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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@ur momisugly Bruce Cobb, there are three melting seasons left to see how accurately (or not) Wadhams called it. And even if he and Wieslaw Maslowski are off by a decade in their feedback-driven estimates of ice-free summer conditions they’d still be far closer than the majority of conservative modelers.
Nope. You are wrong.
1. Those average “Daily” insolation values are worthless, and more than useless, are (deliberately) misleading because they infer people can use average “radiation levels” and multiply by “average” albedoes! The radiation received at each hour (itself a coarse “average” for the entire 60 minutes) must be multiplied by the albedo at that same hour for the same (assumed) cloud cover and relative humidity and atmospheric clarity, because the sun is changing elevation angle each hour through ever-deeper (or shallower) air masses.
Those 12 hours when the sun is below the horizon radiate long wave radiation each hour, evaporate latent heat energy each hour, convect and conduct heat energy each hour to the ever-changing arctic air temperature – which, by the way, is ALSO not at some “average” daily temperature either!
If your solar insolation model of 2006 generates “average daily values” then, it too, is useless. Show the results for each hour of each day for each month in question.
Show the results for direct radiation and diffuse radiation separately.
Show the assumed cloud cover and atmospheric turbidity for each day.
2. Hmmn, I DID read and use the sea ice albedo daily measured values from Curry.
3. Hmmmn. I am using the curve for the daily Arctic ice areas for the WORST case (the lowest ever) sea ice extents year because that IS what actually happened in 2012. If, in some year in the future, the only concern (from a CAGW religious standpoint worried about Arctic sea ice reduction) is an even greater sea ice retreat! We know absolutely that the low sea ice in 2012 was recovered (re-frozen) in 2013, and the so-called arctic amplification is also falsified by the recovery from 2007 into the following years of 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. The so-called arctic amplification could ONLY be validated IF the sea ice gets lower some year LATER than 2012.
Why should a higher average sea ice value from 30 and 40 years ago matter to the difference between one a square meter of sea ice either melting (open water) or sea ice (still frozen) radiation receive in September this year? THIS YEAR is the year that will be either melted water or frozen sea ice. That square meter, square kilometer, or million square kilometers will either melt, or it will freeze on any given day.
The resulting heat balance is instantaneous: what “excess” is reflected from an increased Antarctic sea ice extents cannot ever be recovered. It is lost immediately to space. What little bit is absorbed in the Arctic by the difference between a melted sq meter and an ice-covered square meter will be either positive or negative. The little bit extra that is hits the exposed flat surface might be absorbed by sea ice or reflected from sea ice, it might be either absorbed by the open water or reflected from the open water. In either case, once absorbed, the open water or sea ice gains energy, which is subsequently IMMEDIATELY either heats the water or the ice (storing energy to be released later in the day or night), evaporates the water, convects into the air, or re-radiates as longwave radiation.
Because the heat balance from an open sq meter of open ocean or sea ice depends NOT on any previous year’s “average” value, the only location that matters IS the edge of the sea ice THAT YEAR. In our case, not 1970 values, but 2012 (worst case for low sea ice) or 2013 (the record high sea ice extents for the Antarctic ice).
To compare sea ice to sea ice if yo didn’t want to use the very low 2012 arctic values, you could also useably compare the average of 2011 and 2013 values for both.
Oh, by the way, Antarctic sea ice extents has been increasing steadily now since May 2010. The edge of the Antarctic sea ice extents IS a very, very good approximation of a circle centered on the south pole. The Arctic, not so much. A small area towards Alaska gets as far south as 75 south, a larger area north of Iceland is even closer to the pole than 80 north.
Measured Arctic air temperatures at 80 north in the summer – you know, that time of the year when the sun is shining all the time up at 80 north – have not only NOT increased since 1959, but are now decreasing just as the Arctic sea ice decreases.
Perhaps the chart which should be presented most regularly is the total sea ice extent of both arctic and antarctic against long-term means.
I think you’ll find that for the majority of the past 12 months, that figure has been above the long-term average.
That’s not as good a measure as total sea ice volume, which could be smaller area*greater depth being greater than larger area*lesser depth of course.
But all the scaremongerers can be silenced if presented with the data for total sea ice volume, for that is what will determine sea level changes, after all. At least until the whole of Greenland melts in never-never land…..
Just for comparison MASIE showed day 73 as this year’s maximum. They include satellite imagery and operational data along with microwave sensor results, so the amount of ice extent is different. Usually the numbers are close at the annual maximums, but MASIE will show much more ice than the others in the summer.
