A video animation follows. Note also that Dr. Walt Meier is now with NASA Goddard, after leaving NSIDC at the end of July. This is his first report from NASA. – Anthony
Arctic Sea Ice Update: Unlikely To Break Records, But Continuing Downward Trend
The melting of sea ice in the Arctic is well on its way toward its annual “minimum,” that time when the floating ice cap covers less of the Arctic Ocean than at any other period during the year. While the ice will continue to shrink until around mid-September, it is unlikely that this year’s summer low will break a new record. Still, this year’s melt rates are in line with the sustained decline of the Arctic ice cover observed by NASA and other satellites over the last several decades.
“Even if this year ends up being the sixth- or seventh-lowest extent, what matters is that the 10 lowest extents recorded have happened during the last 10 years,” said Walt Meier, a glaciologist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “The long-term trend is strongly downward.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiSuUe8dhZ0
The icy cover of the Arctic Ocean was measured at 2.25 million square miles (5.83 million square kilometers) on Aug. 21. For comparison, the smallest Arctic sea ice extent on record for this date, recorded in 2012, was 1.67 million square miles (4.34 million square kilometers), and the largest recorded for this date was in 1996, when ice covered 3.16 millions square miles (8.2 million square kilometers) of the Arctic Ocean.
Watching the summertime dynamics of the Arctic ice cap has gained considerable attention in recent years as the size of the minimum extent has been diminishing – rapidly. On Sept.16, 2012, Arctic sea ice reached its smallest extent ever recorded by satellites at 1.32 million square miles (3.41 million square kilometers). That is about half the size of the average extent from 1979 to 2010.
Sea ice extent is a measurement of the area of the Arctic Ocean where ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean surface. For additional information about the evolution of the sea ice cover, scientists also study the sea ice “area,” which discards regions of open water among ice floes and only takes into account the parts of the Arctic Ocean completely covered by ice. On Aug. 21, 2013, the Arctic sea ice area was 1.98 million square miles (5.12 million square kilometers).
This year’s melting season included a fast retreat of the sea ice during the first half of July. But low atmospheric pressures and clouds over the central Arctic kept temperatures up north cooler than average, slowing down the plunge.
With about three weeks of melting left, the summer minimum in 2013 is unlikely to be a record low, said Joey Comiso, senior scientist at Goddard and coordinating lead author of the Cryosphere Observations chapter of the upcoming report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“But average temperatures in the Arctic fluctuate from one week to another, and the occurrence of a powerful storm in August, as happened in 2012, could cause the current rate of decline to change significantly,” Comiso said.
This year, the Arctic has witnessed a few summer storms, but none of them as intense as the cyclone that took place in August 2012.
“Last year’s storm went across an area of open water and mixed the smaller pieces of ice with the relatively warm water, so it melted very rapidly,” Meier said. “This year, the storms hit in an area of more consolidated ice. The storms this year were more typical summer storms; last year’s was the unusual one.”
The Arctic sea ice cap has significantly thinned over the past decade and is now very vulnerable to melt, Comiso said. The multiyear ice cover, consisting of thicker sea ice that has survived at least two summers, has declined at an even faster rate than younger, thinner ice.
Meier said that a thinner, seasonal ice cover might behave more erratically in the summer than multiyear ice.
“First-year ice has a thickness that is borderline: It can melt or not depending on how warm the summer temperatures are, the prevailing winds, etcetera,” Meier said. “This year’s conditions weren’t super-favorable for losing ice throughout spring and summer; last year they were. Whereas with multiyear ice, it takes unusual warm conditions to melt it, which is what we’ve seen in the most recent years.”
On the opposite side of the planet, Antarctic sea ice, which is in the midst of its yearly growing cycle, is heading toward the largest extent on record, having reached 7.45 million square miles (19.3 million square kilometers) on Aug. 21. In 2012, the extent of Antarctic sea ice for the same date was 7.08 million square miles (18.33 million square kilometers). The phenomenon, which appears counter-intuitive but reflects the differences in environment and climate between the Arctic and Antarctica, is currently the subject of many research studies. Still, the rate at which the Arctic is losing sea ice surpasses the speed at which Antarctic sea ice is expanding.
