Measurements from ESA’s CryoSat satellite show that the volume of Arctic sea ice has significantly increased this past autumn.
The volume of ice measured this autumn is about 50% higher compared to last year. In October 2013, CryoSat measured about 9000 cubic km of sea ice – a notable increase compared to 6000 cubic km in October 2012.
See animation:
Over the last few decades, satellites have shown a downward trend in the area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice. However, the actual volume of sea ice has proven difficult to determine because it moves around and so its thickness can change.
CryoSat was designed to measure sea-ice thickness across the entire Arctic Ocean, and has allowed scientists, for the first time, to monitor the overall change in volume accurately.
About 90% of the increase is due to growth of multiyear ice – which survives through more than one summer without melting – with only 10% growth of first year ice. Thick, multiyear ice indicates healthy Arctic sea-ice cover.
This year’s multiyear ice is now on average about 20%, or around 30 cm, thicker than last year.
“One of the things we’d noticed in our data was that the volume of ice year-to-year was not varying anything like as much as the ice extent – at least in 2010, 2011 and 2012,” said Rachel Tilling from the UK’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, who led the study.
“We didn’t expect the greater ice extent left at the end of this summer’s melt to be reflected in the volume. But it has been, and the reason is related to the amount of multiyear ice in the Arctic.”
While this increase in ice volume is welcome news, it does not indicate a reversal in the long-term trend.
“It’s estimated that there was around 20 000 cubic kilometres of Arctic sea ice each October in the early 1980s, and so today’s minimum still ranks among the lowest of the past 30 years,” said Professor Andrew Shepherd from University College London, a co-author of the study.
The findings from a team of UK researchers at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling were presented last week at the American Geophysical Union’s autumn meeting in San Francisco, California.
“We are very pleased that we were able to present these results in time for the conference despite some technical problems we had with the satellite in October, which are now completely solved,” said Tommaso Parrinello, ESA’s CryoSat Mission Manager.
In October, CryoSat’s difficulties with its power system threatened the continuous supply of data, but normal operations resumed just over a week later.
With the seasonal freeze-up now underway, CryoSat will continue its routine measurement of sea ice. Over the coming months, the data will reveal just how much this summer’s increase has affected winter ice volumes.
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Source: European Space Agency
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/CryoSat/Arctic_sea_ice_up_from_record_low
For more data, see the WUWT Sea ice Reference page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
h/t to WUWT reader Larry Kirk
richardscourtney says:
February 5, 2014 at 7:45 am
Greg:
There is a simple reason why I want the citations. It is that
polar ice has been growing; n.b. NOT reducing.
Arctic sea ice was reducing but the increase to Antarctic ice was greater so total polar ice is now at an all-time high in the short record for polar ice.
Not true, current anomaly is negative, total seaice is nowhere near an all-time high.
I recognise that not all polar ice is sea ice, but I find it difficult to accept the models were predicting anything like “slower decrease in seaice than has been observed” when the models predicted polar amplification of warming which has not happened.
Discussions about (some?) models underestimating sea ice loss seem likely to be an example of misdirection which is typical of wamunists; i.e. it’s worse than we thought.
So, I want citations.
You should have them once they exit moderation.
So, as skeptics have been pointing out, sea ice is highly dynamic. The claim of some of the AGW extremists, that sea ice had accumulated for hundreds if not thoudands of years, is shown to be dubious at best. The confident prediction of many AGW hypesters, that sea ice would be gone by about now, is completely discredited. Paleo-records have suggested that sea ice has made similar swings in the past. Far too many in the AGW promotion industry have gotten away with ignoring this or even fibbing about how variable Arctic sea ice can be. It will be interesting to see if any in the political class pay attention to the fact that they have been misled by the AGW community.
While this obviously good news, I don’t think we should make too much of a song and dance. We are comparing a 50% increase to the previous year which saw a marked reduction in year on year ice cover. If the comparison is carried out on a longer term, things do not look so rosy. Arctic sea ice is in retreat, it will bounce up and down but we know the general trend is down. I would not be so foolhardy as to guess when the summer sea ice will be gone, however I see no real sign which convinces me that the trend is reversing. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
All y’all need to remember ice is an insulator.
More ice, more insulation ===> less energy radiated to space, more ice to cool warm tropical water==> warmer (relatively speaking) water outflowing from arctice eventually leads to warmer earth.
