There’s an information war on the recent Antarctic sea ice records
Guest essay by Frank Lansner
Today Cryosphere reports 2,112 million km2 more sea ice around Antarctica than normal.
Fig 1
Reality is that we right now have an area matching the size of Greenland of extra sea ice floating around Antarctica. The nightmare for the global warming believers is if the growing ice around Antarctica should be linked to cooling, and so:
1) Some Re-analysis papers and more have been made showing that the ocean around Antarctica is not cooling (as original data suggests) but is in stead warming fast.
2) Several mechanisms have been suggested to argue how come ice can grow so much faster when in fact the water is supposed to have warmed up.
Therefore in the following I will first (part 1) go through some data sources to evaluate if it’s cooling or not in the area of ice-formation around Antarctica, and then (part 2) I will go through the most frequent attempts to explain faster ice formation in supposedly warmer waters.
PART 1: ARE THE OCEANS AROUND ANTARCTICA WARMING OR COOLING?
Fig 2
The red box: I have inserted the red box 73S-63S 220W-50E because this area will be used in the following to evaluate the situation in the ice forming waters around Antarctica.
NOAA use a base period approx. 1983-1995 and they report that the waters around Antarctica today are colder than normal. In fact this is the case most of the time in the last decade in NOAAs graphics, especially in the zone where extra winter ice is being formed.
Fig 3
CMC Canada use base period 1995-2009, but still we see temperatures of the ice forming waters near Antarctica are lower than normal.
SST
NCDC ERSST v3b2
Fig 4
I use the KNMI online climate explorer to get data from the “red box” area 73S-63S 220W-50E, see fig 2.
HadISST1:
Fig 5
Fine agreement with NSDC.
TAO buoys surface air temperature:
[figure 6 was in error, and the error originated at KNMI, as you can see below and also in comments (h/t to Bob Tisdale for his interaction with KNMI to get to the root of the problem):
Bob Tisdale writes in email to me:
The problem was that Frank uncovered a problem with the KNMI Climate Explorer when he tried (and was successful) to extract what he thought was “TAO Air Temp” data for the Southern Ocean, from a dataset that only includes data for the tropical Pacific.
The data in Frank’s Figure 6 wasn’t data for the Southern Ocean, it was tropical Pacific data. That was the glitch at KNMI. I notified KNMI. They corrected the problem and we can only get data from that dataset at KNMI when the correct tropical Pacific coordinates are used…thus the error message you just got.
We hope to add a corrected graph from KNMI soon – Anthony]
Fig 6
Again, Cooling.
The SST´s and to some degree surface air suggest a drop in temperatures especially around 2008
TLT, Air temperature lower troposphere from RSS:
Fig 7
Data suggest some cooling, certainly not warming.
Thus it seems that recent years for the area of ice formation around Antarctica show:
A: Decrease in Sea surface temperatures
B: Decrease in Air temperatures
C: Growth in Sea ice
These observations are in compliance, I´d say generally in science you can hardly demand more solid evidence to support any conclusion.
* * * It’s getting colder around Antarctica and so the ice is growing * * *
PART 2: MORE ICE CREATION IN STILL WARMER WATERS?
None the less alarmist sites like “Skeptical science” in stead seem to disregard the above conventional data sources and use exclusively projects that somehow ends up showing warming around Antarctica.
Fig 8
Left: Zhangs Re-analysis ending in 2004. Right: NASA´s Earth Obs, ending in 2007.
Zhang achieves a stunning 4-5 K/century warm trend around Antarctica, and NASA perhaps a little less. Notice the “Horse shoe” shape on Zhangs illustration, left. This is the area that I have used for all graphs above. Right: NASA is using infared measurement of the very surface meaning that their data represents the extremely thin top layer ( 1 mm ? ) of the land or ocean surface. The so called “skin layer”.
Such an extremely thin skin layer is much more vulnarable to changes in precipitation or winds than any of the more conventional datasets I have shown in this writing, and the skin layer represents much less mass. More wind in an area of below freezing air temperature is likely to yield warmer skin layer due to mix with warmer water. Here are some attempts to explain matters as I have seen them in debates and on alarmist sites like “Skeptical Science”.
