Researchers have measured a new record for sea-ice extent in the Antarctic. Why the white splendour is extending there while it is rapidly disappearing in the Arctic is a mystery.
Antarctica: The extent of sea ice (white) reached a record on 22 September. The yellow line shows the median of 1981 to 2000. Ice shelf is shown in gray.
Whenever the ice at the North and South Pole is mentioned, it is mostly in the context of melting ice triggered by global warming. However, the sea ice in Antarctica – in contrast to that in the Arctic – has proved to be remarkably robust. New measurements have now confirmed that. As the U.S. space agency NASA announced, the sea ice in the Antarctic has extended over an area of 19.47 million square meters at the end of September. That is the highest since measurements began in 1979.
The result is based on data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) on board of the Japanese satellite “GCOM-W1″. “The winter maximum has been a record for on the second consecutive year” said Walt Meier, a meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. However, he stressed that it is by no means a rapid growth: The now measured maximum extent is only 3.6 percent above the average maximum extent of 1981 to 2010. “This year, the ice edge extends therefore only 35 kilometres further out to sea than in an average year,” Meier said.
Moreover, the mere extent of sea ice does not necessarily say something about the volume of the ice, because that also depends on the thickness of the frozen layer. And the vast majority of the Antarctic ice mass is located on the Antarctic continent – and there the ice has decreased in recent years as a whole, particularly in West Antarctica.
But why the sea ice is increasing is a mystery. Scientists suspect that a change in the air currents could explain to a great extent the increase in Antarctic sea ice in recent decades. Other speculations are that ocean currents carry cooler surface water to the Antarctic or that the melting water, which flows through massive channels in the ice, decreases the temperature of the surface sea water.
Translation by Philipp Mueller
See full article at Spiegel Online, 21 October 2013
Press Release: Arctic sea ice avoids last year’s record low; Antarctic sea ice edges out last year’s high
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. NSIDC scientists provide Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis content, with partial support from NASA.
This September, sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean fell to the sixth lowest extent in the satellite record, which began in 1979. All of the seven lowest extents have occurred in the last seven years, since 2007. Satellite data analyzed by NSIDC scientists showed that the sea ice cover reached its lowest extent on September 13. Sea ice extent averaged for the month of September was also the sixth lowest in the satellite record.
“A relatively cool and stormy summer helped slow ice loss compared to the last few summers,” said NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve. In contrast to 2012, when sea ice reached a new record low in the satellite record, cooler conditions in the Arctic this summer helped to retain more sea ice. “This summer’s extent highlights the complex interaction between natural climate variability and long-term thinning of the ice cover,” Stroeve said.
“For Earth’s ice and snow cover taken as a whole, this year has been a bit of a bright spot within a long-term sobering trend,” said NSIDC director and senior scientist Mark Serreze.
Arctic sea ice, however, continues to be thinner than in past years, as confirmed by direct satellite observations and estimates of ice age, and therefore more vulnerable to breakup by storms, circulating currents, and melt. “While Earth’s cryosphere, that is, its snow and ice cover, got a shot of hope this year, it’s likely to be only a short-term boost,” Serreze said. While most of the ice cover now consists of young, thin ice, a pack of multiyear ice remains in the central Arctic. Multiyear ice is ice that has survived more than one melt season and is thicker than first-year ice.
Arctic sea ice extent reached its lowest point this year on September 13, 2013 when sea ice extent dropped to 5.10 million square kilometers (1.97 million square miles). Averaged over the month of September, ice extent was 5.35 million square kilometers (2.07 million square miles). This places 2013 as the sixth lowest ice extent, both for the daily minimum extent and the monthly average. September ice extent was 1.17 million square kilometers (452,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average.
The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and shrinks each summer as the sun rises higher in the northern sky. Each year the Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum extent in September. It hit a new record low in 2012. This summer’s low ice extent continued the downward trend seen over the last thirty-four years. Scientists attribute this trend in large part to warming temperatures caused by climate change. Since 1979, September Arctic sea ice extent has declined by 13.7 percent per decade. Summer sea ice extent is important because, among other things, it reflects sunlight, keeping the Arctic region cool and moderating global climate.
