From the “no death spiral” department comes this press release made at AGU from ESA.
Arctic sea ice is holding up to global warming better than expected, according to the latest data from the CryoSat-2 satellite, a team from University College London will tell the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
![Five_years_ice-thickness_change[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/five_years_ice-thickness_change1.gif)
Arctic sea ice volumes in the autumn of 2014 are above the average set over the last five years and sharply up on the lows seen in 2011 and 2012, according to the latest satellite data.
Data from the European Space Agency (ESA) CryoSat-2 satellite to be presented to the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco later today (Monday 15 December, 2014) will show Arctic sea ice volumes in October and November 2014 averaging 10,200km3 – slightly down on the 10,900km3 reported in 2013 but sharply up on the lows seen in 2011 and 2012.
This is the second year in a row where a relatively cool Arctic summer has led to less sea ice melting than has been typical during the summers of recent years and this has resulted in thicker and older ice surviving into the autumn and winter during both 2013 and 2014.
The team of researchers from University College London (UCL) who are presenting the CryoSat-2 data to the AGU Fall Meeting state in the abstract of their presentation that their data indicates “the Arctic sea ice pack may be more resilient than has been previously considered”.
The autumn 2014 volume is the second-highest since satellite measurements of Arctic sea ice thickness began in 2010, and the data shows that “the five-year average is relatively stable”, according to ESA.
This news comes as the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported that Arctic sea ice extent – the area of ocean covered by sea ice – in November was “fairly average”.
It is a combination of sea ice extent and sea ice thickness which gives rise to sea ice volume. CryoSat was designed to measure sea-ice thickness across the entire Arctic Ocean using radars, and this has allowed scientists to monitor the overall change in Arctic sea ice volume accurately over the last five years.
However, researchers are careful to caution that this apparent stability shown in the satellite data does not mean there has been a recovery in Arctic sea ice. A news release from ESA quotes Professor Andrew Shepherd from UCL and the University of Leeds as saying: “We must to take care when computing long-term trends as this CryoSat assessment is short when compared to other climate records”. Shepherd is one of the authors of the AGU presentation.
Here is a news release from the European Space Agency regarding this research issued on 15 December 2014:
CryoSat Extends Its reach Into The Arctic
CryoSat has delivered this year’s map of autumn sea-ice thickness in the Arctic, revealing a small decrease in ice volume. In a new phase for ESA’s ice mission, the measurements can now also be used to help vessels navigate through the north coastal waters of Alaska, for example.
Measurements made during October and November show that the volume of Arctic sea ice now stands at about 10 200 cubic km – a small drop compared to last year’s 10 900 cubic km.
The volume is the second-highest since measurements began in 2010, and the five-year average is relatively stable. This, however, does not necessarily indicate a turn in the long-term downward trend.
“We must to take care when computing long-term trends as this CryoSat assessment is short when compared to other climate records,” said Prof. Andrew Shepherd from University College London and the University of Leeds.
“For reliable predictions, we should try other approaches, like considering what is forcing the changes, incorporating the CryoSat data into predictive models based on solid physics, or simply waiting until more measurements have been collected.”
CryoSat was designed to measure sea-ice thickness across the entire Arctic Ocean, enabling scientists to monitor accurately the overall change in volume.
While the amount of ice normally fluctuates depending on the season, longer-term satellite records show a constant downward trend in ice extent during all seasons, in particular in summer, with a minimum occurring in the autumn of 2012.
Establishing whether the ice volume is following a similar trend is one of CryoSat’s key mission objectives.
A team of UK researchers at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling are presenting their findings this week at the American Geophysical Union’s autumn meeting in San Francisco, California.
“October is interesting because it is the first month we get data directly following the sea-ice minimum in September, so that’s where we see the largest interannual variability in our volume estimates,” said the Centre’s Rachel Tilling, who is working on the CryoSat measurements as part of her PhD studies.
Launched in 2010, CryoSat has long surpassed its planned three-year life. At the mission’s recent mid-term review, it was further extended until February 2017.
Tommaso Parrinello, ESA’s CryoSat Mission Manager, said, “CryoSat has already achieved outstanding results, both within its original mission objectives and for unexpected applications.
“Looking ahead, we are working hard to prototype new operational capabilities so that the measurements can be used for routine assessments in climate science and for services affected by Arctic sea ice.”
To test this, scientists have produced an assessment of sea-ice thickness north of Alaska and eastern Russia with data acquired over the last month. Products like this could prove useful for maritime services, such as shipping and exploration.
End of ESA news release.