“More precipitation”
Since rain is ice- enemy number one, we will have to assume that this increased precipitation comes as (cold) snow?
In the Antarctic winter air temperatures are low. Snow landing on sea ice will opbviously insulate the ice from cold air temperatures. So how come more snow (precipitation) should increase sea ice areas?
The addition of fresh water should lower salinity and increase the freezing temperature of the water and thus create more ice. But can precipitation really change salinity notably in the deep ocean hundreds or thousands kilometers from the shore?
“Salinity”
The thing is, I don’t see many actual graphs of the salinity that is supposed to be decreasing fast in order to increase freezing temperatures notably.
If Salinity is really the key argument in explaining more ice growth combined with more heat, then why don’t we see several climate institutions focus on Salinity graphs?
Fig 9
From the KNMI online service it is actually possible to retrieve a salinity graph, “EN3”.
SSS = Sea Surface Salinity
The freezing point of water increase approx. 0,7 K per 1% fall in salinity.
From the Salinity data we learn that:
1) Variation is small: From 3,385 % to 3,399 %, that is 0,014 mass % over the years.
Not too surprising since we are in the middle of the deep ocean. Varitaion corresponds to a 0,01 K change in freezing point.
2) To explain MORE ice formation over the years we needed to see LESS salinity.
Problem is, the waters around Antarctica show increased salinity.
In other words:
Variations in salinity are TOO SMALL to even be considered in the first place.
And on top of this, waters are actually getting slightly more salty, thus lowering the freeze point a tiny bit. This would explain a tiny reduction in ice formation, not the opposite.
“The Ozone concentraion has declined”
Ozone concentrations has stagnated since the early 1990´ies.
But in recent years something changed.
KNMI MSR Ozone:
Fig 10
Since 2011 the ozone concentration has increased fast. The extra ice formations are sometimes explained with the drop in ozone concentration, but in recent years the development has reversed.
So in order to maintain ozone as an explanation for more ice around Antarctica you will have to claim that this effect of Ozone works whenever ozone concentrations make any change at all.
“The winds did it”
The supposed role of ozone is to trigger winds and the winds are supposed to be much stronger now when the ice area is growing faster.
So the explanation goes that even though we have a strong warming, and thus supposedly warmer waters around the Antarctic, then winds blow out ice from the Antarctic main land so that this ice will end up in waters that are quite warm. And then this ice is not melting fast as one might expect? I’m not sure if I got that explanation right…
Anyway if this was true we would see that and the ice was pushed out into warmer waters, and there would be no ice formation near the edge of the ice. In fact there should be at least some melting.
Fig 11
The illustration from NRL show actual temperatures and the question is: Are huge ice masses pushed out from the mainland Antarctica to be surrounded by warmer waters?
This color is zero degrees Celsius, so the ice is today clearly surrounded by waters well below zero degrees.
So at least at first glance the suggestion that ice is not formed on the edge but in stead being pushed out from land to warmer waters appears not supported, but what really we need is an investiagation that actually proofs or disproofs this idea and show a well supported estimate of how much ice is being formed this way.
Conclusion:
The conventional data sources like SST, MAT suggest that the bulk of the ocean surface mass is cooling in recent years accompanied by faster ice growth. Arguments based on Ozone or Salinity or precipitation appears not to be linked to the record levels of sea ice formation around Antarctica.
It is therefore fair to say the obvious:
* * * It’s getting colder around Antarctica and so the ice is growing * * *
@Mary Brown
>In the last 10 years, ARGO has shown at addtional .02 deg C of heat added to the deep ocean.
I presume you are aware that an ARGO float is not capable of making such a determination, right?
Even if the determination was 0.02, it has an error bar for 95% confidence, and that spread is more than 0.02 degrees. Numbers that are created from large groups of numbers do not stand alone as they are re-expressions of all the facts contained in the original data set, not ‘measurements’.
>This is a clear peer reviewed sign that total heat of the planet is increasing at an even faster rate than before.
