The headline is a quote by Dr. Judith Curry from a David Rose article in the Sunday Mail: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago…despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now.
![1409435267461_Image_galleryImage_polar1_JPG[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/1409435267461_image_galleryimage_polar1_jpg1.jpg?quality=83)
The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’
Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change.
But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.
To put it another way, an area the size of Alaska, America’s biggest state, was open water two years ago, but is again now covered by ice.
The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square kilometres.
This was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006 (see graph, right), and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres over the past two years – an impressive 43 per cent.
Other figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise – from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres.
The satellite images published here are taken from a further authoritative source, the University of Illinois’s Cryosphere project.
They show that as well as becoming more extensive, the ice has grown more concentrated, with the purple areas – denoting regions where the ice pack is most dense – increasing markedly.
Crucially, the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future melting. Professor Andrew Shepherd, of Leeds University, an expert in climate satellite monitoring, said yesterday: ‘It is clear from the measurements we have collected that the Arctic sea ice has experienced a significant recovery in thickness over the past year.
Indeed, and the way things are going, it looks like WUWT (and Wang) will be closer to the final September Average for Sea Ice than any of the other forecast players in the ARCUS Sea Ice prediction Network:
Click to magnify the image
Figure 1: Distribution of individual Pan-Arctic Outlook values (August Report) for September 2014 sea ice extent. Labels on the bar graph are rounded to the tenths for readability. Refer to the Individual Outlooks at the bottom of this report for the full details of individual submissions.
NSIDC shows sea ice within the +/- 2 standard deviations range, far above the year 2012:
![N_stddev_timeseries[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/n_stddev_timeseries1.png?quality=75)
The WUWT Sea Ice Page has complete details and all sorts of plots and images.
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Note the pronounced current cold anomaly over the whole arctic, and the warm pool in the northern Pacific. Does this look like the prerequisite setup to re-run the polar-vortex style winter pattern?
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-116.12,74.31,536
See the temperature of ocean currents in the Atlantic.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-10.69,1.08,406
This too:
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-165.27,-15.62,406
Indian seem cool too:
And look at the bright heat anomaly along the mid ocean ridge in the southern ocean.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=75.62,-23.45,406
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Yet another “inconvenient truth” for climate alarmists, in which Nature refuses to play along with their beloved computer models. In Warmist theology, the polar ice cap was supposed to vanish (ignore the fact that’s happened several times before). Yet here it is, growing. I wonder if this is related to the discovery of newborn glaciers in Scotland?
Arctic sea ice is already increasing on the North American half of arctic, in one instance as early as August 1st. In areas where it is still declining, it is still higher than 2013 areas:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r11_Central_Arctic_ts.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r06_Barents_Sea_ts.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r01_Beaufort_Sea_ts.png
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/r09_Canadian_Archipelago_ts.png
For all the warmist comments on this thread talking about “still declining long term”, the next data point – 2014 will show the decline to not be so inexorable. Also, I know logic is a discredited subject in our schools for the last 40 yrs or so, replaced by post normal nonsense, but let me try to communicate: if the CO2 central theory were robust, then one should expect an oscillating decline in the ice which could not be stopped. There is no way after decaying so far below the datum level chosen (even if chosen badly) that the ice could ever get back into a positive anomaly. CO2 has increased ~30% since the decline began. Surely with the arctic ice extent on the ropes in 2007 and 2012, there would only be no place to go but down. What could cause it to rebound? Well, natural cycles or variations. If these can overwhelm the control knob, then we have the proof that the CO2 is a much lesser driver, than advertised. I ask. If the arctic ice extent ever becomes positive again, will you guys agree that, yes, the theory is basically wrong. Can I have the answer now?
‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said….
No. Not only demonstrably false, but a pathetic metaphorical non sequitur also.
But failed predictions do not prevent the AGW lemmings from continuing to run headlong over the failed climate models cliff that is now 30 years of heaped bull$hit high. With 30 years of failed climate models/predictions and nearly 18 years of no warming staring them straight in the face, we can only conclude they are real ‘sloooooooooooooooooow learners’.