The sea ice minimum extent analysis produced at Goddard – one of many satellite-based scientific analyses of sea ice cover – is compiled from passive microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus-7 satellite, which operated from late October 1978 to August 1987, and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, which has been used to extend the Nimbus 7 sea ice record onwards from August 1987. The record, which began in November 1978, shows an overall downward trend of 14.1 percent per decade in the size of the minimum summer extent, a decline that accelerated after 2007.
Related Link
› Arctic sea ice multimedia resources from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Maria-José Viñas
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/arctic-sea-ice-update-unlikely-to-break-records-but-continuing-downward-trend/
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I noticed something when looking at the JAXA chart so I did a little digging.
Lets look at where we are and how things evolved for other years
Here’s the JAXA values for the present date and the final minimums
------Aug 22----min
X2003 6520156 6032031
X2004 6208594 5784688
X2005 5901563 5315156
X2006 6061250 5781719
X2007 4948438 4254531
X2008 5555156 4707813
X2009 5823281 5249844
X2010 5628438 4813594
X2011 5173906 4526875
X2012 4456719 3489063
X2013 5660781
the years for minimums in sorted order for this date
X2012 X2007 X2011 X2008 X2010 X2013 X2009 X2005 X2006 X2004 X2003
and years for the sorted minimums of the year
X2012 X2007 X2011 X2008 X2010 X2009 X2005 X2006 X2004 X2003
Notice something? The ordering is exactly the same and 2013 falls between 2010 and 2009 on the 22nd. If the pattern holds then we should expect a 2013 minimum to fall between 4813594 and 5249844.
Seems like the article focused on ‘what could happen if’. The intent of the article is obvious. More money for studies.
JohnB says:
August 23, 2013 at 9:59 am
Let me get this straight, now.
We have a pause in temperature increases.
We have a pause in arctic sea ice decline.
We have a pause in category 3 and above hurricanes (never mind category 6)
One more pause and we’d have a polar bear.
Oh, wait! We have a pause to reflect on polar bear endangerment.
We have a happy polar bear.
You forgot the clauses!
Past performance is no guarantee for future performance.
In the case of Artic ice cover it will turn out to be quite the opposite.
I checked on that rowing story. It is funny that they complained that Mother Nature hasn’t helped them on this journey when one of their goals was to “draw attention to the topic of climate change.” But, but… isn’t climate change “man-made”? So, why are they crying about Mother Nature? Gees…
As a sailor, I have to wonder about their boat and skills, since they kept the centerboard down when they were beached for a windy night. They even mentioned the possibility of damage. And, my CB goes down naturally and if anything breaks, it’s the lines, blocks and cleats to pull the boards up and keep them up. I wonder why they didn’t notice that the boards weren’t down to help in steerage? Very strange….
The whole Arctic ice thing is such a non-starter at this point. According to the DMI graph temperatures have been below average all summer long. If it’s warming, why isn’t it warmer?
Nature abhors a vacuum at NASA as well , one nut out, one nut in. Meier will fit in nicely.
Some information missing.
1. Record low temperatures north of 80 deg. 3 coldest summers in last 5 years.
2. Very little ice lost through Fram Strait. Important for next year.
3. Arctic albedo loss much smaller than Antarctic albedo gain.
4. Greenland ice melt low
Why on Earth is a *glaciologist* working at the Goddard Space Flight Center? Apart from that, I reckon there’s a large, um, “Bayesian” aspect to the Arctic ice extent charts, in that the trend lines are a hybrid of actual data and wished-for data — with the wished-for data increasing until it runs up against the hard cold reality that the actual ice is more, so then we get an uptick correction — one coming up on DMI tonight (promise). Elsewhere, I see the warmists make a lot out of the PIOMAS ice volume measurements, but that is a model-guided tool so also an incestuous hybrid. The reality-stretching cold polar temperatures reported by DMI last week indicate that the pole ice is thicker than PIOMAS admits, as such thicker ice is needed to enable those cold temperatures. This is another reason that Neven’s site is a joke, because they dissect the official charts to bits but it’s just the blind leading the blind because so much of the official data is wished-for data and not actual data.
