From The Australian, 12 May 2014
Graham Lloyd
Antarctic sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres.
The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record “by a significant margin’’.
“This exceeds the past record for the satellite era by about 320,000sq km, which was set in April 2008,’’ the centre said.
Increased ice cover in Antarctic continues to be at odds with falling Arctic ice levels, where the summer melt has again pushed levels well below the average extent for 1981-2010. The centre said while the rate of Arctic-wide retreat was rapid through the first half of April, it had slowed.
The April Arctic minimum was 270,000sq km higher than the record April low, which occurred in 2007. The Antarctic sea ice extent anomalies were greatest in the eastern Weddell and along a long stretch of coastline south of Australia and the southeastern Indian Ocean. The centre said the increased ice extent in the Weddell Sea region appeared to be associated with a broad area of persistent easterly winds in March and April, and lower-than-average temperatures.
Full story at the Australian, here. h/t to The GWPF
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Here are some current plots of Antarctic Sea Ice from the WUWT Sea Ice Page
Antarctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or Greater
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – Click the pic to view at source
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Extent With Anomaly
National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – Click the pic to view at source
Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Area Anomaly
Cryosphere Today – Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois – Click the pic to view at source
Sea ice is an entirely different thing than an ice shelf, glacier, or ice sheet. While Antarctic sea ice extent get used around here as a proxy for all sorts of things, sea ice tells you very little about the current state or ultimate fate of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).
If you want to know what is happening to the WAIS, you should observe the WAIS. That is what the NASA research has done.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148
Leo Geiger says:
May 12, 2014 at 1:26 pm
May, might, could, etc. etc. Well, “NASA research” doesn’t seem to have actually done much observing, but they certainly seem happy to spew a bunch of unprovable nonsense.
A few points about the Antarctic ice sheets:
1. Its natural that the ice flows into the sea and reduces by melting in sea-water and forming icebergs, the important question is the rate of loss. It gets replaced by snowfall and direct conversion of water vapour to ice.
2. Antarctic ice sheet loss has probably got nothing to do with atmospheric warming, they don’t melt from above.
3. Geothermal warming from below is involved, with many subglacial lakes formed, many volcanoes in that region.
The warmists will go to town on this, even though its probably got nothing to do with AGW.
There is a mechanism proposed to explain how warming can cause more sea ice. The documented retreat of glaciers on the West Antarctic is purportedly putting more fresh water into the ocean reducing the salinity so that ice can form more easily. This claim must be refuted in order to say the increase in ice is proof warming isn’t happening.
The “imminent” collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet turns out to be 200-1000 years in the future according to the actual studies.
Wow, the Antarctic is beginning to resemble a golf ball.
Hmm?
george e. smith:
More importantly, the open ocean water is more efficient at radiatively cooling, as well as evaporatively, so a warmer Arctic ocean can do a better job at cooling, the earth, than a colder ice field can.
Important point. Significantly I think, ice insulates. At times it seems it is a defensive reaction to cooling water. It may show a hard switch between two states. Higher heat transfer to the atmosphere and a limited transfer state.
All data from last week’s WUWT (May 8) Sea Ice Page. (Today’s values (May 12) are slightly lower. Then again, we are 5 days closer to the maximum solar exposure in the Arctic. Thereafter, the arctic gets less sun every day.) But the Antarctic gets more everyday.)
1. “Excess” total sea ice area anomaly is now (May 8) greater than 1.050 million sq km’s.
Hmmmn. An “excess” total sea ice area anomaly (which combines both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice areas together) approaching the size of Hudson Bay.
2. “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area is now 1.67 Million sq km’s (May 8)… Or 97% the area of the entire Greenland ice cap. (A fact which 97% of government-paid climate scientists in the Obama administration will chose to ignore.)
3. By itself, “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area is now back over 1.67 Mkm^2 … a level only reached 5 times before.
A level NEVER reached between 1979 and 2007 in the modern (global warming) era, but has been passed five times in the 7 years between 2007 and 2014. Obviously, the more CO2 is in the air, the more Antarctic sea ice area keep increasing, right?
Combine this with the “Inconvenient Fact” that actual measured satellite global temperatures have NOT increased since 1996 … Makes Obama seem a bit – premature in claiming today that global warming is a national crisis?
