Multi-year Arctic ice posts a large gain, peak ice occurred later this year. Antarctica had fourth highest minimum.
From NSIDC: Arctic sea ice at fifth lowest annual maximum
Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent on March 21, after a brief surge in extent mid-month. Overall the 2014 Arctic maximum was the fifth lowest in the 1978 to 2014 record. Antarctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on February 23, and was the fourth highest Antarctic minimum in the satellite record. While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.
Overview of conditions
Arctic sea ice extent for March 2014 averaged 14.80 million square kilometers (5.70 million square miles). This is 730,000 square kilometers (282,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average extent, and 330,000 square kilometers (127,000 square miles) above the record March monthly low, which happened in 2006. Extent remains slightly below average in the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, but is at near-average levels elsewhere. Extent hovered around two standard deviations below the long-term average through February and early March. The middle of March by contrast saw a period of fairly rapid expansion, temporarily bringing extent to within about one standard deviation of the long-term average.
Conditions in context
In the Arctic, the maximum extent for the year is reached on average around March 9. However, the timing varies considerably from year to year. This winter the ice cover continued to expand until March 21, reaching 14.91 million square kilometers (5.76 million square miles), making it both the fifth lowest maximum and the fifth latest timing of the maximum since 1979. The latest timing of the maximum extent was on March 31, 2010 and the lowest maximum extent occurred in 2011 (14.63 million square kilometers or 5.65 million square miles).
March 2014 compared to previous years
Average ice extent for March 2014 was the fifth lowest for the month in the satellite record. Through 2014, the linear rate of decline for March ice extent is 2.6% per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average.
An increase in multiyear ice
The extent of multiyear ice within the Arctic Ocean is distinctly greater than it was at the beginning of last winter. During the summer of 2013, a larger fraction of first-year ice survived compared to recent years. This ice has now become second-year ice. Additionally, the predominant recirculation of the multiyear ice pack within the Beaufort Gyre this winter and a reduced transport of multiyear ice through Fram Strait maintained the multiyear ice extent throughout the winter.
In Figure 4, Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) imagery reveals the distribution of multiyear ice compared to first year ice for March 28, 2013 (yellow line) and March 2, 2014 (blue line). The ASCAT sensor measures the radar–frequency reflection brightness of the sea ice at a few kilometers resolution. Sea ice radar reflectivity is sensitive to the roughness of the ice and the presence of saltwater droplets within newer ice (and, later in the season, the presence of surface melt). Thus older and more deformed multiyear ice appears white or light grey (more reflection), whereas younger, first-year ice looks dark grey and/or black.
Ice age tracking confirms large increase in multiyear ice
Satellite data on ice age reveal that multiyear ice within the Arctic basin increased from 2.25 to 3.17 million square kilometers (869,000 to 1,220,000 square miles) between the end of February in 2013 and 2014. This winter the multiyear ice makes up 43% of the icepack compared to only 30% in 2013. While this is a large increase, and may portend a more extensive September ice cover this year compared to last year, the fraction of the Arctic Ocean consisting of multiyear ice remains less than that at the beginning of the 2007 melt season (46%) when a large amount of the multiyear ice melted. The percentage of the Arctic Ocean consisting of ice at least five years or older remains at only 7%, half of what it was in February 2007. Moreover, a large area of the multiyear ice has drifted to the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea (north of Alaska and the Lena River delta), where warm conditions are likely to exist later in the year.
Summer ice extent remains hard to predict
There is a growing need for reliable sea ice predictions. An effort to gather and summarize seasonal sea ice predictions made by researchers and prediction centers began in 2008. The project, known as the SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook, has collected more than 300 predictions of summer month ice extent. A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters by researchers at NSIDC, University of New Hampshire, and University of Washington reveal a large range in predictive skill. The study found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend. Results from the study also suggest that while ice conditions during the previous winter are an important predictor (such as the fraction of first-year versus multiyear ice), summer weather patterns also have a large impact on the amount of ice that will be left at the end of summer.
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Since 2006 the Artic Sea Ice trend is up.
Why? Is it a growing number of people wanting to know out of idle curiosity or is there really a “need” for these predictions and if so, what is that need?
The problem is that in the Arctic the ice depends a lot on wind conditions and wind conditions can not be predicted a year in advance. Simply moving a high pressure system a couple of hundred miles can have a significant impact on how much ice is blown out of the arctic. I don’t believe we are ever going to get to that level of precision in forecasting that far in advance.
Anthony Watts see the movement of air at an altitude of 30 km. Again, a significant increase in temperature over the Arctic. This can cause cooling of the stratosphere in the equatorial regions. I wonder how this will affect the hurricane season and El Ninio this year.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp10anim.gif
Linear “trend” fits for such data are simplistic, disconnected from any reasonable mechanistic connection and frankly ridiculous. If you want to get a sense of what is happening just use a running average or a binomial filter. The way the March data jumps around for example a 2 – 3 year filter would be more revealing of behaviour over time.