More open water ===> more energy radiated to space ===> cooler water/cooler earth…
Just saying….
I’ve been wondering the same thing,after a nice fast start ice growth has been less than I hoped. (How long does it take ice to re-form in an area after wind or current has pushed the previous ice away?) My guess is that it’s sea surface temp. What to expect this next month, steady growth or jump?
I agree that warmer sea temps appear to be an important factor in sea ice reduction, the path of the North Atlantic drift appears to match the areas of greatest melt. The temps in the Arctic are also elevated. They are still well below zero, but the colder the temps, the faster the ice forms, and at the moment the conditions result in slow ice formation. http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Thank GOD the ice is coming back, I mean…well…um….er it’s much better we have a colder planet and we have 30yrs of data on a 5billion year old planet so we know what the hell a trend means. (/sarcasm!!!!!!!!)
@ur momisugly Alan robertson
“Well, there is a value in “proof”, but to me, uncorrected data still indicates the general state / conditions observed.”
OK, but never generalize that to all and everyone and to eventual reality around you. What it is to you is your private situation, we are hardly interested. You ought not to make yourself the central and major object of interest and study.
Data that are not critically examined and corrected for systematic errors, who may be quite severe at times, do not indicate the general state so well at all. Quite on the contrary, they even may be intensionally betraying.
Practically, I do see another possibly severe error here, that must be checked up.
Why are not the quite extreemly fameous ices down along with the east coast of Grønland shown?
Personally, I am not able to make any decision / draw any conclusion before I have checked up that. And until that is also in order first, I must keep in mind that the very article and display may be a fraud.
I must check up with Ole Humlums Climate 4 you and with the Danes and with Hamburg.
Box of Rocks says:
February 5, 2014 at 8:45 am
“All y’all need to remember ice is an insulator.”
And making it requires a LOT of energy to leak away for it to form. Just saying….
Areas lacking sea ice right now are Alaskan waters and around Spitsbergen. Both places have had much milder than normal weather recently, for instance Longyearbyen was 12 C above normal last 30 days, and had several days with above freezing temps: http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Svalbard/Longyearbyen/statistics.html
Meanwhile, most of Siberia is crazy cold…
Hang on, you mean all that noise about shrinking sea ice area which was imputed (by direct, linear claim) to mean an identical loss of sea ice mass was wrong? That is like finding out that each and every claim over the past decade for ‘extreme weather’ damage being caused by ‘increasing temperatures’ were false because there was no increase! Someone or some people have this ‘global warming’ thing seriously wrong.
“Thick, multiyear ice indicates healthy Arctic sea-ice cover.”
Who has ever proven that thick sea ice is ‘healthy’ for anyone or anything? Surely they are not inferring that polar bears need sea ice or they will starve to death? You’d have to be pretty ignorant of climate history to think polar bears evolved in a few thousands years of colder Arctic seas. Is that ‘polar bear thing’ a new form of climate science creationism? You ‘create’ whatever mechanisms you need to support your narrative?
This paper skewers the ‘Arctic sea ice cover is the canary in the mine’ argument which has been presented to cover up the fact that global temperatures outside the Arctic have not risen for 15+ years. I for one and fed up with hearing how this area reduction constitutes ‘proof’ of anything. It is a vague coincidence, especially as it is rooted in the supporting claims that ‘models show polar amplification of the AGW effect’ while in fact Antarctic ice continued to grow all the while. For all we know, it has been growing for 1000 years.
Now we have the first indication that ice area and volume are not well correlated. Who’d-a thunk.
Isn’t area the same as volume?
Isn’t pressure the same as flow?
Isn’t temperature the same as heat?
Isn’t mass the same as velocity?
Isn’t weather the same as climate?
Isn’t a model the same as reality?
What is the world coming to!
Obligatory /sarc because some people are dense (which is not the same as being a heavyweight)
@Espen
“Both places have had much milder than normal weather recently, for instance Longyearbyen was 12 C above normal last 30 days, and had several days with above freezing temps…”
Waterloo was 5 degrees C below normal in December 2013 and 10 degrees C below normal in January 2014. February looks really cold too.
We would like our heat back right now, thanks. There is nowhere left to pile the snow.
Steven Goddard predicted this after the record low on the record for 2012. We saw a rapid rise in extent after the 2012 minimum, a lot of heat left town (Arctic ocean).
