From Scripps Institution of Oceanography
![sioLogo-scale[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/siologo-scale1.png)
Research Highlight: Arctic Sea Ice Loss Likely To Be Reversible
Scenarios of a sea ice tipping point leading to a permanently ice-free Arctic Ocean were based on oversimplified arguments
New research by Till Wagner and Ian Eisenman, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, resolves a long-running debate over irreversible Arctic sea ice loss.
Ever since the striking record minimum Arctic sea ice extent in 2007, the ominous scenario of a sea ice tipping point has been a fixture in the public debate surrounding man-made climate change and a contingency for which Arctic-bordering countries have prepared.
For decades, scientists have been concerned about such a point of no return, beyond which sea ice loss is irreversible. This concern was supported by mathematical models of the key physical processes (known as process models) that were believed to drive sea ice changes. The process models forecasted that increased global warming would push the Arctic into an unstoppable cascade of melting that ceases only when the ocean becomes ice-free.
Arctic Ocean melt ponds. Photo: Karen Frey/Clark University
Implications of a permanently ice-free Arctic for the environment and for national and economic security are significant, driving deep interest in predictive capabilities in the region.
Wagner and Eisenman’s research was co-funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and by the National Science Foundation. It supports the goals of the Navy’s U.S. Arctic Roadmap, which calls for an assessment of changes in the Arctic Ocean to clarify the national security challenges for future naval operations as this strategic region becomes increasingly accessible.
“The Navy has broad interest in the evolution of the Arctic,” said the ONR’s Frank Herr. “Sea ice dynamics are a critical component of the changing environmental picture. Our physical models lack important details on the processes controlling ice formation and melting, thus ONR is conducting a series of experimental efforts on sea ice, open water processes, acoustics, and circulation.”
During the past several years, scientists using global climate models (GCMs) that are more complex than process models found sea ice loss in response to rising greenhouse gases in their computer simulations is actually reversible when greenhouse levels are reduced.
“It wasn’t clear whether the simpler process models were missing an essential element, or whether GCMs were getting something wrong,” said Wagner, the lead author of the study. “And as a result, it wasn’t clear whether or not a tipping point was a real threat.”
Wagner and Eisenman resolve this discrepancy in the study in an upcoming Journal of Climate article, “How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.”
They created a model that bridged the gap between the process models and the GCMs, and they used it to determine what caused sea ice tipping points to occur in some models but not in others.
“We found that two key physical processes, which were often overlooked in previous process models, were actually essential for accurately describing whether sea ice loss is reversible,” said Eisenman, a professor of climate dynamics at Scripps Oceanography. “One relates to how heat moves from the tropics to the poles and the other is associated with the seasonal cycle. None of the relevant previous process modeling studies had included both of these factors, which led them to spuriously identify a tipping point that did not correspond to the real world.”
“Our results show that the basis for a sea ice tipping point doesn’t hold up when these additional processes are considered,” said Wagner. “In other words, no tipping point is likely to devour what’s left of the Arctic summer sea ice. So if global warming does soon melt all the Arctic sea ice, at least we can expect to get it back if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.”
Source: Scripps Press Release
Meanwhile…. Antarctica continues its extremely constructive record breaking sea ice build…… What do you suppose will happen to that if “we manage to cool the planet down”.
The tone is quite sickening. Its all “our” fault I’m sure.
As the planet gets colder, they notice the ice is growing at both poles! Wow. Absolute geniuses. Now if only they can say this, ‘Global warming isn’t happening, we are now in a long term cooling cycle’ and I will give them a cookie.
Unfortunately, they warmistas seem to have a congenital defect which prevents them from being able to concatenate those particular phonemes.
Well if you read the article carefully, you will see that it is just “models” all the way down, so no assurance that this time they are on the right track.
I mean haow can you miss a little item like heat coming up from the tropics in ocean currents ?
Who’da thunk that could ever happen ?
g
“Well if you read the article carefully, you will see that it is just “models” all the way down, so no assurance that this time they are on the right track==
Certainly more true considering the fact that all they needed to do was review existing peer reviewed research showing a large percentage of loss was due to ocean and wind currents.
They are not saying the planet is cooling. They are not even saying the ice will not melt away. They are simply suggesting that the process is reversible.
I’d be interested to hear what the “two new factors” they are including in their model are.
Caleb, the article contains at least a clue…”“How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.”
“We found that two key physical processes, which were often overlooked in previous process models, were actually essential for accurately describing whether sea ice loss is reversible,” said Eisenman, a professor of climate dynamics at Scripps Oceanography. “One relates to how heat moves from the tropics to the poles and the other is associated with the seasonal cycle. None of the relevant previous process modeling studies had included both of these factors, which led them to spuriously identify a tipping point that did not correspond to the real world.”
Of course it should not be shocking the models miss processes already articulated in peer reviewed journals, as when the title of the upcoming article, “How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.”; is bizarre, as if a scientists GIGO influences how the real world operates. I am fairly certain the world was equally round before the fact that some folk believed it to be flat Climate Models can not influence Sea Ice.
David A
“Caleb, the article contains at least a clue…”“How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.””
I doubt the models or their complexity have any influence over sea ice at all, let alone it’s stability or its reversibility. Even a good model of reality has no direct influence over the reality it represents.
whatever is happening, it is for sure worse than we thought. no matter how bad we imagined it might be, it is so much worse. infinitely worse and then some.
Yes, worse than ever, as usual.
http://www.clarewind.org.uk/events-1.php?event=35
Is a succinct summary of warmism and the worsest thing there ever was,
“We’ll all be rooned, said Hanrahan”
@David A
Dream on. Nearly all peer-reviewed papers confirm, support, or conclude AGW. And the acceleration of sea level rise is repeatedly confirmed, most recently in a paper by Skakun that showed earlier pre-industrial estimates of sea level rise were overstated, so the rate of rise seen today is even more an acceleration than previously thought.
The papers you list are mostly regional studies, not global. They don’t count.
The Science says it is our ‘fault’. Only a few non scientists say it isn’t. Who to believe…..?
Not sure if sarcastic or retarded
The migrating birds here in Brampton, Ontario, Canada don’t believe it’s our fault.
Scheduled to arrive/pass through May 1/2 as they always do.
I believe in Empirical science research.
@clipe.
Not according to National Geographic: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140331-global-warming-climate-change-ipcc-animals-science-environment/
@clipe : If you put your statements in all caps or add an exclamation you’re less likely to receive a rebuttal.
“Not sure if sarcastic or retarded”
What, [trimmed] cannot be sarcastic?
I love the way you actually believe that a handful of computer models is actually “science”.
You are so cute when you are making a fool of yourself.
Only a few eh Warren. The truth is many studies have detected small a deceleration (slowing) in the rate of SL rise.
Here are some papers which have reported the lack of acceleration in rate of sea level rise (h/t to Alberto Boretti, Robert Dean & Doug Lord):
1.Douglas B (1992). Global Sea Level Acceleration. J. Geophysical Research, Vol. 97, No. C8, pp. 12,699-12,706, 1992. doi:10.1029/92JC01133
2.Douglas B and Peltier W R (2002). The Puzzle of Global Sea-Level Rise. Physics Today 55(3):35-40.
3.Daly J (2003). Tasmanian Sea Levels: The ‘Isle of the Dead’ Revisited. [Internet].
4.Daly J (2004). Testing the Waters: A Report on Sea Levels for the Greening Earth Society. [Internet].
5.Jevrejeva S, et al (2006). Nonlinear trends and multiyear cycles in sea level records. J. Geophysical Research, 111, C09012, 2006. doi:10.1029/2005JC003229. (data)
6.Holgate SJ (2007). On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century. Geophysical Research Letters. 34, L01602.
7.Wunsch R, Ponte R and Heimbach P (2007). Decadal trends in sea level patterns: 1993-2004. Journal of Climatology. 5889-5911.
8.Woodworth P, et al (2009). Evidence for the accelerations of sea level on multi-decade and century timescales. International Journal of Climatology, Volume 29, Issue 6, pages 777-789, May 2009. doi:10.1002/joc.1771
9.You ZJ, Lord DB, and Watson PJ (2009). Estimation of Relative Mean Sea Level Rise From Fort Denison Tide Gauge Data. Proceedings of the 19th Australasian Coastal and Ocean Engineering Conference, Wellington, NZ, September 2009.
10.Wenzel M and Schröter J (2010). Reconstruction of regional mean sea level anomalies from tide gauges using neural networks. Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans. 115:C08013.
11.Mörner N-A (2010a). Sea level changes in Bangladesh new observational facts. Energy and Environment. 21(3):235-249.
12.Mörner N-A (2010b). Some problems in the reconstruction of mean sea level and its changes with time. Quaternary International. 221(1-2):3-8.
13.Mörner N-A (2010c). There Is No Alarming Sea Level Rise! 21st Century Science & Technology. Fall 2010:7-17.
14.Houston JR and Dean RG (2011a). Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. 27:409-417.
15.Houston JR and Dean RG (2011b). J. R. Houston and R. G. Dean (2011) Reply to: Rahmstorf, S. and Vermeer, M., 2011. Discussion of: Houston, J.R. and Dean, R.G., 2011. Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal Research. Volume 27, Issue 4: pp. 788-790. doi:10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11A-00008.1
16.Watson PJ (2011). Is There Evidence Yet of Acceleration in Mean Sea Level Rise around Mainland Australia? Journal of Coastal Research. 27:368-377.