In addition to the decline in sea ice extent, a two-dimensional measure of the ice cover, the ice cover has grown thinner and less resistant to summer melt. Recent data on the age of sea ice, which scientists use to estimate the thickness of the ice cover, shows that the youngest, thinnest ice, which has survived only one or two melt seasons, now makes up the majority of the ice cover.
As the Arctic was reaching its minimum extent for the year, Antarctic sea ice was reaching record high levels, culminating in a Southern Hemisphere winter maximum extent of 19.47 million square kilometers (7.52 million square miles) on September 22. The September 2013 monthly average was also a record high, at 19.77 million square kilometers (7.63 million square miles) slightly higher than the previous record in 2012. Scientists largely attribute the increase in Antarctic sea ice extent to stronger circumpolar winds, which blow the sea ice outward, increasing extent.
In contrast to the sharp downward trend in September Arctic sea ice, Antarctic September sea ice has been increasing at 1.1 percent per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. “The tiny gain in Antarctica’s ice is an interesting puzzle for scientists,” said NSIDC lead scientist Ted Scambos. “The rapid loss of ice in the Arctic should be ringing alarm bells for everyone.”
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Does sea ice form with the temperature at minus 20 C when there is little wind and wave? When sea ice concentration drops below 15% or 30% concentration has the ice really melted? When the sea ice piles up 5 meters thick because of the wind and causes the sea ice numbers to drop, has it really melted ? When it rains on sea ice, how deep does the rain water have to be before the algorithms tell us it is ice free?
We should be concerned about the increase in Antarctic sea ice as it represents the increase in the Antarctic circumpolar current of the Southern Ocean and associated westerly wind. This current is by far the strongest in the world and the only one that connects to all ocean basins. The increase speed of the current brings cold water to the surface through a mechanism called ekman pumping. It is sending cold water up the west coast of South America and West Africa and will eventually effect the AMOC which will then result in a decline in the AMO index and then the little ice age will return.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom_new.gif
**This summer’s low ice extent continued the downward trend seen over the last thirty-four years. Scientists attribute this trend in large part to warming temperatures caused by climate change.**
This is an outright lie. How can a downward trend be continuing if the increase was 60 percent from 2012 to 2013? How do you get warming temperatures when the temperatures were below average for at least 100 consecutive days north of 80 deg N as shown by Denmark. Can Mark and Julienne answer this?
To Crispin in Waterloo
Melting ice absorbs CO2, freezing water expels it – deal with it.
If that is the case, then how can we trust the CO2 measurements from ice cores in Greenland? Why bother?
I have been trying to find information on the land ice in Antarctic and can’t seem to find anything. Any suggestions from the experts here?
Too bad we can’t find a bunch of econuts, show them the data of record-breaking ice in Antarctica and the rapid increase in Arctic ice, then show them the ‘tipping point’ for snowball earth. Once they are true believers of an imminent ice age, we could watch them duke it out with the AGW crowd.
Both groups would blame Man, of course, but their remedies would be opposite each other. All we would need do is watch them fight and go on beer runs.
It is not such a big mystery to me….
Recovery of ozone is much more spectacular on the SH
eventually of course the global cooing caused by the recovery of ozone will also end up on the arctic.
the recovery of ozone is caused by the changes on the sun
If you read the paper Schneider, D., and Steig, E., (2008) Ice cores record significant 1940s Antarctic warmth that has yet to be surpassed. Based on ice core data the peninsula was warmer in the 30s, See their Graph A here http://landscapesandcycles.net/image/76499251_scaled_489x638.png.
Also the Southern Annular Mode (Antarctic Osciilation ) index is a measure of the westerly winds. The dramatic increasing trend is driven by stronger summer winds, not winter winds when ice maximum is reached. The summer index peaked around the 1998 El Nino and will likely follow Pacific Decadal Oscillation in a negative trend.
Summer trend http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/icd/gjma/newsam.sum.pdf
and Winter trend http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/icd/gjma/newsam.win.pdf
The modelers didn’t really address these details when blaming the wind for more ice
My view is that it’s a 60 year cycle borne out by observational evidence over the last hundred or so years and we have 30-some years of satelite data and we think we know what’s going on? Alarm bells should be ringing? Aye, the ones on the white vans with the men in the white coats coming to put straightjackets on these guys and take them to a padded communal cell somewhere. One can dream.