4. “Excess” Antarctic sea ice area in 2014 is now (May 8) about 1.0 Mkm^2 GREATER than 2013′s sea ice area on this date last year. And 2013 set a record-breaking maximum Antarctic sea ice area in late December. Makes you wonder what will come later in this year.
5. And the Great Lakes sea ice – which is NOT included in the NSIDC’s “sea ice area” calculations! – has not yet melted away – but we are now in the second week in May. Steel, iron ore, coal production are already being affected, companies have already announced second quarter incomes and jobs are being affected in the Great Lakes region.
Now, Arctic sea ice is of course melting, and Arctic sea ice area has been dropping since early April as it does every year. Total sunlight onto the Arctic is increasing, and will increase until June 22 – about 5 weeks from now. Arctic sea ice will continue melting through the long summer days up north. But Arctic sea ice will continue decreasing its albedo until late July – decreasing from its present 0.93 to towards its low of 0.45 or so in July. But by mid-September when Arctic sea ice is at its minimum and Antarctic sea ice will be near its maximum, the Antarctic sea ice edge will be irradiated by five TIMES as much solar energy per square meter than the Arctic sea ice edge.
So, if 5 times the solar radiation falls on 1.67 million “extra” square kilometers of newly-frozen “excess” Antarctic sea ice than falls on a missing 0.4 Mkm^2 of Arctic sea ice, what happens to the planet’s total heat balance?
Do we not cool off even more?
Interesting.
1. how do explain the fact that there has been NO INCREASE in Arctic summertime temperature since the DMI daily temperatures at 80 north started in 1959?
Instead, temperatures at 80 north latitude have decreased since 1959, and are decreasing faster the more that CO2 increases.
2. At today’s levels, since open Arctic waters lose more heat than ice-covered water than open water can absorb, how do you justify any concern about Arctic ice loss?
3. If Arctic sea ice loss is catastrophic because of the difference in albedo between open water and ice-covered water, why do you ignore the past 4 year’s gain in Antarctic sea ice? The steady gain in Antarctic sea ice since 1979?
4. The WAIS is surrounded by sea ice. Justify your (NASA’s) propaganda fro catastrophic loss . How can the 300 foot thick WAIS melt out if the 2 meter thick Antarctic sea ice continues to gain area AROUND the WAIS every year the past 4 years?
Ragnaar says:
May 12, 2014 at 2:22 pm
…”
Important point. Significantly I think, ice insulates …”
Here is a thermo type problem for all y’all….
Calculate the thickness of ice in a water tower place 125′ above ground and is spherical with a radius of 20′.
What is the maximum thickness the ice layer will be in the tower at a steady state condition.
Assume that the air temperature does not rise above 32 degrees F for 45 days.
Will the tank need to be heated? If so at what rate?
I am sure if left a few more assumptions off.
george> “so a warmer Arctic ocean can do a better job at cooling, the earth, than a colder ice field can.”
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Isn’t that exactly what’s just happened?
Leo Gieger – the supposed mechanism for the melting the ice sheet is increasingly ‘warm’ sea-water, not the atmosphere. The proven requirement for increasing sea ice is colder sea-water usually concentrated by wind. What effect does logic then suggest increasing sea-ice will have on the supposed mechanism for melting the ice sheet?
“Scientists” are having a field day with the “worrisome Antarctic ice sheet melt”.
To wit:
University of Washington glaciologist Ian Joughin
“It does seem to be happening quickly,”
“We really are witnessing the beginning stages.”
“the early-stage collapse has begun.”
It’s likely because of man-made global warming and the ozone hole which have changed the Antarctic winds and warmed the water that eats away at the feet of the ice, researchers said
NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot
“The system is in sort of a chain reaction that is unstoppable,” said, chief author of the NASA study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “Every process in this reaction is feeding the next one.”
Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center
“It’s bad news. It’s a game changer,”
“We thought we had a while to wait and see. We’ve started down a process that we always said was the biggest worry and biggest risk from West Antarctica.”
Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University
“That means sea level rise by the year 2100 is likely to be about three feet”
Box of Rocks says:
May 12, 2014 at 2:50 pm
Some watertowers in the Northern states are heated. They can form ice inside.
Shallow ocean temp profile under ice:
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2012/BRW_MBS12_currTprof.png
At the top of the figure is snow, then ice, then sea water. The temperature profile has me thinking the ice and snow are insulating.