Abstract
Despite a well-documented ~40% decline in summer Arctic sea ice extent since the late 1970’s, it has been difficult to estimate trends in sea ice volume because thickness observations have been spatially incomplete and temporally sporadic. While numerical models suggest that the decline in extent has been accompanied by a reduction in volume, there is considerable disagreement over the rate at which this has occurred. We present the first complete assessment of trends in northern hemisphere sea ice thickness and volume using 4 years of measurements from CryoSat-2. Between autumn 2010 and spring 2013, there was a 14% and 5% reduction in autumn and spring Arctic sea ice volume, respectively, in keeping with the long-term decline in extent. However, since then there has been a marked 41% and 9% recovery in autumn and spring sea ice volume, respectively, more than offsetting losses of the previous three years. The recovery was driven by the retention of thick ice around north Greenland and Canada during summer 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 6% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred – climatic conditions more typical of the early 1990’s. Such a sharp increase in volume after just one cool summer indicates that the Arctic sea ice pack may be more resilient than has been previously considered.
Citation
CryoSat-2 observes Arctic sea ice volume recovery, after anomalously low melting in summer 2013 by Rachel Tilling, Andy Ridout, Andrew Shepherd and Duncan Wingham presented to the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San francisco on 15 December 2014.
Read the abstract here.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
How can 2014 be the hottest year on record and at the same time we are getting record ice? One of the other is wrong!
Arctic summer sea ice………it’s gone already [last year it seems] according to supercomputer and Professors Maslowski and Wadhams..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm
However it seems a lot of it had gone by 1940 but returned by 1960.
http://mclean.ch/climate/Arctic_1920_40.htm
I bet Mark “the arctic is screaming” Serreze is crapping his pants. And right now I think the arctic is laughing………hysterically. No. Wait a minute. With all that dangerous arctic methane release, maybe the arctic is…….um……oh never mind.
The ice is “holding up”? That reminds me of the politically-driven canard in Ferguson. There wasn’t anything wrong with the policing there. Is their next report going to say the ice can’t breathe?
Natural lifetime of Ozone is 1 to 24 hours. Upper atmospheric Ozone is almost exclusively created by Solar EUV. Ozone is a greenhouse gas! They say it is only about 10% effective as CO2 [I think that figure is a lab figure and very wrong in the upper atmosphere].
As Solar output decreases between the 24-25 Solar cycles, the Ozone holes will become huge [my prediction]. This is like opening the windows into space for heat to escape.
Too bad that none of the “models” model the Ozone layer as a greenhouse gas!!!!
“For reliable predictions, we should try other approaches, like considering what is forcing the changes, incorporating the CryoSat data into predictive models based on solid physics, or simply waiting until more measurements have been collected.”
It requires long range NAO forecasts for individual seasons. The broader picture for the next decade is renewed warming of the AMO and an increase in sea ice loss again. The AMO tends to run out of phase with sunspot cycles in its warm mode, hence its [slight] cooling around this sunspot maximum:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:13/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise
Quite pleased and impressed to see this site posting up what is quite a well written and balanced item of current scientific research. But before we all jump onto the bandwagon, as virtually every person contributing to this thread above seems to have done, I think it may be sensible to take a leaf out of the scientists’ book and do what they have done – put this small item of research into its proper perspective.
Having looked at this article I am quite convinced of the conclusion which CANNOT be drawn from it – that this somehow represents evidence that the initial predictions of melting Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming are false. Given the small time scale which this study represents it shows a minor (although positive) and probably temporary change. The research shows that, for a couple of years – which is itself a tiny time interval within the context of climate change – the Arctic sea ice may have been holding up to the warming induced by climate change. This in itself is of no real consequence. It doesn’t say anything which would lend support to the hypothesis that previous predictions of shrinking sea ice are in some way mistaken or false. It simply shows that, in a couple of years, which is a time interval far too small to make any meaningful conclusions about any long term changes which may or may not be occurring, the Arctic sea ice appears to have been bearing up to the threat caused by increasing temperatures. The fact that it is bearing up does not mean that the threat was mistaken or does not exist.
Perhaps an analogy may help to illustrate this point further. Imagine your community is afflicted by a virus, similar to flu, which affects thousands of people producing symptoms such as high fever. Of the thousands afflicted, 2 or 3 lucky individuals have symptoms which are significantly milder, resulting in either no fever at all or a fever which results in a much lower temperature, leading it to be classified as just low or medium. Does the fact that these lucky 2/3 individuals suffer much milder symptoms show that the flu virus affecting the rest of their community is somehow some kind of illusion or that the authorities’ response to it (regarding it as a serious public health issue) was unwarranted, or worse, a deliberate deception? Of course not! It just shows that for the 2/3 lucky individuals concerned, they were more resilient to the infection.
Exactly the same conclusion can be drawn from this latest research into the extent of shrinking Arctic sea ice. For a couple of years when measurements were taken, the sea ice appears, in parts, to be slightly more resilient to warming temperatures than had previously been observed. This tell us nothing about the long term trends at work here or whether this is nothing more than a temporary blip. If this study were to repeated over longer time scales (eg say every 10 years), it is entirely possible that the trend observed in this particular study disappears or is even reversed. Only further research will be able to clarify this. For the moment though, this illustrates nothing more than a blip, probably temporary, in a longer term trend.