Seriously, the spin and weasel words and sheer attempted manipulation of opinion in the above piece is classic. So many comments above concurred with my own thoughts but I’d never heard this one: “found it hard to read over the noise of the BS-Buzzer”. Really good that – say’s exactly what I felt too, just didn’t know how to put it into words so succinctly.
They just have to be sensationalists[bold mine]:
The fact of the matter is in the satellite era baseline (1979-2000) the average year has an extent max at 16.1 million km2 and an average min of 7.6 million km2 which implies that EVERY year should be a year where over ½ the ice is young thin ice.
What if over the next decade Arctic sea ice is visibly seen to have increased its extent from 2007 (2 step forwards, 1 step back fashion – Joe Bastardi mentioned this)? They will remind us that the extent is still in long term decline when we look back to the end of the Little Ice Age. They will take a quick peak at volume too to see if there’s anything there. All the while forgetting what they told us about “death spiral” and “ice free Arctic” and other Alarmist speak.
1920s to 1940s Arctic Warm Period
Here is an increase in 4 or 5 year old ice in the Arctic. See Goddard’s animation, quite a change in the Arctic this Summer and Autumn.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/what-nsidc-is-hiding/
Andrew Shepherd et al. 2012 “A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance” estimated that the net loss of Antarctic ice in 2000-2011 was –87 +/- 43 Gt per year. That is equivalent to around 0.8mm shaved off the ice mass each year. Over 12 years, this is equivalent to adding one million square kilometres of sea ice 1 metre thick. The average 2013 maximum was 0.7 million square kilometres above the 1981 to 2010 average. Given that we have no reliable estimates of the changing thickness of the ice, this gives most likely give no net loss of ice from Antarctica this century, though it does add 2-3mm to sea levels. Such a sea level rise is well below 10% of the recorded rise.
A negative feedback, apparently.
We take our orbit around our life giving fusion ball for granted. All it takes is one cosmic speck of dust to throw us off kilter.
@sadbutmadlad
Aren’t penguins cute?
Is the Antarctic sea ice increasing because of increased precipitation in the southern oceans? Just a thought? I read somewhere the Antarctic is a ‘desert’ because of low rainfall.
Thanx Ferd @ur momisugly 4.11 very dry.
But I was wondering if the bipolar seesaw could been operating over the past 100 years. What was happening in Antarctica during the 1930s?
Wow,
since 1979….
Makes me think of one of my kid’s statements that ends in “….my whole life.”
He’s seven.
This was not reported on the Biased Broadcasting Corporation, so I have made a complaint asking why.
BBC complaints form:
https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/?reset=#anchor
What they should have said was, “This summer’s low ice extent is not inconsistent with the downward trend seen over the last thirty-four years.” They would have, if they were scientists.
In my absolute non-science way the whole warming/cooling is simple.
I fill my bath up, oops too hot, run the cold water, darn too cold, takes me a few turns of the tap to get it just right,
scale this up, churn of the oceans etc and I find it a miracle that the planet stays on such an even keel, unlike me the self correcting mechanism of our planet happens on massive time scales and is never the perfect temp, though hang on, wait a minute ……… bumper crops!!!
What a keel it is, this year has seen bumper crops worldwide, in my eyes agriculture is the definitive sign of how the climate is doing.
I always heard Africa was first in line to be affected by climate change, well, it is doing rather well.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/africa-continent-of-plenty
My parents fig tree in boston grew like crazy this year. Still picking figs. Love that co2!
@dodgy geezer –
Let us not forget that water freezes when you heat it, Therefore, the more warming, the greater the extent of the ice. /sarc
Unfortunately, I was born before the world began in 1979. I guess there was no history before then? Therefore, I must not be here. Makes as much sense as any theory of global warming based on the last 34 years ( since satellites).
So many ignorant comments…bumber crops? Are you aware tens of millions of acres of grasslands went back into production here in the US? Not to mention genetically enhanced varieties of corn and beans along with obscene levels of nitrogen fertilizer.