Image Credit: Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group
By WUWT Regular Just The Facts
In previous years there was reason to cheer, .e.g. “Transport is steaming full speed ahead.” “Some serious ice transport going on there. If this keeps up…” Neven, “Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia”, “Arctic Sea-ice minimum 2012 declared – it’s the Silly Season!” Skeptical Science 1 and 2
However, this year the mood is more sober and downbeat, e.g. in Neven’s recent article “ASI 2013 update 8: the end is nigh” he writes that;
I didn’t think it was possible, but area-wise 2013 is now even above 2009. Apparently this can happen when the weather isn’t conducive to ice decrease (melt, compaction and transport) for almost the entire melting season, even if you start out with a record amount of first-year ice. Fascinating stuff. After the lowest average daily decrease since 2006 for the month of August, 2013 is almost 1.3 million km2 behind last year!
Later in comments this exchange occurred:
Pete Williamson: Neven, I think at some point you’re going to have to stop being surprised at the lack of melt (or the persistence of extent) this year 😛
Neven: I know, I know. I just can’t get over it! 😀
Pete Williamson: Not only has a lot of FYI survived but so has much of the SYI (2nd) which is going to start showing up in the MYI category next year. It possible that at least a bit of a ‘recovery’ in the MYI is on the cards.
Neven: Definitely. This is now the number 1 point of interest for me. A couple of melting seasons like this one in a row, and you could really start speaking of a recovery. But just one 2007/2011/2012 year could negate all of it as well.
So what has these Sea Ice Melt Enthusiasts sober and downbeat? Well certainly the stubbornly average Global Sea Ice Area graph at the head of this article can’t help, but let’s take a closer look:
Arctic Sea Ice Extent;
continues to trend below average, however it has remained within the 30 year (1981 – 2010) “normal” range for the entirety of 2013. Conversely, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent;
continues to trend above average and has remained outside of the “normal” range for much of the last month. Furthermore, Southern Sea Ice Area has now remained above average for most of the last two years:
and is within striking distance of a record high:
All of these facts might dampen even the most dedicated Sea Ice Melt Enthusiast’s spirits, but then again, there’s always next year, i.e.:
“I have great excuses, of course, like the fact that I’m in the process of building a house (slowly reaching its climax in the next 2-3 weeks), and the melting season being less of a spectacle with slow melting and an extremely cloudy Arctic. But still, there’s always plenty of stuff to talk about when it comes to that fascinating place that is the Arctic. Next year will probably be better.” Neven
To see more information on sea ice please visit the WUWT Sea Ice Page and WUWT Northern Regional Sea Ice Page.
The public sees the absense of a climate doom parousia.
That same public sees the IPCC irrationally persist in their prophecy of a climate doom parousia.
The believers in climate doom parousia, in dismay by its absence, are now forced to live a happy life in a naturally normal climate. Awwwww . . . do not pity the poor climate alarmist pilgrims wandering in earth’s naturally varying climate.
John
Do I sense doubts creeping in? If we have to act then don’t you think tackling soot might have a quicker payoff than slaughtering ourselves trying to reduce our ever rising co2?
The summer of 2013 saw record cold since 1958 for the:
What if we acted in the 1920s and 1930s? Could we have claimed success in the 1960s?
Pervasive perversity prevails. Warming and summer ice clearing would objectively be beneficial, but Arctic Ice Extent is so persistently promoted as a predictor of a parboiled planet we are obliged to pick the prognostications to pieces. Phagh!
I haven’t read all of the comments or other blog writings about ice breakers, but I’d make one observation. The various measures of ice extent or area are not necessarily measures of ice melt as such but rather measures of open water versus ice cover, aren’t they? All done by satellite? If ice cover reduces through melt and subsequent transport by wind and current, why wouldn’t breaking up ice, especially at the edges, contribute to increased transport and hence increased open water extent? And as a chaotic system, why should we be surprised if small perturbations deliver unexpected or exaggerated outcomes? I’d be interested in Neven’s thoughts on this. has there been any serious study on that question?
Most of it’s in limestone and other Ca rocks, in the seafloor and mountains. What % of those are we decomposing in the next few centuries, do you suppose? I think that Roulette bullet is a dud.
They want so badly for the sky to fall, they yearn for it.
