this year.
The ice simply is being pushed that way, and not flushing out through Fram Strait as much as usual. (You can see the reduced extent south of Fram Strait, along the east coast of Greenland, in the “Cryosphere Today” comparison maps.)
It would be a pity to be a know-it-all, at a time when there is so much new to see and learn from every day.
RACookPE1978,
Why should “last year” be the lower limit on ice? The exact same argument could have been made in 2008. 2007 was a new record low, and 2008 showed a rebound. But since then, the trend as once again continued toward less ice extent, area and volume, with a new record set 5 years later. If that is the pattern, then a rebound this year … followed by continued decreases in the next years would be a quite plausible hypothesis.
Also you claim that the Arctic is getting colder. A quick look at the DMI data suggests that the summer temperatures are getting slightly cooler, but the winter temperatures are getting significantly warmer. Thus the net trend seems to be overall warming.
tjfolkerts says:
August 24, 2013 at 4:24 pm (replying to)
RACookPE1978,
Absolutely. Yes, there is absolutely NO reason why last year’s minimum is the lowest possible. The trend THIS YEAR is -1,000,000 (or so) sq km’s of sea under the “average” sea ice levels on any given date, so there is no reason why this deficit would not continue.
To be honest, I think you misunderstood my point: Not only might this deficit continue, but it might get worse! Thus, the focus of my question: It could get NO worse than 2,000,000 lower or 3,000,000 sq km’s lower! See, there is no possible way that a current Artic sea ice extents minimum of 3,500,000 sq km’s can get lower than 0. And, last year, it was already down to 3,500,000 and there was no effect this year. ALSO, there is NO possible way for a sea ice area of 2,000,000 could get lower than that 2,000,000.
Further, regardless of when or why those 0.0 sq km’s of sea ice got to 0.0, the area will re-freeze the next weeks (in October and November and early December.) Thus, the heat and thermodynamics calculations need to be valid for a “more reasonable” loss of just 1,000,000 sq km’s from a reasonable point in early September.
Thus, the question I asked: IF 1,000,000 sq km’s were lost in the Arctic for two weeks in September, what is the total heat impact on the planet?
IF 1,000,000 sq km’s were added to the Antarctic at minimum Antarctic, and at maximum Antarctic sea ice extents, what is the heat change on the planet? It does not matter whether the NSIDC or Meier or NASA-GISS “wants” to ignore the Antarctic sea ice gain or not. It does not matter whether they are assigning it the right “percent improvement” or not (and they are not, for “sum” reason.) That Antarctic sea ice gain IS THERE, and IS affecting the climate.
Hence, my question: What is the net effect of both changes?
RACookPE1978 – you’re dragging together a rather large number of vaguely related pieces of information without clarifying how you think they are related.
First off, let’s consider this:
http://supais.com/external/chido-mercancia/wp-content/themes/eGallery/epanel/page_templates/js/arctic-temperature-i6.JPG
From this, the implication is that the over-all heat entering the arctic is increasing (or perhaps… more correctly the loss is decreasing…), even though the
average above zero C has decreased… slightly. This has particularly serious ramifications for both the production of ice, and the net energy captured and contained in the arctic. Increased winter temperatures mean that less of the previous season’s heat is lost, meaning in net, the energy required to start melt is reduced.
I’d hypothesize in addition that the decrease of temperature above zero “c” may be very directly tied to increased ice-free sea surface. Water has more than 100 times the heat density of atmosphere, so transfer from atmosphere to sea water would result in reduced temperature, while at the same time suggesting net increases in enthalpy. It is devilishly complex. We are well advised to keep a firm grasp of scale and physics as we try to understand exactly what the temperatures we see indicate.
tjfolkerts says:
August 24, 2013 at 4:24 pm (replying to)
RACookPE1978,
Your statements are true, but your conclusion is exactly opposite what you intend.
See, the “fear” of an loss of Arctic sea ice is Sereze’s “arctic death spiral” of positive feedbacks.
Sea ice melts, “dark” ocean water replaces it, dark ocean water absorbs more heat, gets warmer, melts more sea ice, exposes more “dark” ocean water, absorbs more solar energy, melts more sea ice, … And Al Gore and Hansen start claiming the waters will boil.
But. The numbers show the opposite. When you run the real numbers for real sea ice albedo, real water albedo of real ocean water with waves and wind and sea leads and clouds and diffuse radiation for the “real world” of where the edge of the sea ice really is melting at each hour of each day at the latitudes where the sea ice is melting … You find NONE of that happens.
Yes, the Arctic winters may be getting warmer. BUT there is no solar radiation up where it is getting warmer. There is NO open ocean up where it is getting warmer to serve as a feedback for the no solar radiation that is not present to melt any sea ice that is not melting!
The ONLY time of year when the feedback could happen is the summer, and the ONLY time of year when there is a positive solar radiation effect is during the summer at high latitudes – which is where it is NOT melting. There are essentially NO sea ice leads in the high arctic where the solar exposure is large for many hours of the day. Even dropping an extra 2 million sq km’s will not bring the edge of the sea ice melt region “up” to where the sun is that high.
Solar absorption heating is instantaneous; what impacts the open ocean at 2:01 PM heats the water immediately at 2:01:01 PM. What heat is lost to long wave radiation to the night sky at 1:21 AM is lost immediately. There is no “lag time” nor 6 months delay between increased heat absorbing and when it shows up as “higher air temperatures” in the winter. Now, be careful in your calc’s also: While heat gain is immediate each mid-morning for a few hours, the increased heat losses are 24 hours per day. yes, the Arctic gets a lot of energy into the sea ice, but only limited areas get that very high solar angles for long periods of time. A “midnight sun” only 3 degrees above the horizon transmit no heat to the sea cie, nor to the water.
Solar absorption heating changes hour-by-hour as the sun moves across the sky. Most days, there are few hours of positive solar absorption energy (low albedo and high sun elevation angle means more energy is absorbed than lost through increased evaporation losses and greater long wave radiation losses (the open ocean is warmer than the sea ice top, and so radiates mroe energy to the sky), and more energy is lost when the insulation between the ocean top meter and the cold air meet.
Thus, ONLY the arctic summer days when the DMI temperatures are above zero permit “arctic amplification. And, since 1958, those summer temperatures are steadily going down.
In fact, since 2003, there have only been 21 “spikes” ABOVE the DMI long-term average.
Yes, in 10 years of summer days in the high Arctic since 2003, there have only been 21 times (40 to 60 days!) when the temperature at 80 north has even got “up” to “average.