Image Credit: Cryosphere Today – University of Illinois – Polar Research Group
By WUWT Regular Just The Facts
Per the graph above, Antarctic Sea Ice Extent has remained above the 1981 – 2010 “normal” range for much of the last three months and the current positive Antarctic Sea Ice Extent anomaly appears quite large for a planet supposedly on the verge of Dangerous Warming.
Furthermore, in 2013 we had the third most expansive Southern Sea Ice Area measured to date;
and Southern Sea Ice Area has remained above average for most of the last two years;
At the other pole Arctic Sea Ice Extent has remained within the 1981 – 2010 “normal” range for the entirety of 2013;
and Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area had it’s smallest decline since 2006;
thus Global Sea Ice Area has remained stubbornly average for the entirety of 2013:
According Michael Oppenheimer, Professor Geo-sciences and International Affairs at Princeton University and IPCC Contributor, the reason for The Pause/Hiatus in Earth’s atmospheric temperature, and apparently associated average Global Sea Ice is that;
“heat tends to hide in the oceans sometimes, but when heat hides in the ocean it later comes out and reappears in the atmosphere and then the warming resumes faster than before. We don’t know this for certain, we’ll find out over the next few years, but it is wrong to say that the IPCC didn’t look at it carefully, it certainly did.” PBS
Reassuring to know that IPCC has figured out Earth’s climate system for us, it’s all just like a big game of hide and go seek, clearly…
To see more information on Sea Ice please visit the WUWT Sea Ice Page and WUWT Northern Regional Sea Ice Page.
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where is the thickness factored into the equation? and where is the part of the graph showing mass of antarctic land ice for comparison?
“heat tends to hide in the oceans sometimes, but when heat hides in the ocean it later comes out and reappears…”
Does it go “Boo!”?
Bill Illis says:
October 20, 2013 at 12:01 pm
[“I’ve decide to sell “Global Warming Insurance”.”]
Do we get a free pen? 🙂
Edohiguma says:
October 20, 2013 at 12:40 pm
[“Heat hides in the ocean? Every ocean I’ve ever put my feet into was colder than the air around me.”]
Duh… Of course you can’t feel it because it’s hiding! 🙂
Question I have been wanting to ask for a very long time. Mars has water ice caps on both poles often covered by frozen carbon dioxide and studies show Mars has experienced ice ages. Wouldn’t this suggest a cosmic relationship with climate change and why does no one ever talk about the similarities in variation between climate cycles on earth to solar system wide or cosmic events? http://www.daviddarling.info/archive/2005/archiveFeb05_1.html#250205_2
“heat tends to hide in the oceans sometimes, but when heat hides in the ocean it later comes out and reappears in the”…..
Poles…..which is exactly what’s been happening
…and now that’s it’s over
I was just looking at the sea ice page last night. Still amazed that WUWT has the most comprehensive list of sources, yet this is almost absent from sites that are pro-AGW.
The Northern sea-ice seems to be expanding quite fast. The true test will be if it doesn’t all get sucked out into the Atlantic next summer via the Greenland Sea. That’s the biggest cause of Northern Sea Ice loss. Not the temperature nor CO2 or anything like that.
Isn’t Antarctica’s maximum extent usually reached around 22nd September? Anyway, the Arctic and Antarctica sea ice have been very badly behaved this year. Maybe the climate has changed after all. I kept trying to explain to Warmists that most sceptics are fervent proponents of climate change. The climate always changes.
Wayne d says:
October 20, 2013 at 1:08 pm
People have talked & still do about possible cosmic effects to explain apparent synchronous heating & cooling of other planets in the solar system. It is a common enough argument that SkS felt the need to try to counter it.
Jordan says
Crocodiles tend to hide under the bed sometimes, but when crocodiles hide under the bed they later come out and then they nibble your ankles. We don’t know this for certain, we’ll find out “when” you(r) kiddies grow up.
Didn’t you mean “if” your kiddies grow up? Crocodiles tend to bite more than your ankles. I take the you(r) to be a typo – it must be, surely?q
It’s the warming wot dun it!
John Comeau says:
October 20, 2013 at 12:51 pm
where is the thickness factored into the equation? and where is the part of the graph showing mass of antarctic land ice for comparison?
_______________________
The mass of Antarctic ice cover is growing at a rate measured in hundreds of gigatons/year.
Terms such as “thickness” are meaningless in this case, but are often deployed as tools of deception. The global sea ice anomaly is currently “positive” in the amount of 164,000 (sq. Km.),
which also signifies nothing.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/10/icesat-data-shows-mass-gains-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-exceed-losses/
Also see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
As soon as Greenpeace gets out of jail in Russia, they’ll be paddling down to the Antarctic as fast as they can, taking care to avoid the Russian part of the Antarctic of course. And once there, they’ll declare that the satellites have got it wrong, that in fact the apparent increase in sea ice is in fact an illusion, a mirage caused by all the missing heat. Clearly we will have to recalibrate the satellites so that they can distinguish between mirages and ice. Quick, someone tell Trenberth we have found his missing heat. /sarc tag only necessary for the AGW challenged.