17.Modra B and Hesse S (2011), NSW Ocean Water Level. 21st NSW Coastal Conference. (or here)
18.Mörner N-A, (2011a). Setting the frames of expected future sea level changes by exploring past geological sea level records. Chapter 6 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
19.Mörner N-A, (2011b). The Maldives: A measure of sea level changes and sea level ethics. Chapter 7 of book, D Easterbrook, Evidence-Based Climate Science, 2011 Elsevier B.V. ISBN: 978-0-12-385956-3.
20.Boretti A (2012a). Short Term Comparison of Climate Model Predictions and Satellite Altimeter Measurements of Sea Levels. Coastal Engineering, 60, pp. 319-322. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2011.10.005. (Also, an article about this paper.)
21.Boretti A (2012b). Is there any support in the long term tide gauge data to the claims that parts of Sydney will be swamped by rising sea levels? Coastal Engineering, 64, pp. 161-167. doi:10.1016/j.coastaleng.2012.01.006
22.Hughes W (2012), Continued existence of Maori canals near Blenheim in New Zealand indicates a stable relative sea level over 200 years. [Internet].
23.Boretti A and Watson T (2012). The inconvenient truth: Ocean Levels are not accelerating in Australia. Energy & Environment. doi:10.1260/0958-305X.23.5.801
24.Burton D (2012). Comments on “Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island, New York,” by Shepard, et al. Natural Hazards. doi:10.1007/s11069-012-0159-8
25.Lüning S and Vahrenholt F (2012). Fallstudien aus aller Welt belegen: Keine Beschleunigung des Meeresspiegelanstiegs während der letzten 30 Jahre. (Case studies from around the world: no evidence of accelerating sea level rise over the last 30 years – English translation.)
26.Homewood P (2012). Is Sea Level Rise Accelerating? [Internet].
27.Schmith T, et al (2012), Statistical analysis of global surface temperature and sea level using cointegration methods. Journal of Climate, 2012, American Meteorological Society. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00598.1 (or draft)
28.Mörner N-A and Parker A (2013). Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case, Environmental Science, An Indian Journal, ESAIJ, 8(2), 2013 [43-51]
29.Scafetta N (2013a). Multi-scale dynamical analysis (MSDA) of sea level records versus PDO, AMO, and NAO indexes. Climate Dynamics. doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1771-3 (In press; preprint here.)
30.Scafetta, N (2013b). Discussion on common errors in analyzing sea level accelerations, solar trends and global warming. Pattern Recognition in Physics. 1, 37-57, 2013. doi:10.5194/prp-1-37-2013.
31.Plus, according to news reports, several papers suppressed by the New South Wales, Australia government. [1] [2&2b]
There are also numerous peer reviewed papers describing cyclical sea ice gain and loss, as well as ocean current changes alone being responsible for up to 40 percent of the ice loss, and wind currents and jet stream pattern changes as being an additional factor. Yes there was some warming, but the majority f the peer reviewed papers regarding Sea Ice reduction in the artic do not state that man kind is responsible for that warming.
Warren, it is curious how the CAGW scientist that is all you apparently read, can only think the ice loss in the Arctic is due to our SUVs, but the ice gain in Antarctica has dozens of natural factors. Perhaps you do not find that observational instructional? To me it is because they not only made many natural excuses, they missed the most obvious natural reason for increased Antarctica sea ice; the southern oceans have cooled!
Yep, if we weren’t there to observe it, it wouldn’t happen.
/sarc
“I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
— Isaac Asimov”
MCR
David A: But those aren’t real scientists, besides they’re in the pay of big oil. /sarc
@David A
Dream on. Nearly all peer reviewed papers confirm, support, or conclude AGW. And the acceleration of sea level rise is repeatedly confirmed, most recently in a paper by Skakun that showed earlier pre-industrial estimates of sea level rise were overstated, so the rate of rise seen today is even more an acceleration than previously thought.
The papers you list are mostly regional studies, not global. They don’t count.
When you’re reading print, tone is all in your head. I found nothing objectionable at all in the tone of the article.
If the model is accurate, the we can return summer ice to the north pole even after its all melted- though I know no reason why we might want to.
In my opinion, the concentration on “global warming” has forced our attention away from global pollution and fresh water loss. The amount of garbage (especially plastics, oil products) we as a species have burdened the land, air and oceans with and the frightening loss of fresh water and “natural” areas is a FAR more important issue than the scientific argument about global warming. This echos the Lord of The Rings ploy of keeping the EYE off the real threat!!!
We, as a species need to accept that there are too many of us and work to reduce the population by encouraging reduced birth rates. The corporate and political forces are actually working in direct opposition to this as economic models of today are all built on growth…We need new economic models and more wisdom directed upon the issue!!!
Would you care to document this “frightening” loss of fresh water?
The amount of pollution of all types that we are producing has dropped dramatically in recent decades.
Would you care to prove your claim that the planet is over crowded? Your naked assertion isn’t sufficient.
Birth rates are already plummeting. Even the UN believes that population will peak before 2050 and begin falling. (In reality the year is more likely to between 2030 and 2040, with an outside chance of happening in the next couple of years.)
Our fault. Of course it is.. Original Sin is a commonality in most religions.
The loss of arctic sea ice is actually a negative feedback as the ice insulates the water preventing it from losing heat to space.
So the hotter it gets, the more Antarctic sea ice extent? Funny, that’s not what was predicted…
You really don’t understand the concept of negative feedbacks, do you?
Hmmm, However…
1) The water below the ice can still cool as it is circulated around the ice above it and…
2) The air over the now ice covered water can get *much* colder.
You don’t understand how radiation works. When a warm substance is prevented from cooling off, it doesn’t get even cooler. By permitting the water to radiate, the water gets colder than it would have had the ice remained.
“By permitting the water to radiate”
I think you has something backward.
@MarkW
“…You don’t understand how radiation works. ”
You don’t seem to understand how conduction/convection works in addition to *or* in place of, radiation.
1)When you place ice cubes in a warmer liquid, the ice may melt some but the liquid still cools. Ice cover over an ocean surface (which has currents at & below the surface which advects [moves] different temperature water through the area) is not the only means of heat removal…as you seem to think “…When a warm substance is prevented from cooling off” The ice cover still provides a cooling process to any warmer water advected into the area. The ice cools the water it is is contact with (through conduction), that cooler water sinks & is replaced with warmer water from below…very obvious to me.
2) With ice covered areas of the sea (or land, for that matter), the radiation process of the heat in the air at the surface to space is much greater (for some reason) so the air will get much colder than if it was just over nearly frozen water or even below freezing but ice free land. When that much colder air is advected out over open exposed water, the heat removal from the water (through convection) is magnitudes greater than simple space radiation in calm conditions because the thermal gradient between the water & air is much greater combined with the turbulent mixing of the boundary-layer air over water/surface. This will allow the water to chill & freeze over much faster than in calm conditions .
JKrob commented
Where I think you might be slighting nature, the ice water interface, the ice will be very near 32F, and if the water is not moving very quickly, I think you’d find a boundary layer of near 32F water, conduction can move more energy, but the differences is small.
But I suspect you’ve never tried to measure the temp of the sky with an IR thermometer, clear sky from 8-14u is cold, @ 41N during the winter I’ve seen -80F, and -40 to -60F temps during the day, in the Sun. To be fair you get to add the forcing from Co2, which is listed as ~22W/m2, but that has to be based on surface temps, so there’s no way it will be that large in the Arctic.
But you add 22W/m2 to -60F, and it’s equivalent to about a -40F surface the 32F water radiates to, Arctic air temp is irrelevant.
Then if you calculate the solar forcing that far north, verses water radiating to anywhere from -40F to probably below -100F, and at most there’s only one or two months of the year is forcing greater that radiation loss, depending on cloud cover. The wildcard is clouds, if it’s clear, open arctic water is a cooling system, the whole tipping point argument is stupid. And as we now know it was from models that left out critical parameters, and there’s no reason to believe they still don’t have missing critical parameters.
If you take two equal masses of water; say 100 grams each, and you put one mass in the ice cube tray and put it in the freezer to freeze; then you transfer the ice cubes to the refrigerator to settle down at about zero deg. C.
Then you take the second 100 gram mass od water and you heat it up to 80 deg. C
So now you have 100 grams of water at 80 deg. C just below boiling, and 100 grams of ice, at zero deg. C.
So now you drop the ice cubes, into the too hot to drink water (if coffee), and gently stir it all.
The ice will eventually all melt, while the too hot to drink water will cool down.
Just as the last of the ice melts, your thermometer that you put in to monitor the Temperature of the mixture will read exactly zero deg. C
It takes a whale of a lot of heat to melt ice.
g
Beyond that, the increased evaporation from the now exposed water means more snow on the nearby land.
I would have thought that by now the question of feedback of arctic sea ice (at least the sign of it) would have been resolved by now. But I am now understanding that MarkW’s view still prevails.
Recently I found this from Hugh Ellsaesser of Laurence Livermore in a contrarian presentation from 1983:
Thanks Berniel, this is exactly what I’m saying, but perhaps it is old knowledge by now? Here near the Arctic it is easier to see both the current warming and how difficult it is to warm a sea.
Current warming – the last 50, 100, 150 years, that’s what I’m talking about.
berniel: That article agrees with what I said.
I agree. With greatly reduced sea ice extent minima like 2007 and 2012, the rebound to the following maximum is very large. While with summer ice extent minima where there is less reduction in sea ice extent, the following rebound to maximum is smaller. That is a negative feedback.