I can also observe that since the max on March 14, MASIE shows increases in ice extent in the Central Arctic and Barents Sea, offset by losses in Baffin-Gulf of St. Lawrence, Bering Sea and Baltic Sea.
As a matter of fact, the maximum so for for Central Arctic ice extent occurred in the last report dated April 2.
Magma says:
April 3, 2014 at 10:46 am
@ur momisugly Bruce Cobb, there are three melting seasons left to see how accurately (or not) Wadhams called it. And even if he and Wieslaw Maslowski are off by a decade in their feedback-driven estimates of ice-free summer conditions they’d still be far closer than the majority of conservative modelers.
Hang it up, Magma. The whole “arctic death spiral” thing is nothing but a Warmist fantasy, based more on wishful thinking and confirmation bias than anything else.
There is nothing that unusual going on in the arctic, any more than anyplace else. Indeed, with cooling likely in the coming decades, in a decades’ time the ice could very well be back close to 1979 levels.
This is has a lot to do with the Arctic Sea Ice, Sun and AMO.
New paper came out yesterday Here..http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/natural-variations-in-atlantic-ocean-affect-climate-says-research.html
Chart I put together from last year Arctic Sea Ica Sept Mean and AMO chart.
You be the judge, I can see it what about controls and Drives the Arctic Sea Ice. TSI and AMO
https://twitter.com/NJSnowFan/status/451794965769646080/photo/1
@njsnowfan says:
April 3, 2014 at 2:00 am
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.
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I had a similar thought at the beginning of this year. The rapid increase in solar activity last fall matched the change in night time temps in No California, where I live. The affect was a rise of 20+ F for the night time. The days became comfortable. I remarked on that with a comment in January, but the several responses were negative. I wondered if part of the reason for the connection was due to the proximity to the Pacific? Is this a direct response of the ocean reacting to the changes in solar activity?
RACookPE1978 says:
April 3, 2014 at 6:15 am
———————————
Two days ago the southern sea ice stepped above the +2 sd line and is on a heading to increase further, from the +2 line.
Magma says:
@ur momisugly Bruce Cobb, there are three melting seasons left to see how accurately (or not) Wadhams called it.
Wadhams is just looking for a excuse to convince everyone to let him play God with our climate.
The next ten years will slope upwards as much as the last ten sloped down. The couple of years will ramp up a little less dramatically than the last two years.
The next OMG low year will be 2019 or 2020 but will not be as low as either 2007 or 2012.
The “death spiral” turned out to be spring coil and it’s just bounced.
David Schnare says:
…In March, when Arctic sea ice is at its maximum. I don’t think anybody has made the claim that the Arctic will be ice free year-around any time soon.
If you look at when it will be ice free in the late summer / early fall (i.e., when sea ice is at its minimum), that will occur MUCH sooner: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/JulySeaIceExt.jpg or, worse yet, minimum Arctic sea ice volume: http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b0153920ddd12970b-pi
Greg says:
And, if it doesn’t turn out that way? Then what?
Only if you apply past tense to your own fantasy predictions as if they have turned out to be fact.
David Schnare says:
…In March, when Arctic sea ice is at its maximum. I don’t think anybody has made the claim that the Arctic will be ice free year-around any time soon.
If you look at when it will be ice free in the late summer / early fall (i.e., when sea ice is at its minimum), that will occur MUCH sooner: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2013/10/Figure3_Sept2013_trend.png or, worse yet, minimum Arctic sea ice volume: http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b0153920ddd12970b-pi
joeldshore says:
April 3, 2014 at 2:31 pm
“Within a year or two or three there will be no sea-ice cover on the Arctic Ocean in September for the first time in about 3 million years. Within a decade or two the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free all-year round.” –Paul Beckwith in 2013
“On current trends, the Arctic will be entirely ice-free in September by about 2016, and will be ice-free year-round by the early 2030s.” –Kevin Drum in 2011
Shall I go on?
Keep in mind that last Summer there was so little Arctic sea-ice that two or three rowboats were able to get more than halfway to the pole (from Seattle). In fact, in 2006 there was so little sea-ice that I was able to get within 5000km of the pole using a clapped out VW bus! Think about that.
joeldshore says:
April 3, 2014 at 2:24 pm
Precisely. Well said. I’m glad we’ve cleared all that up.
RE Chris Beal:
Keep up the hard work. It is no sin to test ideas against reality. You actually learn as much, of not more, by being wrong as you do when you are right. And learning is discovery. And discovery is cool.
I think it is only the upper surface of the scientific community that has been corrupted by the madness of current power-politics and money-grubbing. The scum always rises to the top. Beneath there are many scientists who are in love with truth and discovery, just as you are.