OK, so tell me why you ARE then deliberating the ever-increasing Antarctic sea ice extents, the ever-colder Antarctic average air temperatures, and the steadily increasing total Antarctic ice area of continental land ice area + Antarctic shelf ice + Antarctic sea ice. Here you are pretending to draw attention to what is actually the cause of increased heat loss from the Arctic between late August and early April, all the while ignoring actual increased solar energy refleting from the Antarctic continent.
You claim upcoming catastrophic heating because of a potential future loss of 3.0 million sq kilometers of sea ice from an area who highest solar exposure is 8 – 10 degrees above the horizon, while claiming that ever-higher Antarctic reflection from 37 million kilometers one the same day is due to “melted water” diluting salty ocean water that has diffused from a continent land mass 1100 kilometers away.
Has anyone plotted the arctic sea ice using 1975-2010 instead of 1980-2010? How much different would it look. I think that would be “vedddddddy interesting”. (h/t to Artie Johnson)
“But this is what we do know. The earth’s surface and oceans are warming..”
Peter, This is a well known, undisputed empirical fact. This warming starts around 1850 and is commonly referred to as “recovery from the Little Ice Age. This warming has not accelerated due to CO2. There is NO tropospheric warm zone. Satellite temperature measurements have not shown an increase since 1998. Antarctica has more ice.
CO2 based Global Warming is a falsified theory.
Rejoice.
Did Professor Peter Wadhams make a prediction for the ARCUS Sea Ice prediction Network? Can’t see any entry obviously linked to him. I look forward to his entry next year of 1M sq km.
Also interesting is the range of entries, given the science is settled, all based upon “simple physics”.
The warming is still there, just gonna hide were the least data exists, and not hiding in the Arctic ice.
So, looking at the graph (the one from the Sunday Wail), Arctic sea ice has gone down from 6M sq km in 2004 to 5.5M sq km in 2014. Every decade the ice goes down by 0.5M sq km. So the Arctic will be ice free in another 110 years, give or take a decade or two.. Nice to know that. I shall have to remember this in 2024.
It’s only temporary, there will be several summers through the next decade with strongly negative North Atlantic Oscillation episodes, and it will be 2007 and 2012 all over again, and worse probably.
Each satellite which measures ice area performs a global orbit which covers both Arctic and Antarctic regions. An ongoing issue with these satellite operations is calibration of the polarizing filters — if the calibration isn’t right, then surface ponds are mistaken for open sea, or the ice edge is wrongly placed, etc. Having watched these charts for some years, I see now that the method of calibration is to take whichever setting yields the *smallest* global sea ice area. It’s quite a good method, actually, as it’s globally consistent and avoids runaways. The downside is that you get these silly-looking swings in ice area in which the Arctic area swings are opposite to the Antarctic area swings, a sort of hemispheric tango which is entirely created by the dial-turning.
Prior to 2007 they simply had two setting for the satellite polarizer filter, N and S, which they would switch over twice a year on 1 January and 1 July, causing the well-known bump in the middle of the ice charts. People complained about the bumps so they decided to try something else, and in 2007 they didn’t switch the filter at all. The result was a new record low Arctic sea ice extent in September 2007 followed immediately by a new record high Antarctic anomaly (near +2 million) in November 2007. How the satellite operators must have scurried in search of a solution!
So the undocumented part of the sea ice record is that the methodology since 2008 has been daily minimization of global sea ice, whereas before July 2007 it was the N/S setting switch twice a year. I write this without personal knowledge of operations, but from watching this over 8 years using statistical techniques which have served me in my works.
It appears suspending this in early 2013 has helped the Arctic ice recover http://rt.com/business/russia-arctic-reserves-kept-idle-142/
What is the optimum amount of Arctic ice?
“The Arctic is still losing ice sheets and sea ice.” Love it when the faithful say stuff like this. If true, it absolutely proves nothing as to cause of such ice loss, which is the whole idea, right? So it never lost ice before?
Yes. A parallel might be, when the fall begins,
“The trees are still losing leaves and twigs. Not only that, it is occurring throughout the entire Northern Hemisphere! What will happen to the trees when all the leaves are gone?”
Polar cycles are just longer than the annual cycles. We really won’t know what polar cycles are until we have gone through a couple of them. Another sixty years?