I bring up Ellsaesser objection from very early in the warming movement because I am ever surprised about how the controversy has not progressed on various points despite the enormous attention from science. Thus, I would be interested to know how well the arctic sea-ice-reduction positive feedback position has been defended in the intervening 3 decades.
Another curiosity of the history is found the first time there was a lot of talk about an ice free arctic–in the mid-1950s. Ewing and Donn published a proposal that an ice-free Arctic would trigger…the next ices age. That’s taking negative feedback rather too far!
Y
I would suggest going back to school and brushing up on your Fourier series class.
“…if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.”
…aaand we’re back to “man must take action to cool down the planet”.
Arctic ice extent is very complex and I’m not sure any of the models have a full grasp of the entire system. For one thing, extent is geographically constrained. Ice can only grow in certain directions for so long before running into land. It may (or may not) get thicker, but thickness is not as easily measured and is not accounted for in extent figures. Also, varying wind patterns can remove ice from the arctic in different amounts in different years, regardless of temperature. Humidity is another independent variable that affects Arctic mass transfer. Low temperatures result in low humidities, which cause increasing sublimation of sea ice, the exact opposite of what models based on temperature alone will tell us. These new programs may take much into account that has previously been ignored.
October is the word they are looking for.
Michael hart —
Laughing outloud.
Eugene WR Gallun
Michael, Eugene,
Ditto, while rolling on the floor.
-Nick
Solved the problem with a critical observation.
SCIENCE!
I showed restraint; I only chuckled.
That is not news for those of us who knew the Arctic Sea Ice decline was all [due] to natural causes.
Of course the article, and all Science, says the opposite….
Models do not provide evidence.
Who said models are evidence? Maybe you did, but no scientist does.
Warren, the IPCC, AGW believers and the media seems to think they are,as they make clear they believe in the scenarios up to year 2100.
Heck, the models are what drives the AGW hysteria in the first place,take the models away,then you have nothing.
What science?
Was it science that noticed that the biggest so called melt occurred during a year when wind patterns had reversed and pushed the ice out the wide gap between Iceland and Europe, rather than it’s usual pattern of trying to push the ice out through the Bering Straits?
Data is evidence is it not? And it’s easy to find scientists using the phrase ‘ a growing body of data, generated by climate models’
https://www.data.gov/climate/portals/
You are amazingly ill-informed.
All science does not say te opposite at all Warren, and zero of the science said none of the previous increase in arctic SI was natural.
Also Warren you asked, “Who said models are evidence? Maybe you did, but no scientist does.
Well Warren I am afraid that the title of the upcoming article by these scientist disputes your assertion…
“How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.”
So Warren, apparently the GIGO in computer models influences the arctic Sea Ice.
@Sunsettommy.
No, you are completely confused about what constitutes evidence. But scientists are not. They use models to PROJECT future impacts, not as evidence that AGW exists. If you think you have a scientific reference claiming the opposite, post it.
@David Schofield
Model output is not evidence, and the complete sentence in your link says nothing about it being so:
“The links below provide access to a growing body of data, generated by climate models, relevant to understanding potential future climate change. ”
Note the words “…relevant to UNDERSTANDING POTENTIAL FOR FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE”
Nothing about evidence as to whether AGW is occurring.
warrenlb commented
LMAO, they have the clueless out running defense, the ranks must be getting pretty thin!
Warren, when you figure out why I think this betrays your ignorance, well maybe all the arctic ice will be back by then.
“all Science” ? Do you mean Mark Serreze predicting a likely meltdown in the Arctic for summer 2008? Camille Parmesan announcing the loss of a butterfly species from (as it turned out) a marginal habitat because of AGW? Suppression of evidence regarding the actual cause of the demise of the golden toad?
And who uses phrases like “all Science” anyway?
Warrenlb stop overstating the evidence. Arctic ice is increasing. Who cares? It will (hopefully) decline again, at least in summer.
There is no “tipping point”. That is the point of the article. The ‘science of tipping points’ is rooted is baseless alarm hoping to find a public opinion tipping point that would swing in favour of the AGW argument, leading naturally to a massive shift in how we approach energy production and use. It was always a stupid argument primarily because there is plenty of scientific evidence that the world has no such climate tipping points. If it has, it would long ago have tipped when CO2 was far higher than it is today.
When the climate catastrophism is tipped into the dustbin of history the alarmists will move on to the next man-caused catastrophe. The rest of us will address the problems of the age in which we live.
I don’t think I know the decline is all due to natural causes. It would be nice if it were so, but that is just an optimistic assertion.
The most recent ice losses are in line with what happened the last time the PDO went positive.
The evidence does not show any sign of any losses due to CO2.
@MICRO6500.
Modeling uses physics and DATA from the physical world to PROJECT the future impact of AGW.
In Science, DATA taken from the physical world of today is evidence, but please explain how modeling based on that same DATA now becomes ADDITIONAL evidence of AGW. Please.
warrenlb commented
Right, but you can’t augment your data to fill in missing data, with data that is based on your theory on what the data should be (cause you’re not actually measuring it), and then use that to prove your theory is correct.
When you do this, and your theory is wrong, you get what we have here. Model Output != Measurements
And it isn’t just that we can’t predict these large scale ocean effects (which to be fair were pretty new at the time), they didn’t leave any leave any room in the models temperature output for such a change, it was all allocated Co2 and Water vapor as a super-saturation at the air/water interfaces which gives GCM’s positive feedback with water, otherwise the models ran cold. So instead of fixing the model to account for the changes in the oceans, they juiced the impact of Co2 up.
MICRO: Your reply to my post doesn’t address my post. You tried to move the goal posts with a different point.
Back on track, please. I say Scientists don’t claim models are evidence. You say they do. Where is your proof?
You did not understand my comment then. The temperature evidence is corrupted by modeled data, the surface series published are no longer evidence.
And if you want evidence, do what I did and go read the process used for infilling and homogenization the temperature series.
CORRECTION that was not news to us who knew the Arctic Sea Ice decline was due to natural causes.
Saints be praised, we are all saved!
(…from the unimaginable disaster of having open water where a frozen and all-but impenetrable wasteland has long existed.)
Go Pope!, time to rattle the collection plate and take the credit before some rogue warmist beats you to it or Ban Ki-Moon, here is your big chance . sorry Al and little “o” tails they win heads you lose….
Others have suggested similar findings but were not given much attention. Tietsche (2011) in “Recovery mechanisms of Arctic summer sea ice”
wrote
We examine the recovery of Arctic sea ice from prescribed ice‐free summer conditions in simulations of 21st century climate in an atmosphere–ocean general circulation model. We find that ice extent recovers typically within two years. The excess oceanic heat that had built up during the ice‐free summer is rapidly returned to the atmosphere during the following autumn and winter, and then leaves the Arctic partly through increased longwave emission at the top of the atmosphere and partly through reduced atmospheric heat advection from lower latitudes.”
“Our results suggest that anomalous loss of Arctic sea ice during a single summer is reversible, as the ice–albedo feedback is alleviated by large‐scale recovery mechanisms. Hence, hysteretic threshold behavior (or a “tipping point”) is unlikely to occur during the decline of Arctic summer seaice cover in the 21st century”
My “very cold in winter when sun does not rise for months on end” model had the ice returning every winter, and being quite variable in summer, all along.
It is based on the archaic practice of long term observational studies.
Of course! Another model. Just what we needed. Showing what we’ve known all along, that the whole “tipping point” thing is nonsense.
Let the climate backpedaling continue.
There are more models in climate ‘science’ than on a thousand Paris runways during Fashion Week.
Yes more models…
“It wasn’t clear whether the simpler process models were missing an essential element, or whether GCMs were getting something wrong,” said Wagner, the lead author of the study. […] They created a model that bridged the gap between the process models and the GCMs, and they used it to determine what caused sea ice tipping points to occur in some models but not in others.”
But at least now it appears they are using models to figure out how the models are wrong. A model tipping-point…?
I do not see anything new here. As has been often noted, they have been using models to confirm the models for quite some time.
And the models always say just what they wanted, until they want them to say something else.
In any case, the models cannot be wrong, and have never failed…we just have not given them enough time to be (accidentally) correct.
relax. that was sarcasm.
Ditto.
http://www.qpg.geog.cam.ac.uk/lgmextent.html
Things appears rather ominous when we take this into account.
if it so ominous, why is there no ice right dead center at the north pole? It seems to have all migrated southwards, like some huge flock of migratory birds.
for Ferd: Exactly. Ominous in the opposite direction of the alarmists…
“During the past several years, scientists using global climate models (GCMs) that are more complex than process models found sea ice loss in response to rising greenhouse gases in their computer simulations …”
I thought GCMs were “General Circulation Models”. No matter, we all know the science was settled years ago, so it doesn’t matter that nature isn’t following the script.
/snark
[Yes. “General Circulation Models” became “General Climate Models” which quickly became “Global Climate Models” …. Follow the money. .mod]
Grant Collection Method.
Thanks Moderator, an Interesting morph of the acronym GCM. The act of creating “Newspeak” demonstrated there. Orwellian indeed. (There’s no conspiracy here, move along.)
Backpedaling ever faster. Except for the 2012 cyclone, all indices of Arctic ice have been recovering since the 2007 low. Extent, volume, multiyear. If the DMI and Russian records from about 1920 to about 1939 are half correct (there was a war interuption thereafter), the previous minimum was in the 1940’s. And the present min was 2007. Essay Northwest Passage provides fun details.
