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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MinB says:
October 20, 2013 at 11:15 am
Any possibility the Arctic maximum sea ice extent could recover to the 1981-2010 baseline this year? What are the key conditions for attaining a high maximum?
@ur momisugly@@ur momisugly@@ur momisugly
There is an excellent write up as to why Arctic sea ice did not melt as fast this year as it did recent years at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ This might give you an answer to your question.
it is simple the direction of the wind is keeping the sea ice from floating away
Oh…..I get it …..trees hide declines and oceans hide increases.
“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…”
I just had to quote that again.
Is this the new science – make a statement of whatever one wishes and then say “We don’t know this for certain…” and it is accepted as factual by your loyal following?
Good grief! There is definitely something wrong with this picture.
“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. ”
Seriously? A scientist said this? LOL, that just boggles the mind.
Heat ‘hides’ in the ocean – sometimes. What is it hiding from? Then it magically reappears in the atmosphere? Is that when whatever it is afraid of gets bored and leaves?
This ‘heat’ is a tricksey one, yesss! he is!
When the IPCC is certain, and does have those supporting observations, then another Nobel Prize would be a certainty. It surely would be catastrophic …. for the Second Law of Thermodynamics- a real reversible thermodynamic process. Wow!
Jim Cripwell says:
October 20, 2013 at 3:45 pm
No surprise that the NSIDC fail to mention the unusual August storm that caused the record (since 1979) low last year, just as happened to create the prior low in 2007. Reality deniers try to deny that the cyclone was the culprit, but all the evidence in the world is against them.
@ur momisugly Geoff Withnell
Geoff, there was a huge El Nino in 1998 that left a lot of hot water on the surface. Since then my understanding is that the planet has been in a La Nina cycle, which would have gained momentum in about 2007.
What happens if you compare decades? 1982-1992 ,1992-2002, 2002-2012 etc? Do they show any trend?
There is now a proposal to start naming hurricanes after climate change deniers:
http://www.upworthy.com/this-is-probably-the-funniest-most-effective-way-to-deal-with-people-who-ignore-science-facts-ever-2
I remember not too long ago, when the winter sea ice froze the Intracoastal Waterway along the Jersy Shore north & south of Tuckerton, NJ. I think it was in the mid 70s. It’s a cycle, it’s a cycle – could happen again this year or not in the too distant future.
“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.”
There indeed is the heat in the ocean, accumulated there -caused by Sun (mid- IR unlike the solar irradiation can’t significantly penetrate water deeper than 0.1 milimeter) during last century of the solar activity rising trend, but it can’t be released until the surface cools to allow it – the colder more dense (but still quite warm water) can’t ascend up into warmer less dense water – until a warmer water is above it – the Newton law of universal gravitation denies it. Nor can the heat from the colder (but still quite warm) water below ascend up – the 2nd law of thermodynamics denies it. And if there is any surface layer mixing – due to wind, waves.. it in principle transfers more of the heat of the warmer water down, than the heat from the colder water up. So it accumulated and waited, rising slightly the surface temperatures, evaporation, latent heat transportation, heating atmosphere upon condensation, rising its temperature, slowing the heat dissipation from surface due to Stefan-Boltzman law of radiative heat transfer, causing the surface to warm more…until the solar activity slumped, caused the very surface to release more heat, cool, so the heat from below is now released. But visibly it is not enough to cause any warming and in principle, it can’t be enough. So they can wait and wait in the IPCC and release inept reports…and then finally see that the sea will not warm this planet without surplus energy supply from the Sun.
Comte de Dirac: “There is now a proposal to start naming hurricanes after climate change deniers:”
Name hurricanes after empiricists? I’m down. But the first one better be called Isaac Newton.
The heat is being sequestered in the bottom of the oceans, which, being closer to the Earth’s gore – I mean core, is heating the core to millions and millions of degrees.
The whole “heat hides in oceans” trope has always seemed batty to me, and I wasn’t sure why. But it occurs to me that one reason could be: How do we know that escaping sea heat wasn’t the reason for the run-up in warming in the decades prior to 1997 in the first place? In which case we are just looking at another cycle in an ocean/atmosphere dynamic equilibrium.
Heat doesn’t hide.
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; (I paraphrase)
“That sneaky heat, is skulking around in the deep oceans, until it decides to rise forth into the air of our unsuspecting planet, which will then allow the Earth to resume warming again, but faster than ever!. / paraphrase
Perhaps my paraphrase contains a bit of hyperbole, but it is still not as ridiculous as Michael anthropomorphizing the object of his ignorance.
“Ice Extent anomaly appears quite large for a planet supposedly on the verge of Dangerous Warming.” – There’s a completely unsupported argument.
There has been some interesting research on Southern Sea Ice lately: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00139.1
But the existence of that research doesn’t mean that the planet isn’t warming or that it’s not dangerous. It means that the southern sea ice extent is still an interesting field to study.
The argument that “well, you’ve changed your mind on this one little aspect, therefore your whole thesis is wrong” is used by creationists at lot. Not a group I’d be proud to ape. Congratulations for lowering the bar “justthefactswuwt”.
“Ice Extent anomaly appears quite large for a planet supposedly on the verge of Dangerous Warming.” – There’s a completely unsupported argument.
There has been some interesting research on Southern Sea Ice lately: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00139.1
But the existence of that research doesn’t mean that the planet isn’t warming or that it’s dangerous. It means that the southern sea ice extent is still an interesting field to study.