The planet? The planet is cooling. Even Trenberth admits there is no extra heat to be found above the surface. That is why he went looking in the (largely unmeasured) deep oceans.
The planet warmed from 1976-1997. That is a peer reviewed fact. The rate was uneven (because it is unlikely the cause was a smooth rise in CO2). It is certainly not warming faster than that at present or alarmists all over the world would be crowing it from the rooftops. They have stopped using the term ‘global warming’ because, well, it isn’t. They now call it Climate disruption based on the idea that selling alarm can continue if the weather is ‘disrupted’, whatever that means.
>GRACE data show Antarctica ice mass dropping rather dramatically.
It does? And the amount of the drop is what? By t hat I mean what constitutes ‘dramatically’ in your neck of the woods? Antarctica has about 25,000,000,000,000,000 cubic metres of ice give or take a snowman at the South Pole (and not counting sea ice). If it were to melt away within 10,000 years starting now, the rate of loss would have to be 2,500,000,000,000 cubic metres per year, which is 2500 cubic kilometers. If that were happening, sea level rise would be about 7mm per year. It is 1.8. Based on that, Antarctic ice might be gone in only 41,000 years. If we count the expansion from heating you say is going on down there, it will take even longer. If that happens, it will break a 500,000 year series of recurrent ice ages which as everyone knows, starts with ocean cooling and the spread of ice over the planet – remarkably like what is happening now in the South.
E.J. Mohr says:
July 2, 2014 at 2:50 pm
Thanks, EJ, I’m glad someone is awake.
If ozone has stared increasing significantly above the poles then that goes a long way to validating my New Climate Model which anticipated just such an observation.
Standard climatology expected more ozone with an active sun and less with a quiet sun but I pointed out that higher up and towards the poles the sign of the ozone response to solar variations appeared to be reversed and that reverse sign ozone response then feeds down through the descending air column of the polar vortices in the stratosphere.
That is why the ozone holes grew when the sun was active during the 20th century, nothing or very little to do with CFCs.
That is how the climate zones shift latitudinally in response to solar variability.
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
Frank Lansner: KNMI said they would look into the problem. My contact also pointed out something else you missed. Your Figure 6 shows about a 27 deg C (80 deg F) average temperature. That is not consistent with Southern Ocean surface air temperatures.
Mary Brown says: “In the last 10 years, ARGO has shown at addtional .02 deg C of heat added to the deep ocean. This is a clear peer reviewed sign that total heat of the planet is increasing at an even faster rate than before.”
Mary Brown, the subsurface temperatures of the oceans to depths of 2000 meters may have increased over the past decade, but the warming took place only in the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. Phrased another way, the North Atlantic and the largest ocean on this planet, the Pacific, show no warming to depths of 1.25 miles.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/figure-72.png
The fact that 2/3rds of the oceans show no warming to depths of 2000 meters (6600 feet) is not what we would expect from well-mixed greenhouse gases.
James at 48 says:
July 2, 2014 at 4:06 pm
Assuming there is an net annual albedo component term to triggering the end of an interglacial, it is a darned good thing we have not been seeing expansive sea ice in the NH the past few years.
Not so good if you live in the SH as I do.
We will know in the next couple of years whether the albedo feedback causes accelerating sea ice increases and accelerating cooling. We are already more than 3 SDs above the average which pretty much rules out natural variation ‘noise’. That is, it is a real and very likely accelerating trend.
Nothing can stop global warming, not even cooling. Period.
Rob Ricket says:
July 2, 2014 at 12:55 pm
Regarding:
“The addition of fresh water should lower salinity and increase the freezing temperature of the water and thus create more ice.”
Should this not read “decrease the freezing temperature? If so, there is also a problem with a sentence under the next header. A reduction in salinity lowers (decreases) the freeze point.
________________________________
If a negative temperature becomes more negative, doesn’t it increase negativeness? Or does it decrease the degree of warmth? I have to see my psychiatrist urgently…
…many countries don’t follow that standard, any more than we use the metric system of measures commonly – i.e. for science and medicine but not much for personal or business.