Village Idiot on May 12, 2014 at 11:42 am
Does this mean that the forecast Great Cooling has started?
It may have started a couple of thousand years ago. It will take several thousand more.
What’s the data on Antarctic ice volume?
Irrelevent. Why do you ask?
You are trying to make a point, but you have exactly the WRONG geometry to make your point.
In your case (a spherical tower holding water high up above the ground in the midst of sub-freezing air), it is the amount of sunight received AND the air temperature that matters, NOT the layer of ice forming continuously on top of the water in the spherical tower.
But … that is NOT the geometry in the high arctic.
First, consider the case of 1 Mkm^2 of sea ice at the equator above the atmosphere exposed to sunlight (This is, after all, what the so-called climate scientists use their classrooms and on their mid-term exam tests). When the sunlight hits this “iceberg” in space, it reflects sunlight proportional to the ice albedo of 0.95. If that 1.0 million sq km’s of ice were to melt, the darker albedo of seawater at 0.066 would require the sea water to absorb more much heat energy and the water would heat up the air and, eventually, the earth.
The Antarctic sea ice varies over the year between a latitude of 71 degrees south (at it minimum sea ice extents of 3-4 Mkm^2) and extents as far north as 59 south latitude (at its recent maximums of 19-20 Mkm^2 sea ice extents.) At these latitudes, the edge of Antarctic sea ice receives 5 times the amount of solar radiation that the edge of the Arctic sea ice does in mid and late September each year. At these latitudes of 60 – 70 south, the solar energy penetrates less atmosphere, has much less losses in the atmosphere, hits the water at high solar elevation angles every hour of the day, and is hit with substantially more solar radiation all year for more hours of every day of the year.
So YES, if the antarctic sea ice edge expands – goes further north – more solar energy is reflected from the earth with each square meter of Antarctic sea ice expansion.
Not so in the high arctic – particularly at the tie of minimum Arctic sea ice extents. The edge of the Arctic ice varies somewhat but can be averaged at 80 north latitude to 78 north latitude in recent years. At these latitudes in mid-September, the sun is only 8 to 10 degrees above the horizon. The albedo if BOTH water is 0.30 – 0.35 at these angles. Worse, the sunlight is trying to penetrate 8 to 14 atmosphere thicknesses at these low solar elevation angles. So their is almost no solar energy being absorbed – IF the sunlight can actually penetrate the 70% clouds found that far north at this time of year. If there are clouds, even LESS solar energy gets through to strike the top of the sea ice or water.
So, if the Arctic sea ice melts, little solar energy is absorbed into the Arctic waters through the 12 hours of sunlight at mid-September Not zero, but very little compared to lower latitudes.
However, if the open arctic water is exposed, longwave radiation losses increase significantly.
Evaporation losses – zero if ice-covered – go up significantly.
Conduction and convection losses increase when the sea ice not present.
So, if the Arctic sea ice melts under today’s condition in the Arctic anytime between late August and early April (7 months of the year!~) more heat is lost from the Arctic ocean than can be absorbed into the newly exposed sea water from the sunlight.
RACookPE1978 says:
May 12, 2014 at 7:40 pm
I think the more likely answer is the polar ice exhibits more of a negative feedback overall. Insulation or lack there of, trumping albedo.
Arctic sea ice coverage is within two standard deviations. This is indicative of random natural variability. The average Antarctic land ice mass loss is 69 Gt/yr in 2002-2010. Equivalent to 0.19 mm/yr sea level rise. This is less than the estimated 0.2 to 0.4 mm/yr contribution of glaciers to sea level rise in the last century. Antarctic ice mass loss must have slowed down.
“Irrelevent. Why do you ask?”
How is the volume of the ice irrelevant to how much ice there is? How is how much ice there is irrelevant?
RACook
“So, if the Arctic sea ice melts under today’s condition in the Arctic anytime between late August and early April (7 months of the year!~) more heat is lost from the Arctic ocean than can be absorbed into the newly exposed sea water from the sunlight.”
No. The solar insolation in the Arctic on summer is about 500 W/m^2. The seawater must have a temperature of 37.5 C to radiate 500 W/m^2. If the water is cooler than this, it will be heated by the sun.