Andy Wilkins says:
August 23, 2013 at 8:38 am
“This year’s conditions weren’t super-favorable for losing ice throughout spring and summer; last year they were. ”
Any one reading that sentence and seeing the words ‘super favorable’ would think he wanted the ice to melt!
———–
They use the same wording on the NSIDC Arctic page. At the beginning of this week, they updated the page. The first header is “The balding Arctic”. This is the first hint of their bias. Next they say “Arctic sea ice extent maintained a steady, near-average pace of retreat through the first half of August, making it highly unlikely that a new record low minimum will be reached this year.”.
Notice how they can not bring themselves to state that the current melt is ‘below’ or ‘slower than’ average. They feel obliged to use the word ‘near’ average. If the current melt was above average it would be front page news everywhere in the known and unknown world. They do make a point later on to say that “Sea ice extent continues to track well below average levels (average of 1981 to 2010), though remains within two standard deviations of the long-term mean”.
I hope the Arctic ice does a hockey stick on them for next year. They could call it the “Arctic Mann Effect”.
I read the rower,s lament last night. Unfortunately for them, Mother Nature has to help the rest of the world to see the ‘light’ in regards to who actually controls the weather. Mother Nature is also saying that it is time to leave the region while it is safe. I was just looking at the Arctic Weather Map. The temp map shows a growing cold spot to the west of where they are now , which is the area they will have to traverse to reach their goal. The wind map shows the flow as WSW, so that is pushing the ice pack towards the Canada/Alaska coast. There is also a storm currently that is sitting to the west of the boats and is moving into the the region that need to traverse. The ARCo ice speed and drift has also changed swiftly over the last 4 days to an unfavorable southwest flow. This threatens to cut off their western exit. The rowers in particular will have to make their minds up soon. That is a brave and bold attempt on their part to attempt the transit, although in part for the wrong reason. I hope they all stay safe and make a good journey back. One boat, the Libellule has a mom with two teenage daughters on board. The mom had bemoaned the fate of her fine wines, which fell victim to the cold conditions and were thus ruined. There is a big questionmark whether they would be tough enough to survive the Alaskan seas, if they can make it that far. There are several seaman from Alaska who have blogged with them and have been telling them what they can expect from the Bering Sea in late September. They make it sound like only experienced sailors should attempt the crossing.
Just in…a Canadian Coast Guard ship escorting a cruise ship helped the boats make it through the Bellot Strait.
I still reckon the rapid increase in ice-breakers also contributes to the decline in Arctic summer ice.
goldminer, they should have said the current melt rate and extent/area of ice is within the 2 standard deviation average climatological range. The weasel word “near-average” is for those who like to engage in color commentary (or worse are speaking down to someone) instead of dry scientific/technical writing style. Back when I was writing research, I had to scrupulously erase all such colorful language from my submitted text before the group of researchers dared send it in for consideration. It was my freshman attempt as a research audiologist and I still had echoes of the typical college level creative writing classes that were predominant in the hippie 70’s and disco 80’s.
Believe it or not, technical language is coming back, as far down as in the 5th grade, and is part of the new common core state standards.
Looks like Arctic Ice is ‘Recovering’ to me
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Click on loop to see what is happening in the last 30 days.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/satellite/index.uk.php
Also think about all those Russian ice breakers ‘claiming’ the shelf off the Russian shore line. Sort of makes you wonder about that big whole in the ice at the Russian shoreline.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/09/08/breaking-the-ice/
My hunch is that the number of naturally occurring breaks (polyanas) in the ice from year to year demonstrate quite a range. I would guess that ship-breaks are buried in that range.