While 2 years is not a trend except in the most minimalist of stats imaginable it is returning closer to the trend line. The trend line itself was measured accurately by satellite during the positive (warm) phase of the PDO so now we will get 2-3 decades of measurements during the negative (cold) phase of the PDO. We will then have a real trend line.
If/When it crosses the trend line how long would you consider significant?
Yeah, but wait until you see the corrected data. It will show there is less than zero ice at the north pole.
I think folks can be misled by an accurate description of a 2-year snippet of a 35-year accelerating downward trend. Let me show you how one can be duped by a UK tabloid. In a nutshell, you’re losing more Alaska’s then you are gaining.
In any one year, like a pond, the arctic freezes over in the winter with a maximum extent in March and thaws again in the summer having a minimum extent in September. So for 7 months EACH year an area the size of 5.2 Alaskas melts and reveals open ocean (~9 sq Km) as depicted below. Then most of it freezes over during the winter.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/Sea_Ice_Extent_v2_L.png
Now to determine the trend of ice coverage, it is customary to yearly track the extent in September, when the ice coverage is at the minimum.
Below is the trend of September arctic ice extents from 1980-2012 revealing an accelerating downward trend that is equivalent to a loss of ice the area of 2.5 Alaskas (4.2 million sq Km).
http://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/Tamino2013SeaIce
If you have Excel, go ahead and plot the raw data yourself:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Sep/N_09_area.txt
So in 2007, for the first time in recorded history, there was a sea ice extent (4.3 million sq Km) that was low enough to allow ships to traverse the Northwest Passage without icebreakers. But the loss of ice from 2006 to 2007 alone was about the size of, you guessed it, one Alaska (1.6 million sq Km)!
Now for two years since the 2007 record low, climate contrarians were having an nice little ice recovery party, proclaiming an ice gain of 1.1 sq Km (almost two Texases) in 2009 (5.4 million sq Km).
And contrarian hopes were AGAIN DASHED just 3 years later when in 2012, for the 2nd time in recorded history, there was a new ALL TIME low (3.6 sq Km)!
What’s that? You guessed it, we lost more than another of Alaska (1.8 million sq Km) in just 2 years and that brings us to 2012 (the lowest extent in all of recorded history).
So it’s been another 2 years later (2014) and here we go again. We gain back an Alaska’s worth of ice coverage while still continuing the obvious downward trend, and the recovery party begins anew, while ignoring the fact that we are losing more and more ice MASS AND EXTENT.
And then we bash Al Gore, of course, for making a prediction he didn’t himself make. Let’s recall the salient passage in his Nobel acceptance speech:
cut to 4:30 min
“Last September 21st, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar ice cap is, in their words, “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.”
Albert Gore
Nobel Ceremony
10-December 2007
From the transcript, it seems to me that the summer estimate of an ice-free summer was actually projected to occur sometime between 2014 and 2029, (7 and 22 years) as suggested by a couple of studies quoted by Gore.
I hope I’ve convinced folks that, with some variabilty, there is progressively less arctic sea ice.
There was water available during the summer of 1980 when the ice coverage was 7.2 million sq km
…and again more water in 1996 (ice=6.6 million sq km)
….and some more water in 2005 (ice=5.6 million sq km)
…and even more water in 2007 (ice=4.3 million sq km)
….and even yet more water revealed in 2012 (ice=3.6 million sq Km).
See the downward trend yet and variability? You lose more Alaskas than you gain.
And all that increased open ocean is absorbing solar radiation, getting warmer.
Hanzo
Peter – See for example: http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,578.msg35760.html#msg35760
Frankly Peter, I think the lesson is that “a clearly written synopsis” that doesn’t toe the “party line” has great difficulty in escaping the eagle eyes of the WUWT “moderators”!
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/tag/anthony-watts/
I wish I could say the same Peter!
Great! It’s nice to see the ice growing nice and thickkkk.
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
“Sorting the sheep from the goats”
Or “the truth from the propaganda”.
Or the “science from the agenda”.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/09/01/global_warming_denial_claims_of_arctic_ice_recovering_are_exaggerated.html