My own experience has been that the blue-collar scientists who do all the work actually appreciate the interest of laymen. Sometimes even my most idiotic questions make them pause and scratch their heads, for it involves a line of thought they hadn’t considered.
Your work is worthy. Keep it up.
http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=60317
The winter that never ends….: This week’s snow survey confirms what everyone is talking about – it still looks like the middle of winter.
In fact, not only did we set some new records for snow depth for the years the NBMCA has on record, the area rarely receives this amount of snow in an entire season.”
RE: Michael Moon says:
April 3, 2014 at 6:13 am
You are on the right track, to consider the effects of those nine, huge lakes. It is striking, in the fall, how they warm downwind areas by being unfrozen, and being like radiators that remember summer’s heat. (The same can be said for coastal areas of ocean, on the Arctic coast, Hudson and Baffin Bay, and the Baltic, but these areas are actually included in “extent” graphs.)
Few consider the buffering effect these huge lakes have on temperatures in North America. However the day they are frozen over areas downwind see temperatures plunge. (The same can be said for Hudson Bay, etc.)
Few have a clue how huge and deep Great Bear and Great and Lesser Slave lakes are. They rival the southern Great Lakes. (Lake Winnipeg is much shallower, but significant.) To look at thermometers alone, without considering the effect of these huge radiators, is to gain a false impression.
In the same manner, to look at spring temperatures without understanding those lakes are huge refrigerators, is to gain a different false impression.
RE: Tom in Denver says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:12 am
I am glad to see someone paying attention to mundane details, such as what is actually happening. Hudson Bay, and also Baffin Bay, have been interesting to watch this winter, most especially because in the north, where it is coldest, there have been occasional patches of open water.
I hate to say this about my fellow Skeptics, but they do tend to freak-out, despair and generally have fits, when there is open water in the arctic. Perhaps it is only in reaction to Alarmists cheering and high-five-ing in glee. I feel everyone should just calm down. Open water can appear in Antarctica, even at temperatures of minus-fifty. It is due to the wind pushing ice away from shore, and relatively “warm” water up-welling, (And by “warm” I mean below the freezing point of fresh water but above the freezing point of salt water.) It is something called a “polynya.”
Because the winds were so strong from the north, polynyas appeared in the north of both Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay last winter. As soon as open water appeared, there was a spike in the local 2 meter surface temperatures. (Wild cheering from Alarmists.) There were then resultant updrafts and weak low pressure systems, until the open water froze over. Local temperatures then plunged. (Wild cheering from Skeptics.)
I think we need to pay less attention to 2 meter surface temperatures, and more attention to the temperature of the sea. Any time a polynya forms the sea is getting severely cooled by churning winds. Also the ice that has been moved south is going somewhere. In the case of Baffin Bay it was surging south right along the coast of Labrador and out into the Atlantic, creating above-average ice-extents in an area adjacent to the Gulf Stream.
Hmm. Think about that. If you dump extra ice next to the Gulf Stream, will the Gulf Stream be warmer? (The same goes for surges of ice heading south through Fram Strait, and eventually Denmark Strait, on the east coast of Greenland.)
In the case of Hudson Bay, the ice is pushed south to what? A coastline. It can’t flush out into the Atlantic. So, how thick is the ice down there on the south coast?
I wish they would up-date the Navy maps, but the most recent map shows a thin red line along the southern coast of Hudson Bay, indicative of ice piled up fifteen feet thick, even as ice up along the north coast is as little as three feet thick.
This is what you notice, when you pay attention to mundane details. Only reality can produce situations as illogical as ice thicker in the south than in the north. Computer models are far more “logical,” and seldom produce ice fifteen feet thick in the south and three feet thick in the north.
Another mundane detail I noticed this past winter was how different the cross-polar-flow was from the winter of 1976-1977. Back then the air took a short route, and this past winter it took a long route. In 1976-1977 the air spent little time over the Arctic Sea, jumping across from East Siberia to Alaska via the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, whereas this winter it took the longest possible route, over the Pole itself and then down west of Greenland through the Canadian Archipelago. What difference did this make, down in the USA?
I get to keep my bragging rights. It was colder in 1976-1977, in terms of record-setting cold. It never hit minus-twenty on the clam flats of Maine, this past winter. It didn’t get close. But I think this past winter may have had a more chilling effect, in the long term. Why?
This past winter’s cross-polar-flow had to cross a lot of water, chilling the water, before it gave the eastern USA a bone-chilling winter. A mundane detail I noted was how minus-seventy air departing Siberia is warmed crossing the Arctic Ocean, even when that ocean is ice-covered. The winds crack the ice, exposing cold wind to “warm” open water in “leads”, and polynyas form at the top of Baffin and Hudson Bay, warming the winds more, until they are a balmy minus-thirty, as they start south to freeze my socks off.