“However, if the open arctic water is exposed, longwave radiation losses increase significantly.
Evaporation losses – zero if ice-covered – go up significantly. Conduction and convection losses increase when the sea ice not present.”
Incoming solar insolation is higher than outgoing longwave radiation. Evaporation does not change the temperature of water because it is latent heat. Conduction and convection depend on air temperature if it is cooler or warmer than water temperature. I guess that depends if the wind is blowing from the open sea or from the frozen sea.
JimS says:
May 12, 2014 at 12:14 pm
Oh, I get it now, the thing that fell on Chicken Little’s head that started him flapping about “the sky is falling,” was a chunk of ice.
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Off topic, but Spaceweather made mention several days ago that on the 24th of this month, the Earth will transit “through” the debris field of an old comet. They are calling this a first time event for us.
@ur momisugly Benjamin P…the Sea Ice Index page shows all of the data and anomalies for extent and volumes for both poles.
Are you trying to claim that longwave radiation is the only heat loss from Arctic waters? That’s wrong – unless you have this mental image of that iceberg-in-space that I’ve seen in university exams.
Well, I am specifically and very exactly talking NOT about some mythical “summer day” in the Arctic – you may pick any one you wish – but the very real mid-September days when this supposed “Arctic sea ice crisis” is at its minimum. So, at the 2012 Arctic sea ice minimum of 3.0 Mkm^2, the edge of the Arctic sea was a rough cap over the arctic going fro the pole down to 80 north latitude. At that latitude on Sept 22 (you may pick another day-of-year if you wish) the ACTUAL clear sky no clouds maximum solar radiation onto a flat surface is 7.0 watts/m^2 at 0700, 57 watts/m^2 at 09:00, 100 at 11:00 through 13:00, back down to 57 watts again at 15:00 (3:00 pm), and only 7 watts/m^2 at 17:00 (%:00 pm). Sunlight is of 0.0 between 17:00 and 07:00 the next morning.
Now, where did you get your 500 watts/m^2 at what latitude at what day of year? (Clear sky only now!)
So, for these few watts of incoming solar energy, YOU claim all the energy is radiated away by long wave? Convection alone is 35 – 50 watts/m^2 into the wind-swept air. Evaporation depends on air temperature of course – 30 – 70 watts/m^2 is an accepted value.
Longwave radiation, eh?
So, calculate this: Emissivity of water and ice are nearly the same. Both are emitting into the same cloudy sky, or clear sky if you wish. Longwave radiation occurs 24 hours per day though.
If the surface is open water, then the surface temperature is 2-4 degrees C. 275 to 277 K.
if the surface is ice-covered, then the radiating surface is at air temperature: -10 C to -15 C that day-of-year.
Hmmmn. Only (273-15) = 258 K, right?
So, open water radiates (278^4)/(258^4) MORE energy than does ice-covered water, right?
35% more energy is lost from open Arctic water in Arctic waters at 80 north in mid-September.
A picture might help. Ocean heat loss in winter:
http://www.whoi.edu/cms/images/lstokey/2005/1/v39n2-schmitt3en_5614.gif
The amount of solar energy reflected by sea ice or by open water at sea level is independent of ice volume. Reflection only depends on area and solar elevation angle. (In the arctic, sea ice albedo also depends of day-of-year, varying between 0.93 in early April down to 0.45 in mid-July.) The elevation of the central Antarctic ice cap is NOT changing over time. The total arae of the Antarctic ice cap stays at 14.0 Mkm^2.
The area of the ice shelves around Antarctica are NOT changing with time, they are steady at 3.5 Mkm^2. By the way, these ice shelves are NOT included in the NSIDC’s antarctic sea ice totals.
Almost all of the record-breaking high 19.0+ Mkm^2 Antarctic sea ice we’ve had recently melts every year. (Unlike the Arctic sea ice which is only 50% first-year ice.) You can play games with claims of multi-year ice in the arctic, but NOT around the Antarctic.
So, at the same time that arctic sea ice is at 80 degrees north getting hit with 50 or 100 watts at noon, the antarctic sea ice edge is receiving five TIMES as much radiation on a horizontal square meter.
You need 5 times the sea ice loss in the arctic just to equal what is reflected back into space in the antarctic each second. And, at the low elevation angles of the sun in the arctic, even that ratio is too small.