And Amundsen’s successful traverse of the Northwest Passage in a wooden sloop in 1906 would seem to indicate that lightweight wooden ice breakers are the best kind.
Or maybe it indicates something else.
Reading this article made me think that the day there is no ice in the arctic is the day I sell my house and move somewhere south, way south. http://harpers.org/archive/1958/09/the-coming-ice-age/
Thanks, mpw280. A fascinating read.
Can we list the obvious fallacies in this article?
It will be interesting to see if anyone can count high enough anyway.
Melting sea ice to raise the ocean and down the eastern US?
Sea ice covering entire Arctic ocean through all of history? There are reports of open water in the early 1900’s!
No explanation for the ice ages, and they defy all prediction? Nonsense, the Milankovich cycles were well understood decades before this article were written.
Oh, well, I guess I can count high enough, because I cannot read past the sixth paragraph…laughing too hard.
Typo: …and drown the eastern…
Thanks. Ewing and Donn had it figured out in the ’50s. It’s too bad so many people have never even heard of them. Instead lying idiots like Mann get so much credit. It’s insane!
Arctic ocean stays open water, even in winter, for tens of thousands of years?
According to the scenario, the Arctic Ocean should freeze up when sea level falls 300 feet from current levels…but they also say it was 400 feet lower for a long time and the ocean stayed unfrozen.
Also that it would stay unfrozen when the Arctic was open to the Atlantic, like now and for the past several thousand years…yet it is mostly frozen in Winter.
It does not add up as described.
This has all the trappings of a “walk back from the edge” paper! I’m sure they’ll ask for additional funds to do more research which they’ll find “natural” mechanisms are stronger than previously believed and current models don’t incorporate these well and we’ll need some more funding. The never ending govt/science industrial complex at work.
Let us suppose the existence of an arctic tipping point, as posited by the process models. If we passed that tipping point, would that force the end of the current Ice Age? In that case, the current interglacial would become permanent, on a geologic timescale. After all, I can not see Ice Age type ice sheets forming without arctic ice to help start things off.
If the above scenario is not plausible, what would that say about the process models?
The North Polar ice is rebounding now despite rising CO2 levels so these great computer models are wrong already, or didn’t they check the observations to notice that?
Now you’re combining observations and logic.
CO2 continues to increase, the arctic ice is recovering, therefor the models were wrong. OMG!!!!
I so wish I could reach over and smack them upside the head.
Really hard, too.
So it mussed their hair and everything, knocked their glasses askew and woke their dizzy butts up.
Can someone explain to me how a model can influence reality? Is this some new level of Quantum Theory?
Is the dead cat in the box really dead? We need a billion more dollars to find the answer to that via computer programs!
“Can someone explain to me how a model can influence reality?”
Tabya, take a look at your energy bill. You’ve probably already discovered how a model can influence {your} reality.
Boulder Reality- thanks, I just took a look at my energy bill and it’s been flat for 10 years since I have solar. How’s that for economic stability? Don’t have to worry about Assad, or the Sheik or nadie.
Since I and the other taxpayers paid for about 80% of that solar panel, you are welcome.
Oh Mark, you really didn’t pay 80%, but both of us paid quite a bit to defend a desert full of idiots and assassins and got nothing but IOU’s out of it and sad stories.
Leland, You’re just so superior aren’t you.
Mine’s going up as a direct result of renewables. I’m 83% [unreliable] renewable (up from 34% 6 years ago) and my bill is up 32% after inflation. Meanwhile, the next community over (same county) is actually down a few percent after inflation on their energy bills probably because they can buy coal and gas cheaper. The brother of my girlfriend works for the local energy wholesaler and just laughs at how much they are making off the renewables that politicians are stupid enough to believe are cost effective, will save the world {eye-roll}, and can create a stable power grid {not}.
And yes, all your neighbors are too paying the lion’s share of your solar panels. You’re welcome.
Leland,
You are joking, right?
Your flat-lined energy bills are because everyone else’s bills look like a hockey stick.
Uhm….
If there WAS a tipping point….
Beyond which the ice couldn’t “recover” even if the planet cooled…
Then there would be no ice there right now since there was none during the last hot house earth phase
or something like that…..LOL
If ice can’t recover, how did the ice form in the first place?
MarkW, maybe Earth came with ice pre-installed. (Do I need the /?)
pre-installed?
When’s the next service pack?
Is it ice-windows 7 or ice-windows 8?
/more sarc
…and how much time and money did these Einsteins waste to figure this out?
….”at least we can expect to get it back if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.”
“…..if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.” Pray tell, how are WE going to do THAT?
Next WE could somehow manage to STOP Earthquakes and the Sun from rising in the East.
Since earthquakes are now caused by AGW I am assuming that by switching to solar and wind WE will stop earthquakes. To stop the sun from rising in the east we’ll obviously need a special UN Solar Deference Tax.
I would have thought that it is pretty obvious that with 3.5 bilion years of observational data under a variety of geological conditions (even catastrophic conditions like bolide impacts and continental scale volcanism) there are no climate tipping points. The climate is remakably stable and on the whole cyclic. Based on evidence, how do these people ever think it would be otherwise?
There are some long term one-way vectors that influence the Earth, like the cooling of the core, and the sequestration of Carbon out of the atmosphere and into the earth by the biosphere, but even so the climate remains locked in to a few degrees this way and a few degrees back.
+1
Simples if only commonsense is applied.
We don’t have 3.5 billion years of observational data. We have proxies.
We toggle into and out of interglacial periods. It sure looks like some kind of tipping point is at work.
Even if the planet’s average temperature doesn’t change that much, there used to be about a mile of ice above where I’m sitting right now (if you believe the proxies).
</pedantic>
“………..no tipping point is likely to devour what’s left of the Arctic summer sea ice. So if global warming does soon melt all the Arctic sea ice, at least we can expect to get it back if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.”
So the planet is too hot for these guys, is it? Want it to be colder, do they?
After the severe winter we’ve had the last two years here in the upper Midwest, is say they’re nuts. Bring back the warmth of the the MWP and to hell with these guys. Unfortunately, because of how quiet the sun is right now, another MWP-like warm period does not appear to be in the cards for us.
If these dim bulbs expect me to believe their tipping point garbage and want a colder planet, they can move to Pluto. Plenty cold there. And, oh, I forgot. Pluto is just a dwarf planet now, but there should still be enough room for them there.
The backpaddling begines. Oh wait, backpaddling in ice!
There have been many archaeological sites found in Greenland (but they wouldn’t know that), the oldest on Peary Land about as far north you can get on land, dating back over 4000 years:
“Peary Land was historically inhabited by three Eskimo cultures, during which times the climate was milder than presently: • Independence I culture (around 2000 BC, oldest remains dating from 2400 BC) • Independence II culture (800 BC to 200 BC) • Thule culture (around AD 1300) …” (Wiki until bowdlerised by Connelly).
Currently reading “The Frozen Echo” by Kirsten Seaver , dealing with Norse occupation of Greenland and
North America, AD 1000-1500 and the historical and archaeological records .There are several mentions of reindeer(caribou) feeding on the abundant green pastures in South West Greenland ( where the so called Eastern Settlement was located ) when the Norse arrived.
Is this not both surprising and significant ?
Process models? Somehow I doubt that they are talking about the same sort of tools that are used to analyse industrial or engineering processes. They moved on to GCMs, which have bogus CO2 sensitivity hard-wired into them, so they are still going round in circles.
Maybe the hope is that the “process models” will be confused for something like HYSIS.
Wow – cheered me up seeing that stuff. Real modelling 🙂
The title of their article says it all. “How Climate Model Complexity influences Sea Ice Stability”
How far from reality can one go? These “scientists’ have given us a new high mark to strive for.
And I’m sure many more will try.
Hooray for GCMs!
But this is no bombshell. The IPCC was not projecting an irreversibly ice-free Arctic. The AR4 says:
“An important characteristic of the projected change is for summer ice area to decline far more rapidly than winter ice area (Gordon and O’Farrell, 1997), and hence sea ice rapidly approaches a seasonal ice cover in both hemispheres (Figures 10.13b and 10.14). Seasonal ice cover is, however, rather robust and persists to some extent throughout the 21st century in most (if not all) models.”
Incidentally, they also say, in 2007:
“In 20th- and 21st-century simulations, antarctic sea ice cover is projected to decrease more slowly than in the Arctic (Figures 10.13c,d and 10.14), particularly in the vicinity of the Ross Sea where most models predict a local minimum in surface warming. This is commensurate with the region with the greatest reduction in ocean heat loss, which results from reduced vertical mixing in the ocean (Gregory, 2000). The ocean stores much of its increased heat below 1 km depth in the Southern Ocean.”
what? the IPCC are all about ‘tipping points’.
http://climate.dot.gov/about/overview/climate_tipping_points.html#_ftn11
“IPCC Perspectives on Tipping Points
In the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC addresses the issue of tipping points in the discussion of “major or abrupt climate changes” and highlights three large systems: the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) system that drives Atlantic Ocean circulation, the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and the loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet (Meehl et al. p. 818). The IPCC also mentions additional systems, as noted below, that may have tipping points but does not include estimates for these additional systems.