I put together my estimate/forecast the other day for the Arctic.
https://twitter.com/NJSnowFan/status/451376664857948160/photo/1
My feeling why is because of large TSI spike from second solar peak(October-March), sea ice minimum this summer will be below 2013. TSI # is around 150 now was around 120 4/1 in 2013 and averaged 110 during 2013 summer.
Multi year ice has increased since AMO warm cycle/phase has started to flip to cool phase.
AMO #’s 2006 till end of Feb 2014
2006 0.144 0.096 0.081 0.218 0.329 0.354 0.395 0.422 0.385 0.355 0.310 0.192
2007 0.192 0.238 0.148 0.180 0.133 0.110 0.150 0.076 0.120 0.179 0.198 0.132
2008 0.052 0.150 0.180 0.064 0.194 0.278 0.227 0.196 0.220 0.124 0.023 0.040
2009 -0.037 -0.142 -0.138 -0.109 -0.040 0.143 0.250 0.174 0.079 0.186 0.091 0.104
2010 0.062 0.199 0.309 0.448 0.481 0.470 0.472 0.547 0.471 0.346 0.258 0.230
2011 0.166 0.130 0.077 0.114 0.174 0.201 0.114 0.169 0.167 0.085 -0.048 -0.022
2012 -0.043 0.027 0.048 0.102 0.187 0.322 0.398 0.453 0.471 0.352 0.187 0.163
2013 0.151 0.138 0.181 0.159 0.123 0.069 0.213 0.217 0.278 0.370 0.151 0.059
2014 -0.039 -0.020
TSI # 2006 to end of March 2014
Mo Observed
2006 1 83.32 80.67 72.60
2006 2 76.52 74.67 67.20
2006 3 75.50 74.75 67.28
2006 4 89.27 89.90 80.91
2006 5 80.83 82.62 74.36
2006 6 76.68 79.10 71.18
2006 7 75.88 78.36 70.53
2006 8 79.59 81.58 73.43
2006 9 78.02 78.87 70.99
2006 10 74.43 73.95 66.55
2006 11 86.43 84.56 76.10
2006 12 90.39 87.58 78.83
2007 1 83.76 81.09 72.98
2007 2 77.65 75.76 68.18
2007 3 72.24 71.50 64.36
2007 4 72.36 72.87 65.59
2007 5 74.36 75.98 68.38
2007 6 74.07 76.39 68.76
2007 7 71.48 73.83 66.44
2007 8 69.03 70.76 63.68
2007 9 66.98 67.71 60.94
2007 10 67.69 67.27 60.54
2007 11 69.39 67.88 61.09
2007 12 78.21 75.77 68.20
2008 1 74.02 71.66 64.49
2008 2 71.03 69.33 62.39
2008 3 72.99 72.30 65.07
2008 4 70.15 70.65 63.59
2008 5 68.32 69.86 62.87
2008 6 65.85 67.94 61.14
2008 7 65.67 67.82 61.03
2008 8 66.17 67.81 61.03
2008 9 67.00 67.70 60.93
2008 10 68.21 67.75 60.98
2008 11 68.53 67.02 60.32
2008 12 69.05 66.89 60.20
2009 1 69.70 67.48 60.73
2009 2 69.85 68.17 61.35
2009 3 69.10 68.42 61.57
2009 4 69.61 70.11 63.10
2009 5 70.35 71.91 64.73
2009 6 68.57 70.74 63.66
2009 7 68.19 70.41 63.38
2009 8 67.36 69.04 62.13
2009 9 70.32 71.05 63.95
2009 10 72.14 71.66 64.50
2009 11 73.66 72.05 64.85
2009 12 76.84 74.44 67.00
2010 1 81.31 78.71 70.84
2010 2 84.74 82.70 74.42
2010 3 82.96 82.12 73.91
2010 4 75.72 76.24 68.61
2010 5 73.63 75.26 67.73
2010 6 72.38 74.67 67.20
2010 7 79.60 82.20 73.98
2010 8 79.16 81.15 73.04
2010 9 80.95 81.81 73.63
2010 10 81.42 80.89 72.79
2010 11 82.56 80.77 72.70
2010 12 84.19 81.59 73.43
2011 1 83.39 80.73 72.65
2011 2 94.55 92.26 83.03
2011 3 124.26 122.91 110.61
2011 4 112.85 113.61 102.25
2011 5 95.68 97.79 88.00
2011 6 95.86 98.88 88.99
2011 7 94.34 97.43 87.69
2011 8 101.61 104.16 93.74
2011 9 135.27 136.68 123.01
2011 10 137.40 136.52 122.87
2011 11 153.50 150.23 135.21
2011 12 141.46 137.07 123.36
2012 1 134.79 130.49 117.44
2012 2 106.86 104.29 93.85
2012 3 115.71 114.53 103.07
2012 4 113.26 114.14 102.72
2012 5 121.40 124.12 111.71
2012 6 120.40 124.19 111.78
2012 7 137.81 142.31 128.09
2012 8 115.86 118.75 106.88
2012 9 123.40 124.70 112.22
2012 10 123.07 122.22 109.99
2012 11 121.15 118.45 106.61
2012 12 108.26 104.87 94.38
2013 1 126.83 122.78 110.50
2013 2 104.41 101.90 91.71
2013 3 111.36 110.22 99.20
2013 4 124.95 125.84 113.26
2013 5 131.43 134.33 120.90
2013 6 110.74 114.25 102.82
2013 7 115.53 119.29 107.36
2013 8 114.90 117.75 105.97
2013 9 102.83 103.91 93.51
2013 10 132.86 131.92 118.73
2013 11 148.78 145.55 131.00
2013 12 148.10 143.49 129.14
2014 1 162.69 157.50 141.75
2014 2 170.13 166.01 149.41
2014 3 150.50 148.97 134.07
This is a chart I put together also,
https://twitter.com/NJSnowFan/status/451348679081725952/photo/1
Climate Scientist they say the sun does not effect temperatures on earth directly. I find that NOT to be true, TSI and Arctic temps above 80 N.
