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.
Steve Oregon says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:19 am
crosspatch says: 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?
That’s my line.
If it can be said there is a growing need for sea ice prediction I’d like to know why.
I am skeptical of why we spend vast sums monitoring so many things without any regard for where those resources may otherwise be needed for more serious pursuits.
The ‘need’ is due to the rapidly increase in commercial traffic via the Arctic during recent years.
Magma says:
@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.
Translation: They’d still be wrong.
So it appears that the arctic is continuing to warm and that the US Navy is correct
John – It also appears as if WUWT isn’t too keen on presenting its readers with evidence that supports the US Navy’s outlook:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2014/04/whats-up-with-watts-moderation-episode-1/
We have lost 50% of the multi year ice in 7 years that is significant the heat must be coming from somewhere
There are few if ANY bureaucratic institutions LESS beholden to political pressure than the senior military. They will do whatever is necessary to follow their political leaders, and they have actively SWORN oaths to follow those political leaders to the literal death – if need be – to follow those political leaders.
Now, one “could” be so blinded by their CAGW religion to pretend that the United States ‘ actual “military leadership” would be doing everything required to protect lives and prudently and practically be preparing for an actual war in the future with real enemies that will actually kill their own troops and sink their own ships and destroy their own aircraft. And, in truth, there are almost certainly a few of those such real military leaders left somewhere in the military bureaucracy.
They are NOT the ones getting promoted under the Obama administration. They ARE the ones getting fired. The ones getting ignored. The ones getting shot actually troops in Afghanistan under Rules of Engagement that are DESIGNED to ensure American troops get shot and killed, and DESIGNED to ensure that the Afghan shooters are – bluntly – given legal advice and medical treatment after shooting American troops. And do your precious “military leaders” who fund such papers and documents protest such rules?
No.
So, under an administration where more Air Force money is spent/wasted on “ecological” fuels than ANY other institution worldwide, does the fact that you can cite a paper claiming the Arctic “might” be ice-free in a few years matter? under an administration that sends its US military Academy “leaders” to a government-MANDATED field to New Jersey NOT to study the Revolutionary battlefields and MILITARY logistics and problems of figthing a “real war”? So, what did this propaganda-obsessed administration send its future military leaders to New jersey to do?
Go to tour Egyptian relics, Chinese temples, Buddhist temples, Muslim mosques, and Indian temples. (No Christian churches or Catholic sites of course. – THOSE would imply some kind of “link” between church and the state! )
And, why did this administration force these cadets to go to Muslim mosques? So they can “understand” the people who are shooting them with AK-47’s and RPG’s.
No.
And, if the Arctic does become ice free, show me WHY IT MATTERS. Over the entire 24 hour day every day of the year from the end of August through the beginning of April, the Arctic LOSES more heat energy when it is ice-free than if it were ice-covered.
So, less Arctic ice between September and April, the more the planet cools.
The more Antarctic sea ice extents ANY TIME of year, the more teh planet cools.
And, by the way, the EXCESS Antarctic sea ice extents today? That “little bit” of EXCESS antarctic sea ice extents you are ignoring and trying to get us to ignore with your government-paid “military expertise” propaganda?
It is “only” 1/3 the size of Greenland.
By the way, who is paying you to spread the propaganda responsible for the immediate deaths of millions each year?
John says:
April 5, 2014 at 8:44 am
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A large part of that loss was wind driven sea ice being pushed south into the Atlantic.The other source of the melt is from the warmer Atlantic waters feeding into the eastern Arctic.
Re: RACookPE1978 says:
April 5, 2014 at 9:57 am
What has any of that got to do with whether the NSIDC are correct when they state that “Air temperatures however remained unusually high throughout the Arctic during the second half of March” and “a large area of the multiyear ice has drifted to the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea, where warm conditions are likely to exist later in the year.”, or whether Caleb is correct when he states that “I think we need to pay less attention to 2 meter surface temperatures”, or whether the US Navy are correct when they state that “as multi-year sea ice in the Arctic Ocean recedes, previously unreachable areas may open for maritime use for a few weeks each year”?
What has any of that got to do with WUWT moderation policy for that matter?
Well, when you’re painfully ignorant, but trying to push a particular Weltanshauung, you might post as a Disney character promoting a weblog by asking stupid questions on more popular weblogs. Maybe that’s the answer.
I just wish I could remember what “James Hunt” was in Cockney rhyming slang.
Stark – My dear old Dad was born within whistling distance of the bells of Bow. Unfortunately he’s now pushing up the daisies, so I can’t ask him to refresh your memory for you.
I’m still ignorant about what any of that has to do with the topic of this thread though. Allow me to refresh your memory. It’s “multiyear ice on the rise”.
Snow White says:
April 7, 2014 at 3:34 am
For once we agree, Little Jimmy.
Quoting me out of context again Stark? Since nobody in here seems to have noticed, I thought I’d just point out that things are warming up over in Siberia as we speak:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2014/04/the-arctic-sea-ice-recovery-vanishes-even-more/