Various climate and climate-affected systems that might undergo abrupt change, contribute to climate surprises, or experience irreversible impacts are described in the IPCC Working Group I report (see Chapter 10, Box 10-1). The systems that the IPCC described include:
Atlantic MOC (AMOC) and other ocean circulation changes;
Arctic sea ice;
Glaciers and ice caps;
Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets;
Vegetation cover; and
Atmospheric and ocean-atmosphere regimes.”
this is what the USA government are telling their tax payers..
Yes, they listed it in FAQ 10.1 of the AR4. But don’t you ever stop to read what they said about it? Here it is:
“Arctic sea ice is responding sensitively to global warming. While changes in winter sea ice cover are moderate, late summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost completely towards the end of the 21st century. A number of positive feedbacks in the climate system accelerate the melt back of sea ice. The ice-albedo feedback allows open water to receive more heat from the Sun during summer, and the increase in ocean heat transport to the Arctic through the advection of warmer waters and stronger circulation further reduces ice cover. Minimum arctic sea ice cover is observed in September. Model simulations indicate that the September sea ice cover decreases substantially in response to global warming, generally evolving on the time scale of the warming. With sustained warming, the late summer disappearance of a major fraction of arctic sea ice is permanent. “
Same as above. “With sustained warming, the late summer disappearance of a major fraction of arctic sea ice is permanent.” No total disappearance, and dependent on sustained warming.
Nick, it is not me that wrote that trash the American government put on their website. your problem is with them it seems. I never believed that the arctic melt was unprecedented in human times, so i dont really care about the crap that the IPCC formulate from their already proven wrong models.
my specific issue is the ‘no bombshell’ statement you make. considering the government website makes it rather clear that there are indeed tipping points for the arctic sea ice, this is what they expect the public to digest. kids go do their homework and find.. tipping points. green trash statements which are just as bad as the word sustainability. who decides what is sustainable when the figures are nonsense? who decided tipping points when the figures (models) were nonsense? etc.
Nick,
There are so many authorities to choose from as the voice of AGW Consensus Inc.
You favour a jejune utterance from the IPCC.
Why not Mark Serreze?
“We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point,” said Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the data center, in Boulder, Colo. “It’s tipping now. We’re seeing it happen now.”
That was 2008 before his damascene moment.
We recently read that skeptics are actually closet believers but I’m sensing that, along with “death spiral” Serreze, you and Brandon and the other couple of warm-hearted visitors are covert contrarians, who knew the tipping point thing was nonsense all along but neglected to mention it.
Serreze? Sure, there are scientists who think there may be a tipping point. But this article says the discovery of one group that thinks there may not is a BOMBSHELL. The IPCC summarises the general trend of the literature, and says (2007) that Arctic ice disappearance is not expected this century. That one more paper says that is not a bombshell.
In fact, it’s a rather technical paper on the bifurcation of a differential equation. I don’t think there has been discussion of this, pro or con, in popular discourse.
“There are so many authorities to choose from as the voice of AGW Consensus Inc.”
That is so you can quote many different shades of grey when you need an excuse for the fear-mongering going poorly.
Nick,
I know the IPCC is a convenient cover to duck into and out of; Pachauri, himself, did it.
Interview:
“SIMON LAUDER: You’ve said before that carbon dioxide needs to be no higher than 350 parts per million to avoid the climate tipping point. Do you think action is happening fast enough to avoid that still?
RAJENDRA PACHAURI: Well, I did preface that remark by saying this is a personal view and I’m not saying that as chairman of the IPCC because the IPCC is not supposed to be politically prescriptive. I mean it is for the world to decide whether they want 350 parts per million or 450 or whatever but as a human being, as an individual I would say that I would feel comfortable with that level and of course, we know that is going to be quite a challenge.”
Opining that 351ppm is a tipping point is not “politically prescriptive” if it’s based on science, as he claims it is. What he’s saying is that people must decide whether they care about it being a tipping point, not whether it is one.
The reason he was being interviewed was precisely because he was the boss of the IPCC, just as Hansen got his soap-box as a perk of working at NASA.
It’s also clear that every blow struck on the AGW body is merely a Monty Python flesh wound, so we have to ask; if it’s not a bombshell, then what is it?
Is it noteworthy that Serreze, whom you dismissed as merely one of several, reversed his position on the tipping point?
Will it be another damp squib when Peter Wadhams postpones permanently the plunge off the polar precipice?
mebbe,
Sorry, but I’m on record in this forum as saying that I’m dubious of claims that the WAIS has reached tipping point. Not “sceptical” — dubious. I’m not convinced. That does not mean that I categorically reject the concept, nor saying that such claims must be false, and it certainly doesn’t make me a covert climate contrarian. It does, however, make me honest about my doubts.
An aside: on a subject as complex as climate, it’s very easy to say to someone, “you’ve never said X about Y” and “conclude” that they must have been trying to hide something. This is a nonsense argument because there’s always something that I will not have written about given the mammoth scope of the topic. As well, I seriously doubt that you read ever word I’ve ever written everywhere I post on this topic, so you’re essentially making insinuations on the basis of incomplete information. Which I do NOT consider honest.
Cheers.
Brandon,
Even you should savour the irony of your invoking the WAIS in a thread about Arctic sea ice, since your side always accuses us of saying “What about the Antarctic?”
Skeptical, even when you spell it with a c is the same as dubious; you doubt the validity, veracity or truthiness and that casts a shadow over your full-fledged, non-contrarian credentials.
In addition, on the strength of your doubts as to my having perused the entire corpus of your on-line contributions, you have the temerity to “insinuate” that I am not “honest”. You didn’t have the complete information necessary to impugn my integrity but I can now asseverate that your doubts about my familiarity with your world-wide commentary are well-founded.
This admission does not exonerate you with regard to the calumny you previously perpetrated and which was equivalent to the slander that you claim I slung your way.
You might even be accused of the horrible crime of hypocrisy!
“antarctic sea ice cover is projected to decrease more slowly …….particularly in the vicinity of the Ross Sea”
Unfortunately exactly the opposite has happened since AR4 was writtten. The Ross sea and adjoining areas are about the only place in the Southern Ocean where sea-ice hasn’t increased much.
Well, I suppose a slow increase is closer to a slow decrease than is a fast increase….
I suppose if one thinks that somewhere around 1850 or so was Earth’s optimum climate, then even the normal “snowball-to-hothouse” Earth climates we know about would seem catastrophic. Anyone schooled in geology takes a rather phlegmatic, long-term view of things such as climate; however, perhaps those not so blase would be rather alarmed at Chicago going back under a kilometer of ice, or sea levels rising another 100 feet. Even natural variability is a bitch if you’re the one at the far end of it.
Was an interview with a Polar Bear involved?
Yes, but it ate the reporter. No film at 11, damn thing got the camera guy too.
“It wasn’t clear whether the simpler process models were missing an essential element, or whether GCMs were getting something wrong,”
uhhh…yes and yes
You beat me to it!
They’re both models so they’re both crap.
How can these numbskulls continue to use models as ‘evidence’. Models aren’t data, they’re just guesses (and bad guesses at that)
Well they got it half right, what they missed is the melt is a cooling mechanism in itself.
Did they miss it, or is it just not mentioned in the press release?
Since they say this
“During the past several years, scientists using global climate models (GCMs) that are more complex than process models found sea ice loss in response to rising greenhouse gases in their computer simulations is actually reversible when greenhouse levels are reduced.”
I’m guessing they missed it.
micro6500,
Turns out there’s a preprint of the entire paper here: http://eisenman.ucsd.edu/papers/Wagner-Eisenman-accepted-2015.pdf
Lf is the latent heat of fusion of sea ice, and cw is the heat capacity of the ocean mixed layer, which is equal to the product of the ocean mixed layer specific heat capacity, density, and depth.
So no, they didn’t miss it, it’s just not mentioned in the press release.
Brandon Gates April 28, 2015 at 7:50 pm
////
Brandon, that is not a complete answer. It only deals with latent heat, but there is potentially another inter -related feedback.
The other aspect is whether the low extent of ice coverage enables more heat to be lost from the ocean (on an annual basis) than heat is gained by the ocean during such periods as there is sufficient solar irradiance impacting upon the ice free ocean.
richard verney
And that conclusion is what the Arctic calculations do show. Down south, not so: Over the 2014-2015 twelve month year, the rising Antarctic sea ice does reflect 168% more energy over the entire year than the slightly-smaller (7% low) Arctic absorbs into its darker waters. Only 4 months of the year, (April, May, June, July) does the Arctic Ocean get exposed to enough sun to even have a heat gain.
The other 8 months? Greater Arctic ice loss from today’s extents = More heat loss from the planet.
Richard Verney,
It completely answers the posed question that latent heat of fusion had been “forgotten”. The balance of your response moves the goalposts. Nice try, but no dice.
Brandon Gates commented
So, since it was my comment, I should be the one to say if you answered it, and I’ll give you a B, you made a reasonable attempt at answering what I wrote but I was not talking about heat of fusion, I was really referring to the massive radiative heat loss from open water, and that I don’t believe there is even a possibility of a tipping point, that was what I was pointing out they missed..
micro6500,
Yes quite true, I was out of order.
A mistake on my part for which I feel a bit silly about upon review. Ice melt is not a cooling mechanism per se, it’s an endothermic process which involves no temperature change … only a phase change. IOW, absobed energy which does not increase temperature.