When there is fairly a normal circulation around the N pole region with no large storms or severe weather pattern moving across the polar region TSI spikes or dips fit like a glove with DMI temperature data above 80 N/
I do feel the same is happening around Antarctica but I just don’t have data to work with like the Arctic.
I shared my info with Judith Curry @curryja yesterday, I was not referring to her what I said in my above post, Climate Scientist they say the sun does not effect temperatures on earth directly.
Just want to make that clear..
got to love the start date of 1979 for sea ice. Choose a cold extreme when ice was at max then every other figure is bound to be less thus show ‘a trend’ of co2 caused ‘melting’.
another great decontextualisation by the warmists
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/arctic-ice-measurements-began/
crosspatch says:
April 3, 2014 at 1:25 am
There is a growing need for reliable sea ice predictions.
Why? Is it a growing number of people wanting to know out of idle curiosity or is there really a “need” for these predictions and if so, what is that need?
It would definitely help those people daft enough to think they can row the NW passage in one season.
This should grow through 2030, at least with the solar sunspot minimum. However, my readings of other Scientists who have studied the Atlantic Conveyor Belt put more emphasis on the Antarctica Polar Ice Cap. The South Pole is the feeder to the North Pole.
Let’s focus on the South first. The North just reflects the South.
Paul
Oh no Mr. Bill! It is worse than we thought!
Since warming causes freezing in modern climate “science”, I guess that global warming and the magic molecule CO2 are behind this report of more old sea ice. If the planet gets much hotter we will all freeze to death!
It will be fun watching the multi-year ice this summer. It is positioned over towards Bering Strait, where it seems less likely to be flushed out like 2007.
I have promised myself to produce 3 metrics of Arctic sea ice, by writing some (or a lot) of code that maps the sea ice location to a 24 hour cycle (or variants of such as a moment in time) of the sun light intensity. For example an given area of ice will reflect more sunlight the further away it is from the pole if it is not in earths shadow all day.
The 3 metrics would cover the arctic circle, the arctic as defined by the red border in this map :
and the last metric would cover all northern hemisphere sea ice.
The first, arctic circle would be easiest. At the moment of the winter solstice the metric would be a value of 0 (zero) or I might reverse the metric so it would be 1 (one). It would change value from zero, or 1 as the sun started to return towards the north pole and sun light hits open water (no sea ice). The intensity of the sun will be a part of the metric (a simple angle from the perpendicular calculation, not actual joules, watts or whatever it is). The value would change throughout the day most of the time most likely. I could either calculate on a minute by minute change or larger time periods depending on accuracy desired. I don’t see it taking long for a modern computer to do the calculations.
My complications involve writing code to geo locate the pixels on sea ice maps to real world coordinates to carry out the necessary calculations. I also need to write the code to calculate the sun location at any given time and date. There may be other forms of ice data that I may need to write code to process.
The other 2 metrics will be more complicated and I need to think through if a value of 0 to 1 or some other numbers should be used.
I have a to-do list that has about 400 entries. First on the list is to write a smart phone app to help me with my to do list. I kid you not, I spent the fall and winter working on that to-do app and nearly have it up and running. It is very sophisticated and I don’t want to reveal details until I make it available for others probably much later this year.
ggm
eyeballing the sea ice extent map on WUWT it seems the ice at Svalbard is increasing along its eastern border and above Novaya Zemlya even at this late date although it may be melting further to the east.