“…healthy Arctic sea-ice cover”
“healthy”? Sorry, that’s just poor word choice because it implies less coverage is unhealthy – which suggests that a natural variation may be unhealthy.
Do you know what they said about Arctic amplification due to a loss of albedo? September 2013 throws a spanner in the works.
Please, please take a look at a sample of what they have been saying over and over again.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/03/climate-impacts-of-nearly-ice-free-arctic-summers
Dr. Ware…
“No one knows–or can possibly know–what the ideal situation might be. There is no norm in such matters. While we can say–from research and experience–that the normal human body temperature is 98.6 F, and that normal vision is 20/20, no such statistic or research exists for large natural systems. Is Arctic weather behaving as it should? If not, how can one tell?”
I would suggest there is such a norm. Assuming humans actually have the power to affect the planet’s climate, what is a reasonable goal? How about a full on glacial period to which musk oxen and wild horses are well suited? Bring back the woolly rhinoceros and mammoth and all the rest? Wild horses with enough food can be comfortable at -40F. Hopefully it is obvious that we should geoengineer to benefit our own species. Our thermal neutral point is around 82F. This is the temperature at which humans can sit in the shade of a tree with no clothing and be perfectly comfortable. Places like that exist today on earth and are generally considered to be “paradise”. For example, Hawaii.
Of the two planetary conditions, Ice House Earth and Greenhouse Earth, today we find ourselves in the former. Obviously, humans have adapted to a wide range of miserable climates. To reach the state in which the largest area of earth can be called “paradise”, ideal for us, we will have to bring about Greenhouse Earth conditions. That means no polar ice and no continental ice. The temperature differential from equator to poles will be at a minimum. Energy usage will be very low after the transition. There is the norm.
—-
Bluntly summarized, from today’s real-world extents, across every day of the year from minimum extents in to february to its maximum extents in late September, increasing Antarctic sea ice reflects ever increasing solar energy from the earth. This difference between the dark ocean albedo at high solar elevation angle and the “bright” (newly-frozen) “fresh” first year sea ice around Antarctica cools the planet.
Does this matter? Well, the Antarctic sea ice extents anamoly – the difference between a climatologists expect Antarctic sea iec extents and what measured last October – November was over 1.5 million km^2 (Mkm^2) ….
More “excess” Antarctic sea in October and November than an entire Hudson Bay.
About 3/4 of Greenland’s total area actually was what the “professional” climatologists are ignoring and trivializing …..
Now, today’s extents are right under 0.9 Mkm^2 – a bit less, so figure 3/4 Hudson Bay of “extra ice” is still present. Still reflecting solar energy.
But, does excess sea ice matter?
It depends entirely on WHERE that excess sea ice is freezing and WHEN that excess sea ice is freezing.
Excess sea ice occurring in the Arctic or Antarctic darkness does not reflect solar energy back into space.
Excess sea ice occurring near the equinox when there are 12 hours of darkness every day and when the sun’s maximum solar elevation angle is only 10 or 12 degrees above the horizon reflects less energy than when the sun is at a 30, 33, or 43 degree solar elevation angle and is above the horizon from 3:00 am until 9:00 PM.
BUT!
Excess sea ice DOES “insulate” the ocean waters from radiating long wave radiation into space,
excess sea ice DOES prevent all evaporation losses from occurring,
it DOES reduce convection and conduction losses to the colder air, and so
… in the Arctic at minimum sea ice extents (late August-September-October, reduced sea ice extents INCREASES heat loss from the ocean more than it increases solar energy absorption.
Thus, through September each year, less Arctic sea ice means a cooler planet.
Bottom
More in a bit if any one wants to see the numbers for each day at each latitude.
Gareth Phillips I saw your alleged increasing trend and to me it’s bottomed out. The 2007 and 2012 low extents was primarily caused by wind and currents. It’s something in the water Gareth. 😉
Larry Kirk – where can we find more information about the end of the Cryosat-2 mission? And how to lobby to extend it?
Gareth, nature plays its part as you know full well. Here is a reminder.
Gareth here is some more reading.
Phil.
Sincere thanks for the references I requested which you have provided in your post at February 5, 2014 at 8:03 am,
You cite three papers in GRL.
One is by Rampal, P. et al. but is fairly recent being published in 06 Oct 2011.
Another is by Stroeve JC et al and is even more recent being first published online: 25 AUG 2012.