I don’t think they missed radiative heat loss from open ocean either. They discuss it in various places, here they show the maths for it: http://eisenman.ucsd.edu/papers/Wagner-Eisenman-accepted-2015.pdf
b. EBM formulation with seasonal variations
The time evolution of E(t;x) is determined at each latitude by the net energy flux into the atmospheric column and surface below:
∂E/∂t = aS – L + D∇²T + Fb + F (2)
which includes fluxes due to top-of-the-atmosphere net solar radiation, aS; outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), L; meridional heat transport in the atmosphere, D∇²T; and heat flux into the model domain from the ocean below, Fb (Figure 1).
However, they do go on to explicitly “ignore” something:
Note that most EBMs compute only the equilibrium climate state, ∂E/∂t = 0 in (2), whereas here we consider the time-evolution of the system. Since we are considering an aquaplanet, and the ocean mixed layer has an effective heat capacity that is more than an order of magnitude higher than the atmosphere (North and Coakley 1979), we neglect the heat capacity of the atmospheric column. This implies that the vertical temperature profile in the atmosphere at a given time and latitude is fully determined by T.
They “forget” the LAND and “neglect” heat capacity of the atmospheric column!
I suggest you could come up with better critiques by reading the paper instead of just guessing, same as I could have come up with a better rebuttal by not making an assumption about what cooling mechanism you were invoking.
Well there you go being all reasonable and stuff…..
richard verney,
As micro6500 has informed me that he was indeed thinking about cooling due to radiative heat loss in open ocean, I stand corrected and retract my previous comment to you with apologies.
Well, Scripps’ false premise was there was a significant net loss lover a significant period. But now allow a modified premise it is probably reversible. Their original premise was tainted but i’ll now take very graciously the more reasonable position that it is probably reversible. : )
This may be the end of the alarmist’s world as they knew it, or at least another facet in the beginning of the start of the end of the alarmist’s world as they knew it.
John
Do you accept Scripp’s conclusion that the disappearance of Arctic sea ice due to AGW can be reversed if AGW is reversed?
“Do you accept Scripp’s conclusion that the disappearance of Arctic sea ice due to AGW can be reversed if AGW is reversed?”
No, the amount of ice has nothing to do with AGW, so doing anything about AGW will do nothing to the ice.
NO!
Doggone Scripps Institute. Another example of fraudulent Science at work…
@warrenlb- as you can see, the crowd here is focused now on the fact that sea ice melt CAN be reversed, as opposed to the fact that it is already melted, and could melt a lot more. It’s a generally consistent “trick” that is played out here. Bait the crowd with XYZ alarmist admits worst case projections were not realized, and then they pile on as if that is proof that no scenario exists at all except the one that they want. No probabilities, no possibilities, simply purity of a future than no one can predict, unless your name is sunsettommy…
If the premise is faulty, then by definition the conclusion must also be faulty.
“Do you accept Scripp’s conclusion that the disappearance of Arctic sea ice due to AGW can be reversed if AGW is reversed?”
NEWSFLASH: ARTIC SEA ICE RECOVERING RAPIDLY!
Credited with the recovery? Doing nothing.
Leland Neraho,
Not really. The fact is that none of the alarmist predictions re: arctic ice disappearing have come to pass. In fact, no alarming prediction has ever happened. They have all been flat wrong.
Arctic ice cover is now recovering and has hit a decade high. So much for the scare stories. When one side of a debate is 100.0% wrong in every prediction they make, rational folks will stop listening to their self-serving climate alarmism.
dbstealey April 29, 2015 at 3:24 am
Arctic ice cover is now recovering and has hit a decade high.
Hardly stealey, according to NSIDC march was the lowest extent on there record.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2015/04/monthly_ice_NH_03.png
But they’re cherry picking Phil!
Why stop at 1979? other than it’s the peak ice of the last 50 years, but let’s ignore the first 50 years of the 20th century. A little inconvenient truth too much for you, or did they just forget to add it to your talking points?
Since there isn’t a documented value of “AGW”, the answer necessarily has to be, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
micro6500 April 29, 2015 at 6:20 am
But they’re cherry picking Phil!
Try to read micro! Stealey claimed that:
“dbstealey April 29, 2015 at 3:24 am
Arctic ice cover is now recovering and has hit a decade high.
Now that’s ‘cherry picking’ and what’s more it’s untrue as I showed, ~0.5 million sq km loss over the last decade, some recovery! Rather than a ‘decade high’ it’s a ‘decade low’, if you want to argue ‘cherry picking’ take it up with stealey, he chose the time frame for comparison.
You picked the current March ice extent, and I think db was talking about min extent in Sept.
https://d3800158-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm/2014_sea_ice_CT_min.png?attachauth=ANoY7cqXWhnwSv-xjXGHvAuk-vgGPwGMKUzsBmAgYjJVMB8FDKqHdAZQPAmeLRIkg0LMCJViQTaDbUwGSlLXiVEmBne5QtkOziSFJLPIzj8OX7Fiww5XVYF-AHR0y5bRzICD_KgbAc8sx9Ht0y8gCHZPPPesNlpFj_OhJ73YLl-NrjKNQ4s30nwYSZGtH94LeSOvtTpOKex25YP0t_mpteGQmQ9laR-pZ10UlsScvibgP_ZHlF4rLfByfhuzxMgDTbgoJ9bOHIqD&attredirects=0
But if you look at the data (below), you see 2015 ice is right with the last bunch of years.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
All hype Phil.
Maybe this link will work better than the long one.
https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm/2014_sea_ice_CT_min.png?attredirects=0
One more time
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
Phil.,
Arctic sea ice is recovering very strongly, whether you are willing to admit it or not:
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/bpiomas_plot_daily_heff-2sst-1.png
It is now at its highest since the early winter of 2006 — the highest in a decade.
micro6500 April 29, 2015 at 7:50 am
You picked the current March ice extent, and I think db was talking about min extent in Sept.
Really, I guess ‘Now’ means something different in your language? I guess we have to be psychic to understand stealey’s posts. That the lowest maximum extent on the record is over-ruled by a previous minimum is rather strange usage. Also by decade he apparently means the calendar decade (since 01/01/2011) not the last 10 years.
Also for your posts too apparently since you posted an unlabeled graph in a discussion of Arctic sea ice which purports to be of Arctic sea ice anomaly but is not!
Further disingenuousness by stealey follows:
dbstealey April 29, 2015 at 8:57 pm
Phil.,
Arctic sea ice is recovering very strongly, whether you are willing to admit it or not:
Now he switches from recovering sea ice coverage, which he first tried to deceive us about, to sea ice thickness (without saying so of course).
It is now at its highest since the early winter of 2006 — the highest in a decade.
He can’t even read his own graphs since it was higher in 2009, also note the flexible meaning of ‘decade’.
Of course you might expect the average ice thickness to increase as sea ice coverage decreases since the thinnest ice melts first.
You have to be very careful with stealey’s posts, they’re very deceptive!
“It’s a generally consistent “trick” that is played out here. Bait the crowd with XYZ alarmist admits worst case projections were not realized, and then they pile on as if that is proof that no scenario exists at all except the one that they want …”.
================================
Nonsense, I think most posters are laughing at the fact that a computer model is used to validate the bleeding’ obvious.
completely agree that models fail, or at least are fallible. One only need to point to Alan Greenspan and the many credit models that failed. All you had to do was pay attention to price vs income to know that whole house of cards would collapse.
So Leland, you admit the models can be (and often are) wrong.
So why do you and the other warmistas believe we should change the whole economic world model because of some fallible results? (Your expensively subsidised solar panels being a case in point.)
warrenlb on April 28, 2015 at 7:02 pm
– – – – – – – – –
warrenlb,
I would consider responding, if you want to clarify what you are saying in the form of some basic kind of Aristotelian logic. Premises and logic matter and can be one’s friend or enemy. Are they your friend or enemy?
John
Warren wants to know if you stopped beating your wife up in the arctic.
@John Whitman.
Here’s what I posted April 28, at 7:02pm:
‘Do you accept Scripp’s conclusion that the disappearance of Arctic sea ice due to AGW can be reversed if AGW is reversed?’
Seems like the question asks for a simple YES or NO. No Aristotle, Mills or Bertrand Russell needed.
@Warrenlb ‘Do you accept Scripp’s conclusion that the disappearance of Arctic sea ice due to AGW can be reversed if AGW is reversed?’
I think I figured out why you seem to be having such a hard time understanding the replies you are receiving. The question being asked isn’t exactly like asking ‘So how long ago did you stop beating your wife?’ It is, however, like asking ‘Do you accept the conclusion that the loss of prairie grass due to unicorn grazing can be reversed if unicorns are stopped from grazing?’
“all models are wrong, some models are useful”. Doesn’t sound like anyone has a useful model on arctic sea ice.
But, but, CO2 has gone up 10% in 20 years and we have 2006 ice?
Seems all those links saved on the 2007 arctic cyclone don’t work any longer. WUWT?
It turns out that CO2 doesn’t melt sea ice after all.
“Till Wagner and Ian Eisenman, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.”
Well, if they carry on with this line of inquiry then that’s surely the last time that they’ll hear themselves called scientists.
If they continue to doubt the validity of the most scary modeled predictions then surely they will soon be known as “deniers”, or if they are lucky, “contrarians”.
Of course they still have time to pull back from the irreversible tipping point. The tipping point at which their mainstream credibility is wrecked by the alarmists.
Someone needs to warn them – it’s not too late for them to get back on the alarmist bus, to start agreeing with absolutely all the most scary predictions and occasionally manipulate an old prediction in such a way that it looks even more scary than the last.