Selah. (Pause, and consider.)
If the Arctic Ocean lost enough heat to warm the cross-polar-flow between twenty and forty degrees, as it moved from Siberia and Canada, is the Arctic Ocean warmer this spring?
I refuse to answer. I’ll stick with observing the mundane details.
However I will say this: I decided, last spring, that I should stop listening to people who seemed less than logical, and that I should spend a year actually observing arctic weather and arctic sea-ice myself, to see the truth. It is darn tedious. I have better things to do, and I’m going to be darn glad when the year is over, and I will have fulfilled my vow. However it is not the arctic itself that is tedious. The arctic is actually amazing and beautiful. What is tedious is having to listen to people talk like they know a hill of beans about sea-ice, when they quite obviously have never payed attention to the mundane details.
Once my year is done and my vow is fulfilled, I fully intend to turn a cold shoulder to the topic of sea-ice, and to attend to the mundane details of more profitable pursuits, such as collecting aluminum cans from a roadside.
Pamela Gray posted “And let me also add that every school specialist, principal, and superintendent in the public school system should also be required to have graduate level statistics classes in their coursework.”
If they did have such qualifications, they wouldn’t pursue a career in public education. I think they’d want a $100K+/year job after experience and public schools do not pay that. The people educating our children are paid a salary that’s at a level pays less than a bartender or stripper (after taxes).
It will have to come from somewhere else. Critical thinking and statistical analysis are pretty hard concepts to understand.
Re: RACookPE1978 says:
April 3, 2014 at 7:10 am
“The Great Lakes are NOT included in the NSIDC’s sea ice extents”
Precisely my point! When do you suppose we will have “lost ALL of today’s Arctic sea ice”?
Caleb here is the link for Huddon Bay Ice thickness, Canada ice service data.
http://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod20/page3.xhtml
Thanks for Kind words above, our eyes are are out best tool to observe what is really going on.
Why we even look at arctic sea ice is an interesting question. Without Alarmism, it would be of relatively little interest, except to those in the oil and shipping industries.
I suppose learning has its’ own rewards. But yeah, mainly, the reason we skeptics/climate realists look at it is to see if, in fact, the Alarmists are correct in their claim that the “arctic is melting”. Even further, if the arctic “is melting” what does that mean, and why? The Alarmists have latched onto the meme of arctic sea ice disappearing completely in summer for two reasons: the biggie is that it sounds scary, so is useful in fanning the flames of climate alarmism. As usual, they take a certain fact, that arctic sea ice declined over the 30-year period 1980 – 2010, and extrapolate like crazy. The idea that the ice cover beginning in 1980 was perhaps a bit high then, maybe due to 30-year period of cooler doesn’t seem to occur to them, or gets dismissed out of hand because it doesn’t fit their climatist idee fixe. Not content with that, though, they’ve fabricated this idea of a “death spiral” (ooh, scary-sounding), with all sorts of positive feedbacks and consequences for the earth’s climate (all negative, of course). Alarmists desperately NEED for arctic sea ice to decline. It has great value for climatism. We look, and point out that, no, although there has been a decline over that 30-year period, that in itself means nothing. Further, the ice appears to have stabilized, and may be growing again, much the same way temperatures have stabilized for as much as 17 years or more, and appear to be dropping now. Also, it turns out that watching and learning about the ice can be fun. Especially when it doesn’t do what the Alarmists want it to.
Gary Pearse says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:37 am
Phil. says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:07 am
Gary Pearse says:
April 3, 2014 at 8:43 am
April 3rd and you can still walk all on ice and snow from Sapporo Japan to Detroit.
“You’d need to take some very big steps to cross to Sakhalin!”
Why do that, Walk on the ice to land bordering the Sea of Okhotsk?
Good luck with that there is no continuous ice there to walk on!
Jimbo says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:29 am
Phil. says:
April 3, 2014 at 5:40 am
richard says:
April 3, 2014 at 5:09 am
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….”
Because of the increased commercial use of the Northern sea route between Europe and the Pacific as a result of the decrease in summer sea ice. Interesting how you continue to ignore that in your post!
Interesting you missed the last paragraph in the link. They project increased business for their ICEBREAKERS for the next 30 years! Who needs ice breakers in say 2025?
The Russians will still need them because the ice will probably not be gone year round before then!
Just because the ice is gone in September doesn’t mean that there’s no use for icebreakers during the rest of the year.