But we do use it every day and for business – amps, volts, watts.
Dear Bob,
Yes, KNMI are normally fast repliers to me too, so i dont see why we could not wait to hear them out as I suggested (??)
Summa: KNMI have made an error inserting data for TAO in koordinates near the Antarctic where they do not belong.
The unit from TAO is Celsius (not Farenheit) which then suggest tropical temperatures near Antarctic 🙂
You then ask me to correct the KNNMI error in my writing, but i have no such access. I will mail Anthony on what to do.
I think its beneficial that you discover this – which actually lifts WUWT over the level of KNMI – but honestly, your tone could be more polite and kind as allways.
Nick Stokes says:
“Here is a movie of Antarctic SST anomalies over the last year. It does look cool around the edges of the ice.”
This is a very good point indeed. If ice is created near the edges it suggests that it is indeed created due to low temperatures. And nimations like this show that alarmist postulates on the opposite have little if any support in reality.
Thank you for pointing this out, its the most complex argument in this specific discussion.
KR Frank Lansner
Mary Brown says:
” The mainstream clearly disagrees with this article ”
This statement.. its different.. and i like it!
James at 48 says:
“Assuming there is an net annual albedo component term to triggering the end of an interglacial, it is a darned good thing we have not been seeing expansive sea ice in the NH the past few years.”
Philip Bradley says:
“Not so good if you live in the SH as I do.”
You know, alarmists – including DMI – officially claims that the albedo changes here for Antarctica does not play any role!
The argument is, that in the Antarctic winter the angle of incoming Solar rays is too flat .
So the 1000$ question is:
WHAT MELTS AWAY THE ICE IN SPRING TIME ?
If it is Solar rays (!) then the albedo of shifting ice area obviously counts.
So even the Albedo if ice is attempted denied when we talk SH…
Manfred says:
“It’s getting colder around Antarctica and so the ice is growing.”
Further evidence is given in the study below, showing that increases locally happened exactly where it got colder.
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/study-finds-antarctic-sea-ice-increases-when-it-gets-colder/
SPOT ON!!
Thank you Manfred. You are a Dane are you not? I dont see you much in the Scandinavian cliamte sites? Would be nice – we could use use you!
Mary Brown,
I enjoy your comments. There is one point that needs to be added. The Grace ice mass balance currently shows slight Arctic ice loss. The reason for that is because ice mass follows [lags] ice extent/area. As the ice recovers, second and third year ice begins to accumulate. Arctic ice recovered sharply this year. The ice mass balance will follow.
The mass balance argument is just another failed attempt by those sounding the global warming false alarm to try and show they are right. But they have been wrong all along, and this time is no different.
Frank ´Lansner says:
July 3, 2014 at 3:32 am
You know, alarmists – including DMI – officially claims that the albedo changes here for Antarctica does not play any role!
The argument is, that in the Antarctic winter the angle of incoming Solar rays is too flat .
That argument is nonsense. As I regularly point out, the place on Earth that gets the highest daily levels of solar radiation is south of the Antarctic Circle around the Austral Summer Solstice and that is precisely where we are seeing increased sea ice at that time of year.
It is the place and time on Earth where albedo changes have the greatest effect.
http://www.applet-magic.com/insolation.htm
See second figure
Frank,
I should have said.
‘That argument is nonsense, as I suspect you know.’
Apologies for my abruptness.
water below the seaice area is usualy warmen as there is no sea ice above.
Frank ´Lansner, KNMI has repaired the problem at the Climate Explorer. Try it again with those coordinates. You’ll receive a response that there is no data for those coordinates. Let me pass along a thank you from KNMI for your finding the problem, (without your realizing it was a problem).
Frank ´Lansner says: “Yes, KNMI are normally fast repliers to me too, so i dont see why we could not wait to hear them out as I suggested (??)”