That’s what real scientists do. Isn’t it?
Being Scripps, they can transfer to the “Ocean Acidification” bus that leaves out of Alarmist Gate 2.
Arctic Death Spiral canceled? YAY!
Oh, wait. I’m all for an extra couple of degrees of global warming. Nevermind…
Me too. I’m also for a Northwest Passage.
Let’s clarify that headline:
“Once Again, Climate Skeptics Proven Correct: Arctic Ice Not In Death Spiral”
The Warming ‘Elite’ may be wising up. If they continue with the”irreversible ” banter, their Taxpayer-provided, research $Billions could be yanked. ‘Why throw more money at something that we can do nothing about?’. Pretty shrewd…..eh?
“They created a model that bridged the gap between the process models and the GCMs, and they used it to determine what caused sea ice tipping points to occur in some models but not in others.”
So is there now a Model Science developing; the science of the study of models? Will there be PHD’s awarded in this new field?
Now some may think this is just cleaning up faulty programming but it looks more like a whole new area of specialization worthy of significant government grants and requiring special meetings at exotic locations.
So just like the U.S. President can slow the increase in sea level rise, at least Obama can, PHDs in this field are able to use models to make sea ice more stable.
“Wagner and Eisenman resolve this discrepancy in the study in an upcoming Journal of Climate article, “How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.”
In a sane world it would be “How Sea Ice Stability Influences Climate Model Complexity” and not the other way around. But, such are the effects of CO2 on gubbmint funded thinking…
It’s neither horse nor ass it’s a ….mule
The blob is going to sneak into the Arctic Ocean and finish off all the Arctic sea ice. No one received the memo, obviously.
“Oversimplified” is being very kind. “Idiotic” would be a better description off the alarmist arctic ice predictions. A brief study of actual past ice cycles, by anyone of average intelligence, would lead to a different conclusion. Of course a brief review of history doesn’t pay as well as developing a “complex” model.
Not much talk of that, even here. Why is this do you think?
The Blob prefers attacking Hollywood.
Seth Borenstein may well be getting drunk, drawing a warm bath and digging through his tool box looking for a razor. Better call on him.
28 April: CarbonBrief: Roz Pidcock: Prof Richard Muller: Not adjusting global temperature records would be “poor science”
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Lord Lawson’s UK-based climate skeptic lobby group, has announced it is launching an inquiry into the integrity of global surface temperature records…
Carbon Brief has spoken to Prof Richard Muller, physicist and self-professed skeptical scientist, who carried out a very similar inquiry a few years ago as part of the Berkeley Earth surface temperature ( BEST) project, based in California. Muller tells Carbon Brief:
“From a scientific point of view, it would be irresponsible not to adjust … it would be considered poor science to avoid such corrections … [and] ***they do not affect the substantial results.”…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/04/prof-richard-muller-not-adjusting-global-temperature-records-would-be-poor-science/
***”they do not affect the substantial results.”… or should it be “they do not SUBSTANTIALLY affect the results.”?
paywalled, but add this to the few MSM covering the story:
27 April: Australian: Panel to probe homogenisation
The GWPF is a controversial voice in the climate change debate but Professor Kealey said his review team “approaches the subject as open-minded scientists — we intend to let the science do the talking”. “Our goal is to help the public understand the challenges in assembling climate data sets, the influence of adjustments and modifications to the the data, and whether … In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology has faced similar …
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/panel-to-probe-homogenisations-role-in-warming-trend/story-e6frg8y6-1227323733213
”they do not affect the substantial results.”
Nonsense, the results are presented in a way to hide the fact that the increase in Co2 doesn’t appear to be doing anything.
More models? Geesh. The Ludic Fallacy continues apace….
none of the previous models didn’t account for seaonal changes? really? And they wonder why climate models are mocked.
Only mocked by those who are ignorant that models are not weather forecasting tools.
That too.
Wrong, Warren, they use forecasting models everyday, to predict rain,wind and so on.
“Tomorrow there is a 60% chance of so on.”
@sunsettommy.
We’re talking about models (e.g., AOGCMs) used by the IPCC, you know. If you think they’re using weather forecasting models just so you’d have something to criticize, you might imagine they have more important issues to deal with.
“Only mocked by those who are ignorant that models are not weather forecasting tools.”
Models are forecasting tools.
@RH.
You say “Models ARE forecasting tools”
I say: But the IPCC’s models are NOT weather forecasting tools, nor did the IPCC intend them to be. Nor do their scientists claim them to be so. Only you seem to.
What we expect is that they get climate correct at the regional level, being 10 or 20 degrees warm one place and cold in another and because the average is close doesn’t make them accurate.
logos_wrench,
No, some models did and some models didn’t. Not all models do the same thing, and even between similar kinds of models there are differences. As well, let’s be clear; this study is limited to Arctic sea ice. The authors do not say that seasonal variations were not considered across the board in all models. Here’s the abstract:
Abstract
Record lows in Arctic sea ice extent are making frequent headlines in recent years. The change in albedo when sea ice is replaced by open water introduces a nonlinearity that has sparked an ongoing debate about the stability of the Arctic sea ice cover and the possibility of Arctic “tipping points”. Previous studies identified instabilities for a shrinking ice cover in two types of idealized climate models: (i) annual-mean latitudinally-varying diffusive energy balance models (EBMs) and (ii) seasonally-varying single-column models (SCMs). The instabilities in these low-order models stand in contrast with results from comprehensive global climate models (GCMs), which typically do not simulate any such instability. To help bridge the gap between low-order models and GCMs, we develop an idealized model that includes both latitudinal and seasonal variations. The model reduces to a standard EBM or SCM as limiting cases in the parameter space, thus reconciling the two previous lines of research. We find that the stability of the ice cover vastly increases with the inclusion of spatial communication via meridional heat transport or a seasonal cycle in solar forcing, being most stable when both are included. If the associated parameters are set to values that correspond to the current climate, the ice retreat is reversible and there is no instability when the climate is warmed. The two parameters have to be reduced by at least a factor of 3 for instability to occur. This implies that the sea ice cover may be substantially more stable than has been suggested in previous idealized modeling studies.
This would have been much more persuasive if you’d attached a graph of some sort. Three graphs would be super serial!
Only if the graphs had nothing to do with the point he was making.
The substantive nature of the comments above is astounding. I must concede, I’m completely outclassed by the erudition on display here.
If models influence the weather, my wife is correct and my concept of the language is
outdated.
“If models influence the weather, my wife is correct and my concept of the language is
outdated.”
Doesn’t rising hemlines on models, mean an excess of warming?
Rising hemlines mean improving economic conditions.
Hemlines going down means worsening economic conditions and increasing unemployment [probably get that if North America is overwhelmed by ice again].
GregK commented on
I was just thinking about how hot Models warm me up 😉
Well that’s potentially good news. But somewhat like ELCore (@OneLaneHwy) just above me points out, interesting that we apparently trust models today.
Are you being paid to make yourself look dumb, or do you just get a kick out of it.
We are ridiculing the fact that the early models have been shown to be faulty, despite the claims of warrenlb and the other warmistas. We are also having fun with the fact that the models are now agreeing with what we knew all along.
“We are also having fun with the fact that the models are now agreeing with what we knew all along.”
Are you referring to the point that the authors made that the ice, once gone, will not come back until we cool the Earth?
MarkW,
When I am amused by all this, it’s generally for comments like that one.
Since all models are always wrong, I’d hardly call that prescient.
There you go, making yourself look dumb again.
Nobody said that all models are wrong. Just the GCMs.
MarkW,
I said that all models are always wrong. If they were always right, they’d be reality. Not a difficult terribly concept in my view, YMMV.
Brandon, the peer reviewed research already gave them the answers they had before ignored. They are not discovering any new process or influence.
David A,
Peer reviewed literature tells you that human CO2 emissions are warming the planet. Do you ignore it, reject it, or simply have not had the time to fully understand it? What you have written in the past certainly suggests that you do not believe it. I do not know precisely why — I cannot tell, because I am not a mind reader.
Now, please tell me which particular peer reviewed papers gave which modelers the information you already knew, and demonstrate how it is that you KNOW that it had been deliberately ignored. Thanks.
This deals with the seasonal variation in the AO. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442%282002%29015%3C2648:ROSITT%3E2.0.CO;2
“Rigor et al. showed that year-to-year variations in the wintertime AO imprint a distinctive signature on surface air temperature (SAT) anomalies over the Arctic, which is reflected in the spatial pattern of temperature change from the 1980s to the 1990s. Here it is shown that the memory of the wintertime AO persists through most of the subsequent year: spring and autumn SAT and summertime sea ice concentration are all strongly correlated with the AO index for the previous winter.”
This study deal more with the multi decadal variation of that seasonal flux….
Abstract
Atmospheric and oceanic variability in the Arctic shows the existence of several oscillatory modes. The decadal-scale mode associated with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and a low-frequency oscillation (LFO) with an approximate time scale of 60–80 years, dominate. Both modes were positive in the 1990s, signifying a prolonged phase of anomalously low atmospheric sea level pressure and above normal surface air temperature in the central Arctic. Consistent with an enhanced cyclonic component, the arctic anticyclone was weakened and vorticity of winds became positive. The rapid reduction of arctic ice thickness in the 1990s may be one manifestation of the intense atmosphere and ice cyclonic circulation regime due to the synchronous actions of the AO and LFO. Our results suggest that the decadal AO and multidecadal LFO drive large amplitude natural variability in the Arctic making detection of possible long-term trends induced by greenhouse gas warming most difficult.
