![berger-arctic-water-clouds[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/berger-arctic-water-clouds1.jpg?quality=83)
“absorbed solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere in early summer (May–July) plays a precursory role in determining the Arctic sea ice concentration in late summer (August–October)”
“this intimate delayed…relationship is not represented in most of current climate models. Rather, the models tend to over-emphasize internal sea ice processes in summer.”
Alarmists ignore the unspeakable all-time record highs in Antarctic sea ice extent broken over each of the past three years, as do climate models, which laughably predicted the opposite of a decrease in Antarctic sea ice extent more so than Arctic sea ice.
Alarmists also claim current Arctic sea ice changes are “unprecedented” while ignoring proxy data indicating Arctic sea ice was much less than present-day during the Holocene Climate Optimum ~6,000 years ago, Arctic temperatures were warmer than the present multiple times over past 1357 years, the Medieval Warming Period in the Arctic was warmer than the present, Alaskan glaciers are about the same size as during the Medieval Warm Period, etc., etc.
Connecting early summer cloud-controlled sunlight and late summer sea ice in the Arctic
This study demonstrates that absorbed solar radiation (ASR) at the top of the atmosphere in early summer (May–July) plays a precursory role in determining the Arctic sea ice concentration (SIC) in late summer (August–October). The monthly ASR anomalies are obtained over the Arctic Ocean (65°N–90°N) from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System during 2000–2013. The ASR [absorbed solar radiation] changes primarily with cloud variation. We found that the ASR [absorbed solar radiation] anomaly in early summer is significantly correlated with the SIC [Arctic sea ice concentration] anomaly in late summer (correlation coefficient, r ≈ −0.8 with a lag of 1 to 4 months). The region exhibiting high (low) ASR anomalies and low (high) SIC anomalies varies yearly. The possible reason is that the solar heat input to ice is most effectively affected by the cloud shielding effect under the maximum TOA solar radiation in June and amplified by the ice-albedo feedback. This intimate delayed ASR-SIC relationship is not represented in most of current climate models. Rather, the models tend to over-emphasize internal sea ice processes in summer.
This study demonstrates that absurd correlations can be found.
There, fixed it.
[snip – unacceptable – mod]
“Little fluffy clouds, lots of stars at night, you don’t see that…”
http://youtu.be/FHixChYgGRI
You won’t find a lot of people on the beach on a cloudy day. If you have a lot of those days you have a bad summer.
“a phenomenon “not represented in most of current climate models.””…Now just wait a frig’n minute here. The inclusion of such a variable somehow ‘superiorizes’ that model that includes it? Oh. So that makes this model better because it explains the sea ice behaviour as viewed by the modeller. Bash away at it, boys, sooner or later you’ll find something to make your ‘data’ equal reality. What shabby hubris lurks among those who put the climate cart before the donkey of reason.
There are more things in the real world, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your models.
So they found another correlation…
Clouds of sulfuric acid over the Arctic.
http://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/bardarbunga/
The current circulation of the Arctic Circle.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=26.59,88.90,277
A bit of a lag is unsurprising: Most people even can see analogous in their local weather (some of the month of August being a comparable time distance and length-of-day variation from the ~ June-21 solar solstice as some of May but typically hotter), let alone what is possible in the oceans.
A paywalled paper isn’t readily evaluated. Generally, though, at least with regard to a broader timeframe, overall arctic ice extent trends over the past hundred years, there is a stronger (relatively less indirect) relationship of the sun/GCRs/clouds to temperature, yet not nearly as much to arctic ice in the data I’ve seen, e.g. http://www.webcitation.org/6PsOoxWKN . With that said, perhaps their focus on particular timeslices, on comparisons of May-July versus August-October, makes apparent a relationship otherwise more masked by other factors.
In another article on the record extent of the antarctic sea ice, towards the end of the article:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-14/record-coverage-of-antarctic-sea-ice/5742668
“CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns.”
So Warming leads to greater ice, did they predict that too? I thought the warming atmosphere leads to melting ice.
Can someone make up my mind?!?!
“Alarmists focus on Arctic sea ice as the supposed canary in the coal mine for CAGW”
Since this particular “canary” has got back on it’s perch and is merrily chirping away for the last two years, they have been desparatly trying to wave their hands and direct attention to the other end of the planet, where, with suitably blinkered vision they manage to find some glaciers going through at millennial scale “collapse”.
Nobody want to talk a singing canary. Let’s go and look in a different coal mine.
Here I showed how length of Arctic melting season compared to Artic Oscillation index, which is an air pressure index almost certainly linked to cloud cover.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/arctic_freeze_melting_daily_ao.png?w=800
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=226
‘But ice is also nice,
And will suffice.”
Check Arctic temperatures for “Daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel, plotted with daily climate values calculated from the period 1958-2002”. Look at the 1960s and early 1970s and compare it to 2007 and 2012.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It looks like we are very near the bottom now for Arctic sea ice extent. It is slightly above 2013.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Rather than re-post the peer reviewed references showing evidence of an ‘ice-free’ Arctic ocean during the Holocene Climate Optimum, I thought I would show other references for other times outside the HCO.
As I pointed out yesterday Nansen ice exetent ( thier own algorithm ) seems to have hit bottom on 11th Sept. Ice area the 12th. Somewhat more than last year.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Artic ice extent from norsex
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
If you add another chaotic variable to a chaotic system, I doubt it increases your ability to predict what the system will do.
The paper is garbage, for example if the clouds are absorbing the reflected sunlight (solar panels are placed upside down for better efficiency there) that simply increases the atmospheric radiation.
Of course the paper also has a point, maybe unintentionally, that atmospheric radiation doesn’t warm the surface.
Either increased atmospheric radiation warms the surface or it doesn’t. They can’t have it both ways.
I could sometimes notice an odd phenomenon happening upon a glacier in the french Alps. This glacier (“Marinet glacier”) is probably the farthest south of the Alps. It is lying at an average altitude of 3000 meters on a steep slope oriented towards North-East, under a peak summit 3450 meters high. Like many other glaciers in that situation it protects itself aigainst melting in its lowest parts under a mass of boulders (“rocky glacier”).
But it has another way of protecting itself thanks to the dominant summer South-East winds which produces a permanent wide cloudy canopy in the depression created by the overhanging summit, thus keeping it safely from the sunbeams for a great part of the day.
“… a phenomenon “not represented in most of current climate models.””
Shouldn’t that be “yet another phenomenon “not represented in most of the current climate models””?
Is it any wonder that the “current climate models” don’t represent the current climate?
Classic…
Figure 7b (Antarctic Sea Ice Model Fail) is a money shot:
Goosse, H.; Roche, D.M.; Mairesse, A.; & Berger, M. (2013). Modelling past sea ice changes. Quaternary Science Reviews 79, 191-206.
http://web.science.unsw.edu.au/~sjphipps/publications/goosse2013.pdf
Could that Solar energy be UV and the clouds high enough to be the Ozone layer??
Solar Cycle 24 did an uptick for the last 6 months while the Sun was in the Northern Hemisphere, could that have an effect??
[Steven Mosher – thanks for the alert – mod]
I’m still waiting to hear if noctilucent clouds are a positive or negative forcing on climate!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/10/noctilucent-clouds-on-the-increase-climate-change-will-likely-be-blamed/