Why would you want to wait? Your graph in Figure 6 shows an average marine air temperature of 27 deg C for the Southern Ocean and anyone with slightest bit of common sense knows that’s wrong. Let’s drop back to an even more fundamental question for YOU, Frank. Do you understand what the “T” in “TAO” stands for? It stands for “Tropical”…not Southern Ocean, not global….”Tropical”. Please tell us why you would think you would receive data for the Southern Ocean from buoys along the equator, Frank. You made a very basic error. It’s much easier to acknowledge the problem, correct it and move on.
I’m not going to waste any additional time on this. I made the effort to advise KNMI of the problem, because it needed to be corrected. That’s the only reason I got involved.
And I’ve made my suggestion to you, Frank, but as always, when someone finds an error in one of your posts, you fail to acknowledge and correct it immediately. Your post looks foolish with a graph showing 27 deg C marine air temperature for the Southern Ocean, Frank. Feel free to leave it, if you’d like to continue to look foolish.
Have a good day.
Frank,
I think you may have misunderstood the ‘The winds did it’ argument.
The sea ice grows in winter, there’s no real melting going at this time of year, even further out (up to a point, of course). So I think the claim is simply that the sea ice cover would not grow fast enough to account for the increasing extent/area simply by freezing from the outer edge. Strengthening continental winds aid the increase by in addition physically pushing this edge ever outward from the coast. In this, there’s the implication that these winds have indeed become stronger in later years. But have we ever been given any data to show that this is in fact the case …?
Frank ´Lansner says: “The unit from TAO is Celsius (not Farenheit) which then suggest tropical temperatures near Antarctic”
I did not say the unit were in Fahrenheit, Frank. Read my comment again, Frank. And yes, those are tropical temperatures in the Southern Ocean, so why did you post the graph, if the error was so obvious to you?
Frank ´Lansner says: “You then ask me to correct the KNNMI error in my writing, but i have no such access.”
Nice try at misdirection, Frank, but it didn’t work.
I did not ask you to correct a problem at KNMI. I suggested to you that you correct your blog post. KNMI is not responsible for the problem with this blog post. KNMI had a hidden glitch in Climate Explorer, but it’s one that did not appear if you used the coordinates for source data, which are listed by KNMI just above here you, Frank, entered the coordinates that were outside the listed range. The problems with this post were yours entirely, Frank, (1) for not understanding where the data came from, (2) for not understanding that the temperatures you presented in your Figure 6 were representative of the tropics, not the Southern Ocean, (3) for not understanding that the “T” in “TAO” stand for tropical, and last but not least, (4) for arguing instead of correcting the problem.
Good-bye, Frank.
Bob take it easy!!
you write “I did not say the unit were in Fahrenheit”
Well i did not write so..!
you write: “I did not ask you to correct a problem at KNMI”
But I wrote: “You then ask me to correct the KNNMI error in my writing, but i have no such access. “
***Its getting colder around Antarctica and so the ice is growing***
This year, sea ice growth set 30-year records in Baffin Bay between Greenland’s west coast and Baffin Island. Is it fair to say it’s getting colder there too?
Otteryd says:
July 2, 2014 at 12:15 pm
Oh come on … It’s so obvious. North Pole is at the top, South Pole is at the bottom … Ice is slippery… It slides downwards.
——————————————————————————————————–
+1 and a nomination for Quote of the week.
not try to re-ignite the ‘Sun did it…’ war…… but, the TSI start decreasing around 2003-2005 by a small amount….
I am an agnostic when it comes to the sun. Or, should I say Delta Sun, because it’s changes there that would result in changes here? But the change in TSI is %-small. Some of the components, however, show a %-large variance, such as UV. The various correlations looks less than horrible, but, esp when Willis puts the fat to the fire, not “good” enough.
But, the way it’s been going, the next Cycle may well provide at least a good partial answer.
So we wait and see.
Kristian, you say ” So I think the claim is simply that the sea ice cover would not grow fast enough to account for the increasing extent/area simply by freezing from the outer edge”
Im not sure really. If it is true that ice is pushed away from Antarctica due to stronger winds, then the ice on the edge would meet warmer waters. This should reduce creation of ice at the edge.
But as we both say, we need more proof and documentation on these matters before anyone can claim anything.
KR Frank Lansner