The argument that “well, you’ve changed your mind on this one little aspect, therefore your whole thesis is wrong” is used by creationists at lot. Not a group I’d be proud to ape. Congratulations for lowering the bar ” justthefactswuwt”.
Reply to @ur momisugly Seth aka “Seth CuttleFish”
You wrote: The argument that “well, you’ve changed your mind on this one little aspect, therefore your whole thesis is wrong” is used by creationists at lot. Not a group I’d be proud to ape. Congratulations for lowering the bar ” justthefactswuwt”.
Two things.
1. You sir, are an idiot for making such a outlandish claim to try to make this about creationism. I reserve statements like that here for people such as yourself that go off the rails of connected rational thought. I don’t think I’ve ever said it more than one other time for a similarly ridiculous claim.
2. With you being a government employee of Roads and Maritime Services (RTANA) in New South Wales, I can understand why you are an idiot. I’m sure they appreciate you spending work time online making such claims, right? Care to test that theory?
Feel free to be as upset as you wish, but I have a low tolerance for government employees spouting creationism idiocy in an attempt to smear while at work under the cover of fake names, as pointed out in the WUWT policy page.
– Anthony
Seth: “The argument that “well, you’ve changed your mind on this one little aspect, therefore your whole thesis is wrong” is used by creationists at lot.”
Fair cop. The Creationist and ID types are all over Evolution for lacking both predictive value and experimental validation also. Seems to me that if folks don’t want to be lumped with nutty religious types, they should just shut up and and accept the revealed knowledge from the High Popes of Heat.
With fewer El Ninos to create warm water pools feeding into the Arctic, the Arctic ice should increase. If the Antarctic also starts increasing, are we setting the stage for significant cooling on a world wide scale?
As for the notion that this heat would, at some point, come out “all at once”, that would require so many changes to the laws of physics that one should be equally worried about a gravity well reversal that spews everyone on earth out to space.
I think our baseline understanding of the core mechanism of gravity is so poor in comparison to thermodynamics, that the latter might be more likely.
JoNova also has an article on Antarctic ice on her site.
The failure of the ice to melt this summer is not explained very well by the link Jim Cripwell gave at 3:45. I think it has many scratching their heads, the NSIDC included. The simple fact of the matter is that the ice was quite thin, and torn up by a big storm in February, and I myself was wary about how thin it looked at the start of the melt last April, especially right near the Pole. Alarmists, on the other hand, were elated, and fairly sure the ice was flimsy and would fall apart quickly. The fact it didn’t demands a better explanation than the NSIDC’s take that summer of 2012 had dipolar winds and 2013 was more zonal, for the fact of the matter is that both summer had a variety of weather set-ups, and both summer had summer gales, with the ice actually stronger to begin the summer of 2012 than the summer of 2013.
I think the water was cooler last summer, especially at depth. It was cooled by three events. First, the big storm in August 2012 didn’t melt a huge amount of ice by hitting it with a hot hair-drier. Rather it churned the ice with the water, and brought up slightly warmer water from a hundred or two feet down, and melting all the ice made all the water cooler, even down deep. Second, having such a vast area ice-free as winter descended and the sun dipped below the horizon was a perfect set-up for the water losing further heat. Lastly, the storm that cracked up the ice in the Beaufort Gyre in February exposed areas of ocean to the coldest air of the winter, (air that was below normal on the DMI graph,) making the Arctic Sea that much colder. Therefore even though the ice cap may have looked flimsy last April, the water it sat in was colder. It wasn’t merely colder up close to the icecap, with milder currents meandering down below the ice, but was colder clear down to the pycnocline, so that last summer’s gales couldn’t upwell warmer waters from beneath to melt the ice. Having the water colder down deeper may have even so changed the density of the water that milder currents had a harder time penetrating the arctic and flowing under the ice.
Please notice I began the above paragraph with “I think.” This is all theory on my part, in an attempt to explain what is quite baffling. However the true scientists up there are gathering data like crazy, and have gizmos that run up and down cables under the newer buoys bobbing around up there. (I’d give my eye teeth to get a gander at the data they’re gathering, but I suppose if they do all the work they get first dibs at peeking at it.) The data they are gathering is in many ways brand new information about what goes on under the ice, in terms of salinity and temperature. They are pioneers on a new frontier.
It is a silver lining, on the dark clouds of Global Warming balderdash, that those guys get the funding to place all the neat buoys up there. I have a fear they will get de-funded as soon as it becomes apparent the ice is growing, and doesn’t support the “agenda.” The fact of the matter is that the “science” of Global Warming is going down, (not in flames, as it isn’t hot enough, but rather like a Titanic after hitting an iceberg.) World temperatures refused to rise, computer models looked stupid, children continued to know what snow is in England, and an ice-free-Pole was the last, great hope of Alarmists. And as far as they were concerned, last summer was a dreadful disappointment, and an impossible, inconceivable, freakish, and weird return to normalcy.
They appeared to be staggered, and babbling, like a boxer who just took an uppercut to his jaw.
“Antarctic Sea Ice Didn’t Get The Memo That It Was Supposed To Melt”
Global Warming blocks memos.
“heat tends to hide in the oceans sometimes, but when heat hides in the ocean it later comes out and reappears in the atmosphere…”
As Giant Crabs, Godzilla, Giant Octopus, the Kraken, Cthulhu, and many others.