NevenA,
That you call yourself an “alarmist” is the first step in curing your psychosis. Like a drug addict or alcoholic, it is necessary to wholeheartedly accept you have a problem before you can begin to cure it.
We are irrelevant and all of us reading this thread here today will be dead in about 100 years or in most cases far less. Consider how you wish to enjoy those remaining years of this wonderful world and wonderful experience called life. If you think carefully and deeply, there is no need for a self-important crusade, like “saving the planet”, to give meaning to your life. There is no need to live in constant fear and anger. The sooner you can escape from these fears, the sooner you can give way to your hatred and open up to all the wonder of life; and start helping others rather than trying to control them. Fossil fuels, on the whole, have been an incredible boon to all of us alive today. Life has never been more luxurious or more enjoyable. Be thankful to those who have learned to harness mother nature’s fuels for the benefit of everyone! Humans are incredible when they work together to harness the magic of technology for the benefit of all mankind, and we should hold our heads high and be proud and noble. There is no shame in burning fossil fuels. In fact, the discovery of how to make and control fire is generally regarded as the giant leap forward of our species over ordinary apes!
Brian H Says:
I think that Roulette bullet is a dud.
. . .
. . .
you think so eh? well, by all means. . .except you DO realize that the gun is pointing at your child’s head, not yours right??? (and not just your own child’s head but the head of every child alive today).
and does it even matter to you that tens of thousands of armorers, manufacturers and gun-range enthusiasts, all of whom have spent the better part of over a hundred years of cumulative study of this ONE BULLET have determined that it is 95% likely that not only is the bullet live but that the gun’s trigger has an even softer pull than we once thought?
NevenA says: “Putting greenhouse gases that took millions of years to get sequestered back into the atmosphere in 200-300 years”
Fossil fuel formation is relatively rare and it is wrong to suggest the fossil fuels we burn amount to anything like millions of years’ sequestration of greenhouse gases.
NevenA says: “But in the end what I’d really want, is for … some intelligent changes to our culture and economic system …l.”
Society has to make many value judgements on important issues. The costs of action is measured against the credibility of tangible climate outcomes. The lack of action suggests the costs are too high and the certainty of outcomes too low.
NevenA says: “It’s all about risk management.”
If you apply risk management techniques at a personal level, you’d weigh up the consequences of making a fool of yourself if your tiresome worry mongering turns out to be unfounded. Do you value your own credibility enough to reduce your personal risk?
jai mitchell says:
September 8, 2013 at 3:23 pm (replying to))
Brian H Says:
I think that Roulette bullet is a dud.
. . .
Hmmmn. Uhm, er, NO.
See, you have,in your hysteria and your fears,inverted the paranoia doctrine (er, precautionary doctrine.)
You are DEMANDING the world kill millions immediately, and condemn billions to 87 years of a guaranteed 100% certain energy-starved future of poor health, poor or no growth, poor and less food, poor water and no clean water, no sewage treatment, poor transportation and bad food, clothing and shelter in the fear that “perhaps” there is a 1/2 of one percent chance that in 100 years perhaps some part of the world “might” be in worse conditions by some unknown probability of unknown causes of unknown value!
Your “dud round” is being aimed by people PAID to aim it at hysteria and hyperbolic extrapolation towards uncertain futures BECAUSE the governments paying them DEMAND such hysteria to feed their power and their taxes.
Rather, it is the innocents YOU are killing through YOUR fears and hysteria.
jai mitchell says: “and does it even matter to you that tens of thousands of armorers, manufacturers and gun-range enthusiasts, all of whom have spent the better part of over a hundred years of cumulative study of this ONE BULLET have determined that it is 95% likely that not only is the bullet live but that the gun’s trigger has an even softer pull than we once thought?”
Jai – let’s just say we all agree the bullet is live. Just as we all agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (so please don’t get confused by that old chestnut).
Perhaps we can turn this into the question of whether the gun will launch the bullet.
The trigger has a logarithmic spring. The first few mm need little force to move, but the force required to pull the trigger further increases with distance. This could be an analogue for Beer’s Law.
And then we need to consider feedback and amplification. The firing mechanism might delivers either equal or lower energy to the bullet than the energy delivered at the trigger (zero or negative feedback) and the bullet will not launch (global warming not an issue). The bullet will only launch if the firing mechanism can deliver more energy to the bullet than the energy provided at the trigger (climate sensitivity amplification). If the gun has no obvious source to deliver the extra energy to the bullet, do you think there is anything to worry about?