Barry, not bad. I’m betting the guys who provide us with their Arctic in Context reasoned and calculated mantra, being all knowing as they are, figured it the same way you just did.
So, how many years from now will Cape Horn be closed by Antarctic Ice? 8?
10?
I was always wonding what’s happening in the arctic anomaly “spaghetti” after 2007. Today I finally analysed the available data
.
http://i40.tinypic.com/2ry3d4i.png
Of course it’s not very good idea in general to use just five years as a base for anomaly calculation but it gets rid of the spaghetti. There are ups and downs but nothing what I could call a “rebound” yet. To me there indeed is a continuing steady decline with 2007 being way more extreme than 2012. Of course, different people may see different things there.
See measurement data for 1998 sea ice lead length, duration, and width from Curry’s SABER ice station data
http://www.curry.eas.gatech.edu/currydoc/Tschudi_JGRO107.pdf
There’s a collection of notes from several people trying to traverse the NW passage at http://northwestpassage2013.blogspot.com/ . I don’t follow these very closely, but several of the observations have a tinge of doom to hopelessness in them that wasn’t present in last year’s commentary, especially before September, e.g. from s/v Tooluka:
Another from s/v Arctic Tern:
Would someone please ask him ( and Julliene and Serreze ) just what the heck we should be seeing in the post 1960’s to 1970’s period!
For God’s sake, should temperature and sea-ice match those years even today? Anyone? Bueller? Mosher?
Of course it’s lower. These people are like children. It’s like walking outside after sunrise and noticing the temp is rising!
Are they saying that the warmup from the 1960’s to 1970’s cool period is now over and we should return to it again? Or are they saying we never should have left the 1960’s to 1970’s cool period in the first place?
Odd, that the NSIDC does admit that Antarctic Sea Ice is increasing, but that they claim it is only going up by 1%. This year, the “typical” Antarctic sea ice anomaly has been running just under 1,000,000 km^2. With a minimum Antarctic sea extents of just at 1,000,000 in a normal year, that means that we’re not 1% above normal, but 100% above normal. (50% over normal if you take 2,000,000 extents vs area.)
At maximum, the Antarctic sea ice extents are about 19,000,000 km^2. Now, we are STILL running 1,000,000 + extra sea ice square km’s …. so, that about 1 in 19 = more than 5% by my calculator.
Probable total reflective area of all the Antarctic ice at maximum extents this year? Probably 35,000,000 km’s.
But it is worse than you think. The Antarctic sea minimum has been steadily increasing, and continues to increase at latitude 69-70 south. There it reflects MORE energy very day, every year than does the missing sea ice that are so worried about at 85 north latitude in the Arctic. Net? The planet cools down.
But it is worse than you think. The Antarctic sea maximum has been steadily increasing as well, and continues to increase but at latitude 59-60 south. There it reflects even MORE energy very day, every year than does the missing sea ice that these propagandists (er, so-called scientists) are so worried about at 85 north latitude in the Arctic. Net? The planet cools down.
But it is worse than you think. The Arctic sea minimum has been steadily decreasing, and continues to decrease at latitude 83-85 south. There the open ocean absorbs a little bit more energy compared to sea ice-covered MORE energy for a few hours each day (at certain latitudes, on certain days of the year), but the open ocean loses MORE ENERGY than it gains every hour every day than does ice-covered water. Net? The planet cools down in the Arctic with every loss of sea ice from today’s levels.
BBould said on August 23, 2013 at 8:12 am:
Patterns repeat.
===
IanE said on August 23, 2013 at 8:22 am:
Sounds like you’d appreciate this fine stockmarket-related item, since you just illustratively described it.
(Site link, great place for admirers of fine colorful handmade porcelain flowers and shells, suitable for collecting.)
I love the double-talk: “Still, this year’s melt rates are in line with the sustained decline of the Arctic ice cover observed by NASA and other satellites over the last several decades.”
“in line with the sustained decline” turns out to mean that it did not decline, but increased instead.