@ur momisugly John Comeau,
Here’s another link with a great deal of info about Antarctic ice:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/antarctica-gaining-ice-mass-and-is-not-extraordinary-compared-to-800-years-of-data/
The hide and seek heat, which bypasses the first 700m of ocean, is an attempt to buy more time for their already failed CAGW speculation. Many climate scientists are secretly ruing the day they decided to go along with this con job. Their IgNobel ‘reputations’ will end up in the scientific bin of history. Hailing Oppenheimer.
On Antarctica sea ice growth: They have blamed ozone, melting ice, winds etc. Could it be that it’s just getting colder???
“heat tends to hide in the oceans sometimes, but when heat hides in the ocean it later comes out and reappears in the atmosphere and then the warming resumes faster than before.
‘Tends to’ and ‘sometimes’ sounds like there is empirical evidence to prove this or a record of observations or something to explain how this works as it obviously happens regularly? And then the rest of the sentence sounds like someone speaking from experience: “and then the warming resumes faster than before”.
I’m afraid he blows it with the next sentence: “We don’t know this for certain, we’ll find out over the next few years””
Out of interest is there a Temperature Lapse rate for Oceans?
When Antarctic sea ice begins its seasonal melt, and if it proceeds at a normal pace, with such a high starting point it’s hard to believe that there won’t be significant implications for the Southern Hemisphere summer.
Well: I would not say heat can hide in the oceans. However, as Bob Tisdale explains, successive La Ninas can supercharge the waters on the west equatorial Pacific by cooling the air to the east which reduces cloud cover and allows the sun to warm the waters which pile up (or down) into the wester areas of the equatorial Pacific. The heat later surfaces during an El Nino, when gravity allows the piled up water to plunge down and resurface the warmed water.
However, the IPCC are not talking about this mechanism. This mechanism proves that the warming we’ve seen, which caused step changes in the global climate is completely natural. So it is a double edged sword if they give credence to this fine work by Tisdale.
Alan Robertson says:
October 20, 2013 at 1:53 pm
_______________________
The mass of Antarctic ice cover is growing at a rate measured in hundreds of gigatons/year.
__________________________________
Correction: Antarctic ice cover is thought to be growing and changes intraannually at a rate measured in gigatons/year.
I am a Quality Engineer, and as such I have spent a good part of my career looking at and interpreting process charts. Looking at the Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly chart, three things jump out at me. This is a process which was more or less steady up to about 1998, then started a fairly stable downward trend. Around 2007 the descent stopped, and since then the process has been level, but possibly has a little more variation. If this were a process I was investigating, I would pet money that something changed ~1999, and again ~2007.
John Comeau says: “where is the thickness factored into the equation?”
Thickness isn’t relevant to catastrophe theories which rely on ice albedo positive feedback. Not that I accept these arguments, if there is any merit in an ice albedo positive feedback process, the increasing Antarctic ice cover, consistent catastrophe theory would recognise a cooling effect and self-perpetuating expansion of the ice cover.
Robert Scott says: “Didn’t you mean “if” your kiddies grow up?”
No, the statement is addressed to children (the lay audience). Therefore “when you (the kiddies) grow up”.
When the kiddies grow up, they will come to appreciate there were never any Crocodiles under the bed, and they were fooled into staying in bed by underhand tactics.
The original statement appears to be addressed at people who’s understanding of thermodynamics is no greater than the level of pre-school children. It appears to be seeking to scare the audience to behave in an intended way.
Antarctic ice extent was flat-topped, that it, they turned the satellite polarizing filters to prevent a new record, so the extent was flat-topped until it finally recedes. That’s why the ice is apparently refusing to melt — it is melting, but from its true maximum which the graph does not show.
This is simply the Gore effect caused by this:
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059958774
“”Former Vice President Al Gore is taking his fight against climate change to Antarctica next week as part of a cruise organized by his Climate Reality Project.
Gore and more than 100 fellow travelers will depart from Argentina late next week. Scientists, including climatologists James Hansen of NASA and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will give talks during the journey.””
The ice has been increasing ever since.
I have seen non-skeptics claim that the Antarctic Sea Ice is expanding because the continental glacial ice is melting faster increasing the fresh water content of the coastal waters. Is there a response to this better than, “Come over here so I can give you a smack”?
You know, I think what EWF says has merit.:
EWF says:
October 20, 2013 at 3:14 pm
“Antarctic ice extent was flat-topped,…”
I had posted before as to why the antarctic sea ice data stopped in Sept until Oct 19th. This could be the reason. Maybe the NSIDC did get a secret memo from the powers that be…
Just Sayn.