NevenA says: September 8, 2013 at 10:14 am
What I meant was that next year I will probably be less busy and be better able to write more about the melting season in play, because as I said, there’s always plenty to write about, even when there’s less spectacle on the melt side (this year had different interesting events such as one very persistent cyclone, and two short intense ones, spreading the ice pack, eventually leading to a large hole, not too far from the North Pole).
I can’t control the way you interpret what I write, but perhaps you should offer your readers the full range of interpretation by offering the entire paragraph.
I’ve posted the full paragraph in my comment above and will leave it to WUWT’s readers to interpret accordingly, but I think my excerpt provides the context of both you being busy, as well as there being “less of a spectacle with slow melting”.
Secondly, it’s too early to speak of a sign. If volume doesn’t increase over winter above 2011-2013 levels and we get an average melting season next year, what do you reckon will happen?
I reckon that neither you nor I have any idea what will happen next melt season. It is not the skeptics who are making wild predictions and assertions based upon a rudimentary understanding of a Earth’s climate system and a laughably brief historical record…
Thirdly, remember, the IPCC position in Arctic sea ice is still that the Arctic won’t go ice-free before 2050. Mainstream cryospheric science says it could occur by 2030.
Given my prior point, and the abject failure of the predictions to date of the IPCC and Mainstream Cryospheric Science, I’d put more confidence in the predictions of a Magic 8-ball:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8-Ball
Again, if AGW is a real threat, I want Arctic sea ice to become even more spectacular than it has been in the past 6-7 years, because it might spur policy to minimize the risks of AGW.
Ok, please provide empirical evidence that “AGW is a real threat”, I’ve been searching for years and I can’t find any.
That’s only logical from my alarmist point of view, right?
Per my prior point, unless you can provide empirical evidence that “AGW is a real threat”, then I have to assume that your “alarmist point of view” is based upon some other motivation, whether it be financial, political, or otherwise.
Of course, I’d prefer it if the sea ice stays in place, while at the same time there’s a shift in our culture and economic system that makes us more resilient against the crisis cocktail (AGW is just the cherry on top).
This says to me that you are an alarmist because you want to propagate your political and economic ideology, and CAGW is a useful vehicle to do so. In terms of a “shift in our culture and economic system that makes us more resilient against the crisis cocktail”, the most realistic crises we face are disease, drinking water shortages, and food shortages due to a large volcano that temporarily injects large amounts of Sulfur Dioxide high into the atmosphere, resulting in late frosts and lost crops. How does the “shift in our culture and economic system” you propose help address this “crisis cocktail”?
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/
Is still down for maintenance.
It is the source for the the Arctic Ice Thickness, Concentration, Temperature, Drift plots
used on the WUWT Sea Ice Reference Page.
Bill Illis says: September 8, 2013 at 7:22 am
NSIDC’s sea ice extent numbers went up for yesterday.
They’ve actually gone up for the last two days, i.e.:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/NH_seaice_extent_nrt.csv
Year Month Day Extent
2013 9 4 5.21931
2013 9 5 5.17147
2013 9 6 5.18197
2013 9 7 5.20124
We might have hit extent minimum on September 5th.
– – – – – –
jai mitchell,
The IPCC is not only a scientifically blind marksman in its targeting AGW from fossil fuels, but more importantly what you call the IPCC’s 95% likeliness claim commits what is known in statistics as the ‘sharpshooter’s’ fallacy.
If you are going to extend somebody else’s (Brian H’s) analogy, at least do so with a reasonable amount of circumspection.
In its intellectual capability, I think the IPCC only has the scientific equivalent of rubber guns. In a scientific sense, they belong to what the policy community calls the ‘rubber gun squad’; too dangerous to continue professionally without harming the public.
You used the rhetorically nefarious children maneuver? Really? If you need help with your children or grandchildren or great grandchildren or etc, we can help you. Seriously. Let us know.
John
The PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume was up 46% compared to last year as of the end of August.
Even that number must be low given that average ice thickness according to PIOMAS was down compared to the previous year. It just doesn’t make mathematical sense.
All of the measures of Arctic sea ice are up around 50% from last year’s record low.
