Antarctic Sea Ice Increase and Global Warming

Reading a new science fiction book called OLD MARS. Series of short stories dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs. If you have never read Burroughs (1875-1950 — also the creator of Tarzan) this is the Mars of canals filled with water and several Martian races living in fantastic cities. The Mars of swashbuckling swordplay.
Suddenly I understand THE PAUSE. Mars is a dying world growing ever colder. The water in the canals is almost frozen solid. To save their planet the Martians have been stealing earth’s heat —
transmitting it to Mars via Z-rays.
One of earth’s greatest heroes — Super Mandia — has been dispatched to the fourth planet by a ultra secret organization known only as The Team — traveling there in a hot air balloon — daring for the first time the terrible turbulences of the interplanetary atmosphere –. accompanied only by Captain Kelvin Trenberth — earth’s foremost expert on interplanetary heat exchange.
Perhaps I should write this? — telling the full tale?
Eugene WR Gallun.

I too am sorry. The “severe, largely anthropogenic warming of the Northern Thermal Hemisphere (NTH)” is largely because of two factors: 1) most of the thermometers now being on runway tarmac or other thermally-compromised places, and 2) liars and cheats masquerading as scientists who keep shuffling UHI off to the past and to cooler spots. The only way now that these compromised data sources can give us “more heat” is if there actually is global warming. And if we go into “global cooling” they will “hide the decline” for years. Thankfully, we have the satellites, and at least one such system seems to be run by honest, competent people. I may not live to see these criminals go to jail, but if, when the blinders come off and a desire for retribution builds, I will do all in my power to see at least the worst offenders given the works. They are destroying the concept of science; their proposed policies are genocidal; and they should be made exemplars of how not to do it in the future.

Nick Stokes says:
June 6, 2014 at 4:33 pm
…I looked at AR1. The graph is on p224. It shows an upward movement (NH) from 1973 to 1979 of about 0.6 M sq km. That isn’t much. The same graph shows a SH down move of 2.4 M sq km over the same period…..

Thank you Nick. As you know Antarctic sea ice extent is near record levels in recent years and has been trending UP since 1979. Now here is something else that jmrsudbury said:

“The ice extent increased until 1979 then fell again. Your ‘progressive arctic ice loss’ is just a part of a cycle.”

Here is a link I provided in this thread:

Abstract – 2010
Twentieth century bipolar seesaw of the Arctic and Antarctic surface air temperatures
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL042793/abstract

Maybe it’s just coincidence.

Re previous post, excuse me, that was 1361 W/m2 TSI approx average, not 1360.
Since it systematically varies by an average of 1 Watt/m^2 every two days (a total variation of 90 W/m^2, up AND down per year) it hardly matters. By the time I’m posting this in response we are 1/4 of the way through your error.
Someday I’m going to make a list of the primary secular variations in energy input to the atmosphere. The list goes something like:
a) Earth’s “mean insolation” 1360-ish W/m^2, depending on how you average it.
b) Earth’s albedo. Horribly variable, both spatially and temporally, it has an average of around 30% but varies from around 3% at dead noon over clear water to around 90% (clouds) to 95% (fresh snowfall) at the surface, plus a substantial amount from the atmosphere. Albedo is an “off the top” removal of solar insolation — it is counts essentially elastic removal of incoming solar energy with no heating at all.
c) Earth’s orbital eccentricity (range 91 W/m^2, the thing that has to be temporally averaged over an elliptical orbit that spends longer further away than it does close up). This is around 15% variation of the TOA mean insolation, 7.5% up, 7.5% down (roughly, actually it’s a bit more down than up if one temporally averages because of equal areas in equal times).
These are all “off the top” variations, independent of atmospheric chemistry per se altogether, although albedo is coupled to aerosol and water vapor content and the particular history of the jet stream and snowfall and ocean currents and El Nino and… so albedo in particular is a major, largely unpredictable, dynamic quantity.
Then there are atmospheric contributions:
d) The greenhouse effect per se — atmospheric absorption of outgoing LWIR radiation and its re-radiation downward, where it functions as (your choice of, lady or the glass) a reduction in the NET rate that the surface loses energy or as an additional gain at ground level (that reduces the total, not net, loss).
e) Air pressure variation. The pressure in the atmosphere varies from a low of ballpark 87 kPa to a high of 108 kPa, a total range of around 21% around the mean of 101 kPa. Air pressure also varies from an average of 101 kPa around “sea level” (which itself is a complex thing to define on a sphere, but skip that) to 30 kPa around the top of Mount Everest — it varies with altitude and temperature both. Atmospheric absorption is primarily (at low altitude) due to homogeneous (pressure) broadening of the individual lines in the greenhouse gas bands in the LWIR part of the spectrum where thermal radiation from local temperatures is peaked. The principle contributor to the width of the lines is the mean free time between collisions, which decreases with increasing temperature and pressure (broadening the lines). Line broadening is a two-sided sword, though — as lines broaden they do increase the net absorptivity of the atmosphere, but since the broadening decreases with altitude the extended “wings” actually absorb and reradiate at wavelengths that the atmosphere above is largly transparent to. The net “warming” effect depends on the details of the vertical pressure profile — on days where the pressure lapse is rapid as one goes up, high surface pressure can actually have a net cooling effect compared to some uncomputable GHG baseline where the pressure variation is more uniform. I do not know exactly what this variation ends up being compared to the baseline downwelling radiation, but at a guess it is a 4-5% effect (given the much larger pressure variation).
And then there is more, but I haven’t really worked it all out and don’t have good estimates for it. Interesting to think about. CO_2 variation is maybe 7th or 8th on the list.
rgb

Robert Brown says:
June 6, 2014 at 5:57 am
And “WOW”, you sure said a “mouth-full” when you said it. And I might add, a “mouth-full” that needs repeated every time the “natives” get restless and excited about their “claims, contentions, estimations and/or calculations” that are rooted in and/or based on “surface temperature records”. Hopefully, a re-read of your commentary will “trigger” a reality “check” of their thinking/thought processes.
And if I may, I will offer my “difference of opinion” to your following commentary, to wit:
“It is a simple matter of fact that the southern hemisphere has comparatively few major urban centers and a much smaller population. It has fewer thermometers, and the thermometers it has are much, much less likely to have been read in the same site, regularly, for 164 years back to 1850. In 1850 Antarctica, much of Africa, much of South America, and the bulk of Australia were Terra Incognita, untouched and unvisited by westerners with their fancy scientific instrumentation, unsettled, uncivilized, unknown). Its oceans were visited by whalers and pirates and slavers, not scientific expeditions.”
——————–
Wherein you state …. “In 1850 Antarctica, much of Africa, … etc., etc. ”, ….. I would have stated …. “In 1900 ….” … and included a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere of actually being “Terra Incognita” relative to thermometer-based recording “regularity” of surface temperatures.