Those two don’t help because they could be ‘afterthoughts’.
However your third citation does demonstrate your point.
Stroeve JC is also the lead author of that paper which has different coauthors to the later paper you cite. This earlier paper was first published online on 1 MAY 2007, and this is sufficiently early for it to not be an ‘afterthought’. Importantly, it considers all the models used in the IPCC AR4 (2007) and not merely some outlier. Its abstract says
One can dispute assertions such as “the models underestimate the GHG response”, but your claim of the models having underestimated Arctic sea ice (which the paper calls “declining Arctic ice cover”) is demonstrated by this paper.
Thankyou.
Richard
I asked above “Does excess sea ice matter?”
It depends entirely on WHERE that excess sea ice is freezing and WHEN that excess sea ice is freezing.
Excess sea ice occurring in the Arctic or Antarctic darkness does not reflect solar energy back into space.
Excess sea ice occurring near the equinox when there are 12 hours of darkness every day and when the sun’s maximum solar elevation angle is only 10 or 12 degrees above the horizon reflects less energy than when the sun is at a 30, 33, or 43 degree solar elevation angle and is above the horizon from 3:00 am until 9:00 PM.
Now, ignoring the Arctic sea ice anomaly for a moment (because it is occurring between 76 north and 80 north latitude), focusing on the excess Antarctic sea ice extents. That matters .. a lot.
The Antarctic continent is 14.0 Mkm^2 of ice-covered rock, surrounded by 3.5 Mkm^2 of permanent ice shelves. (The NSIDC has assured me that they do NOT include these shelves part of the “sea ice extents” recorded on their site.) This 17.5 Mkm^2 ice-covered total is in turn surrounded by 3.0 Mkm^2 of sea ice (at Antarctic’s minimum sea ice extents in February) and by 19.5 Mkm^2 at its maximum in late September-October each year.
So, at Antarctic sea ice minimum 20.5 Mkm^2 extents, there is a near-continuous cover of ice from the south pole up to latitude 67. Flipping the globe’s geography, at minimum sea ice extents, Antarctic’s sea ice covers EVERYTHING from the pole down to the Arctic Circle! Everything from the middle of Greenland, across the top of Canada, through the middle of Alaska, across the top of all of Siberia, across the top of Norway, and back past Iceland is covered by ice. At its minimum extents.
At sea ice maximum, the Antarctic sea and land ice extends from the pole to latitude 59.2 south. At those latitudes – between its minimum at latitude 67 and its maximum at latitude 59, the Antarctic sea ice IS reflecting more solar energy every second than the darker water it covers, and the smaller “insulating” ability of that increased sea ice area is overwhelmed by the reflection of the sun’s energy.
Net result?
Decreasing Arctic sea ice cools the planet. A little bit.
Increasing Antarctic sea ice cools the planet. A lot.
And that Antarctic sea ice minimum extents, its medium extents, and its maximum extents is increasing continually, and has the Antarctic anomaly has been positive since May 2011. The general Antarctic sea ice trend has been increasing since its minimum about 1986.
To illustrate this increasing Antarctic sea ice, if today’s rates continue, within 8-10 years the Antarctic sea ice interfere with shipping around Cape Horn at 56 south latitude.
The daily sea ice anomaly is extremely variable. The annual average might be more informative. The global sea ice anomaly with annual averages is shown here:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/files/documents/GlobalSeaIceArea.jpg
The anomaly is relative to the 1979 to 2008 average.
Year million sq. km
2011 -1.359
2012 -0.905
2013 +0.104
The 2013 annual global sea ice area is 1.46 million sq. km greater than that of 2011.
The January 2014 anomaly was +0.385 million sq km. The data is from:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.global.anom.1979-2008
Excess sea ice DOES “insulate” the ocean waters from radiating long wave radiation into space,
*******
Are there experiments to prove the above statements or are they pure conjecture?
One thing I have been watching is the graphic on the arctic sea ice page that shows the direction and speed of ice drift. I have noticed a lot less ice being exported out of the Fram Strait and in fact the flow has reversed on several days with ice drifting North. Same with ice headed out through the Bering Strait; drift has on many days been nortward back into the Arctic Sea. While this does reduce ice area and ice extent maximums, it would tend to keep the ice in the Arctic more consolidated and compressed. This would *seem* to argue for more ice this summer if the wind patterns don’t change.
Global? warming. http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.fc.gif