But then the Antarctic sea ice may break the all-time record high this year. Funny thing, that CO2.
John
I have posted this document here before, the SRI is a prestigeous group that was contracted to study this issue and published it back in 1979. At the time it was a classified government document (declassified now) and it was part of the JASONS advisory panel, for determining the potential for future threats to the United States.
https://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/co2.pdf
This is not the IPCC, this is real. Their models were very prelimenary but the basic science has been well determined a generation ago. This is not some kind of Anti-fossil fuel conspiracy. this is real.
If you look at the following link:
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cryo_compare.jpg
you need to realize that the average thickness of the ice in the second picture (2013) is less than half as thick as the first picture (2007).
Jai, how long have we had the ability to measure ice thickness accuratly or even at all on any scale?
Just curious, I don’t know,,,,,
QssQss
Sea ice was typically measured by submarines during the cold war since 1958 by ballistic missile submarines who needed to know where they could pop up in the event of a nuclear war.
http://rkwok.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/Kwok.2009.GRL.pdf
– – – – – – –
jai mitchell,
Thanks for your comment. Always welcome.
I think that the IPCC by its inherent ideological / political nature has insufficient scientific credibility, thus science suffers seriously wrt public credibility.
It is time to defend what is residual in science after the IPCC is subtracted. We can rebuild from there.
The IPCC is damaged goods.
John
OssQss says: September 8, 2013 at 7:09 pm
Jai, how long have we had the ability to measure ice thickness accuratly or even at all on any scale?
jai mitchell says: September 8, 2013 at 7:19 pm
Sea ice was typically measured by submarines during the cold war since 1958 by ballistic missile submarines who needed to know where they could pop up in the event of a nuclear war.
We must be careful to ask the right questions here, i.e. Jai, how long have we had the ability to measure ice volume accurately across the entirety of the Arctic?
jai mitchell says:
September 8, 2013 at 7:19 pm
USN boomers don’t operate in the Arctic. Russian SSBNs do.
Our ballistic missile subs stay in ice-free waters, but our attack subs (SSNs) do operate under Arctic ice, in order to hunt Russian boomers in their bastion.
Arctic ice extent & thickness is cyclic. It’s now coming out of a low period, as it experienced in the 1920s-40s, but the long-term trend for the past 3000 years is toward more ice. Back in the Holocene Climatic Optimum, there was usually much less ice in the Arctic in summer than now.
To paraphrase Einstein, “Alles ist natürlich”.
RE: Kwok_2009
All ice drafts are then seasonally adjusted to September 15 using the modeled
annual cycle from an ice-ocean model.
It boils down to very sparse 29 geographic locations measured by submarines whos tracks intersected as much as 35 years later, but not necessarily in the same month. Adjusted somehow in the computer to make us think they were all measured on Sept 15. What is curious is that 1980 appears to be the high point in the overall mean thicknesses, but the paper really says little about the thickening in the 1958-1980 time frame. Error bars are +/- 0.5 m
Even with the much below average temps this summer, it was still a gigantic melt because the ice is very thin and easy to melt. If the temps had been the same as last summer, we would probably have had another record low. The ice can’t even keep up with the 21st century average anymore, much less 1979-2000. The rebound was nice, but I wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in it. We did that with the 2009 rebound after 2007, and look what happened last summer.
A couple of last comments from me:
Consider how you wish to enjoy those remaining years of this wonderful world and wonderful experience called life.
I can’t enjoy it if it’s at the expense of others.
If you think carefully and deeply, there is no need for a self-important crusade, like “saving the planet”, to give meaning to your life.
I don’t care about the planet per se, only inasmuch as it is able support to human society.
Do you value your own credibility enough to reduce your personal risk?
No, I don’t care about my credibility one bit. It’s up to you and other readers to decide whether you find me credible or not. I value transparency much more than credibility.
I reckon that neither you nor I have any idea what will happen next melt season.
Nope. But if volume stays low and you have an outlier that is opposite to this year’s weather (à la 2007), we could come very close to ‘ice-free’ (total sea ice area less than 1 million km2).
Ok, please provide empirical evidence that “AGW is a real threat”, I’ve been searching for years and I can’t find any.
I admire and am even jealous of everyone’s absolute certainty here that there is 0% chance that AGW and subsequent climate change could become a very costly affair in terms of money and human lives.