It does melt rapidly from now on but I am hoping there will still be a late surge back to the average
How much of the ice that is melted over the summer is caused by wind and not temp? If the AMO is heading into negative territory, and stays, will this help the pole hold on to what ice it has?
Simple questions I know….but I’m new to all this!
What absolute rubbish.
Ice extent today is compared to averages measured since 1960 – roughly 55 years ( !!!!) for a planet that is more than a billion years old, and has experienced ice sheets that range in area from a very, very small percentage we see today to an extent many, many times greater than today AND where CO2 levels DURING some of the ice ages were HIGHER !!!!!!! than today.
Where there not reports about 100 to 200 years ago that sailing vessels were able to traverse Arctic regions that “normally” were ice bound? Does not the areal extent of the Arctic ice sheets change all the time?
Why don’t we just take the average temperature of say Omaha , Nebraska over the last 3 days, run some hi-fallutin statistical analysis on that data, and predict climate there 200 years hence ?
The results would be as reliable as the data provided in the sea ice article.
Unbelievable
Antarctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on February 23, and was the fourth highest Antarctic minimum in the satellite record. While this continues a strong pattern of greater-than-average sea ice extent in Antarctica for the past two years, Antarctic sea ice remains more variable year-to-year than the Arctic.
And that’s all they said about the Antarctic, despite paragraph upon paragraph and graph after graph about the Arctic. Heh. Well, at least they put it in the start of the article.
@njsnowfan says: April 3, 2014 at 2:00 am “This is a chart I put together also,”
How can sun spots affect Arctic temperature in the continuous darkness of Arctic winter? Upper atmosphere ‘thing’? Rapid atmospheric mixing via wind patterns?
Arctic ice ain’t going anywhere for a while.
http://www.arctic-info.com/ExpertOpinion/Page/-the-need-for-icebreakers-will-increase-after-the-year-2016-
“…..increase of ice breakers in the Summer….”
@njsnowfan says: April 3, 2014 at 2:00 am “TSI spikes or dips fit like a glove with DMI temperature data above 80 N/”
Considering your connective lines are neither parallel for consistency nor vertical I’d say more like a mitten than a glove.
For those interested in watching ice melt, the deadline for buying tickets to the Nenana Ice Classic is a few days away.
http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/
It seems peculiar to do linear regression on a known cyclic pattern. Unless the tilt of the earths axis changes, there will continue to have winter and summer seasons. It seems peculiar to assume that 35 years of satellite data is representative of long term. As Mr. Watts corrects, sea ice records aren’t “nail biting”. There needs to be more data to understand long term cycle, but all won’t live that long.
I would think that the long term historical records of when high latitude northern ports are ice free would be just as valid. I tember that there beenhave some posts here about some place in Alaska where a River is ice free.
The older ice accumulating in the western Arctic means that the Beaufort Gyre has resumed its normal operation of circulating the ice clockwise in the western arctic. This process started back up in February of last year (after several years of little circulation). This contributed to 2013’s recovery of the ice as well as the extent of multi-year thick ice in the western Arctic right now. Probably the highest since 2007.
The oldest, thickest ice forms on the north side of the Arctic Archipelago. This is the coldest place in the Arctic but it also has the least amount of sea ice drift and the ice can end up land-fast here for several years. 5 metre and 6 metre ice can be found here.
After that, there can be two possible outcomes for this thick multi-year ice.
Its get pushed to the east by the wind, ends up in the transpolar drift and gets flushed out the Fram Strait where it melts in a few months regardless of its age. Old thick ice gone.
Or it gets pushed to the west by the wind and ends up in the Beaufort Gyre where it can remain for several years, circulating in the Gyre and surviving the melt seasons because of its age, thickness, low salinity.
Not hard to imagine how these wind patterns can result in several year oscillations of ice gradually increasing and becoming thicker or gradually decreasing and becoming thinner if lots of multi-year ice is getting flushed out the Fram Strait.
Great animation of what really happens in the Arctic here. The animation ends in October 2013, but note how much older thicker ice has continued circulating into the Beaufort Gyre up until today. Its moved at least 500 kms farther in the Gyre.
Arctic ice not gong anywhere soon.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/why-the-us-must-build-more-icebreakers-now-6693195
“When politicians argue over President Obama’s new 2013 budget proposal, one thing that should escape criticism is the $8 million to be spent on designing a new polar-class icebreaker for the Coast Guard. The hard part will follow: It will cost nearly $1 billion to actually build the ship, and it’s $1 billion that Congress needs to find. ”
( guess Obama was not going to shout loud for an ice breaker, )
2. The U.S. is falling behind.
China, a country with no Arctic coast, is building icebreakers—and that should get America’s attention……….
I loved this couple of sentences.
“The study found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend.”
In other words they can make a good stab at it if it does what they though it was going to.
How much are they paid for this?