This is similar but dealing with the Atlantic ocean influence specifically http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-3224.1
Recent observations show dramatic changes of the Arctic atmosphere–ice–ocean system, including a rapid warming in the intermediate Atlantic water of the Arctic Ocean. Here it is demonstrated through the analysis of a vast collection of previously unsynthesized observational data, that over the twentieth century Atlantic water variability was dominated by low-frequency oscillations (LFO) on time scales of 50–80 yr. Associated with this variability, the Atlantic water temperature record shows two warm periods in the 1930s–40s and in recent decades and two cold periods earlier in the century and in the 1960s–70s. Over recent decades, the data show a warming and salinification of the Atlantic layer accompanied by its shoaling and, probably, thinning. The estimate of the Atlantic water temperature variability shows a general warming trend; however, over the 100-yr record there are periods (including the recent decades) with short-term trends strongly amplified by multidecadal variations.
Brandon, this is a SMALL sample of the past literature on the subject describing seasonal and multi decadal influences on arctic ice having to do with wind currents and ocean flows. No GHG required. The Scripps paper is a backpedal to the CAGW arctic pattern starting to change, but this release from Scripps is nothing new, and nothing the climate science models should not have ALREADY fully incorporated.
I have lead you to this and much more, but you and Warren fail to read beyond the IPCC.
Brandn says, “Peer reviewed literature tells you that human CO2 emissions are warming the planet. Do you ignore it, reject it, or simply have not had the time to fully understand it? What you have written in the past certainly suggests that you do not believe it. I do not know precisely why — I cannot tell, because I am not a mind reader. ”
===================================
Now you degenerate into silliness. I understand that CO2 is a GHG. You know that, so stop playing games. I have, in detail and in general, lead you to peer reviewed research that simply explains to you the failure of the models to match the observations. I have explained the consistency of the models running to warm. I have led you through the failures of the projected harms to manifest, and shown you how the benefits of CO2 are in fact known and manifesting. You know that as well. I have shown you specifics, and whole bodies of hundreds of peer reviewed reports supporting all of this. Your incapacity to either acknowledge this, or study yourself, is strong evidence of a closed mind.
David A,
AOGCMs don’t predict the timing of internal variability. The study which is the subject of this post does not take it into account either. So far as I can tell, it only models straight up seasonal variations in a very simple ocean-only world.
By the way, why do you apparently trust the models in this study?
Only now?
Either that wasn’t clear to me before, or I forgot. There are many different attitudes here about that topic and I cannot keep track of everyone’s particular attitudes about it. Apologies.
Sounds like it would be a good idea to not need them.
As an ensemble, yes. So has the IPCC. This is not Earth-shattering news. IIRC the last time we had this discussion you tried to tell me that ALL models run hot …
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZY_oL2cq4r4/VQiX3rRH2aI/AAAAAAAAAYo/0VNOKoRIQJw/s1600/CMIP5%2Bvs%2BHADCRUT4%2Btrend%2B1860-2014%2B01.png
… which is false. I don’t believe you commented on that plot the first time I posted it for you.
And you know these trends will continue …. how? What models are you using to predict the future?
Do you feel better now? Now that you’re done reading my mind, may I have my brain back so that I can read, study and think for myself again? Thanks.
Brandon, we trust models that have been tested. I’m assuming you’re referring to engineering models, and you’d be correct. The climate models have proven not to be reliable. “We” don’t trust them. But it’s good to see you’re starting to understand our position.
Greg, I think he is referring to the warm reception (pun fully intended) this paper received on WUWT, even though its conclusions are based on models. Model-based scientific papers that support the AGW position are vilified here, whereas those that support the skeptic position, or do not provide implicit support for AGW, are touted as being proof that the AGW premise is false.
On a separate note, this paper in no way refutes the AGW position, it simply says that unlike Antarctica, the Arctic ice “genie in a bottle” can be put back. However, only if we can cool the Earth again: “So if global warming does soon melt all the Arctic sea ice, at least we can expect to get it back if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.”
Chris– that makes too much sense. Please restate.
Leland,
OK, I’ll down 4 shots of tequila and take another crack at it. 😉 However, it’s noon here, and that might cost me my job – perhaps I should re-think this idea…..
Chris,
You have properly interpreted my comment. Have 5 tequilas, first one on me. Cheers.
Chris,
How perspicacious of you! AGW-promoting studies get a frostier reception here than AGW-refuting ones.
It’s a typical exaggeration to say that the latter are “touted as being proof that the AGW premise is false.” It is fair to say that they are held up as evidence that it’s false or weak or whatever.
An analogy for your consideration would be a discussion with proselytizing JW’s at the garden gate. If you elect to do anything more than tell them to go away, you have to try to relate to them on their terms, since they are not capable of discussion on yours.
Certainly, that is condescension, but I feel I owe you that much since you have taken the trouble to come and try to convert me to your faith.
where is the ‘warm reception’? all i see is people making fun of the backpedaling by the alarmists.
sceptics have already stated their position clearly about the models. ie they are trash. this new batch of models will be thought of no differently. the subject matter the models purport to explain is neither here nor there. it is the theatre of the backpedal that is of interest here. ie how one goes from co2 causes actric ice to melt to a point of no return, to co2 causes arctic ice to possibly recover (even while increasing exponentially) without the possibility of a tipping point.. bravo for co2!
@mebbe said “AGW-promoting studies get a frostier reception here than AGW-refuting ones.”
A frostier reception is fine, but to call science junk when it supports AGW, and good science when it does not, is a lot more than frostiness. And this happens even for paywalled papers where most commenters have not even read the papers.
I did not come here to convert you to my “faith” as you call it, I came here to have a discussion about a scientific paper.
@mohici,
There is no backpedaling by alarmists here, you have misunderstood the conclusions of the paper. It in no way says that the decline in Arctic ice is not happening, and it does not say that Arctic ice is increasing. It says that should Arctic temperatures decline at some future date, it would be possible for Arctic ice to recover. That it would not get to a tipping point beyond which the ice could never recover, no matter what happened to surface temperatures.
Chris,
When you characterize the response of commenters here you apply a subjective filter that casts them as stubborn and lazy.
My view of the general WUWT reaction to all studies that are based on models is that they are scorned, even when they ostensibly depart from the AGW orthodoxy.
In fact, it’s very rare that studies that utterly fly in the face of AGW see the light of day, so it’s not hard to be consistently anti-model.
As regards this paper, its significance is that it refutes the strongly expressed view of an AGW faction that has energetically promoted the idea of a tipping point for just about everything. The media have certainly given lots of exposure to that viewpoint.
Small wonder then, that there is delight here at the prospect of an internecine squabble on the other side.
the more sea ice you get ..the more ice that twill be on the ocean where the sea ice is..i always thought that myself
Paper finds Arctic sea ice extent 8,000 years ago was less than half of the ‘record’ low 2007 level
“A paper published in Science finds summer Arctic Sea Ice extent during the Holocene Thermal Maximum 8,000 years ago was “less than half of the record low 2007 level.” The paper finds a “general buildup of sea ice from ~ 6,000 years before the present” which reached a maximum during the Little Ice Age and “attained its present (year 2000) extent at 4,000 years before the present”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/paper-finds-arctic-sea-ice-extent-8000.html
CO2 was around 260 ppm at the time.
another cherry picked data point from a biased source that focuses only summer ice and not corresponding winter ice which perhaps one might average if shifts were more extreme as opposed to parallel?
You didn’t read the link since it was from SCIENCE:
“Science 5 August 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6043 pp. 747-750
DOI: 10.1126/science.1202760”
Here is the Abstract,you didn’t read:
“ABSTRACT
We present a sea-ice record from northern Greenland covering the past 10,000 years. Multiyear sea ice reached a minimum between ~8500 and 6000 years ago, when the limit of year-round sea ice at the coast of Greenland was located ~1000 kilometers to the north of its present position. The subsequent increase in multiyear sea ice culminated during the past 2500 years and is linked to an increase in ice export from the western Arctic and higher variability of ice-drift routes. When the ice was at its minimum in northern Greenland, it greatly increased at Ellesmere Island to the west. The lack of uniformity in past sea-ice changes, which is probably related to large-scale atmospheric anomalies such as the Arctic Oscillation, is not well reproduced in models. This needs to be further explored, as it is likely to have an impact on predictions of future sea-ice distribution.”
Your “cherry pick” claim is absurd.
Fascinating how the warmistas can’t deal with reality.
If the world has gotten so warm that summer ice is less than half what it is now, how is it that the winter gets so cold that winter ice is more than large enough to compensate.
Then again, you have given no evidence of an ability for independent thought.
My claim stands. The website you referenced is from hockeyshtick.com “if you can’t explain the pause, you can’t explain the cause”, ergo bias. The article references a full report, and like WUWT cherry picks what it wants and sets a tone. The abstract references volatile levels of sea ice that they found and elsewhere it is noted that this is summer ice. Nowhere in the abstract does it mention causality, correlation or the lack thereof with CO2, so your reference to 280 ppm was your own conclusion that it was somehow relevant. I don’t presume it is irrelevant, I only would be curious what the directional trend of CO2 was, if there was a peak, and also, is the average of sea ice through out the year a relevant data point– i.e. was their greater seasonal fluctuation (some sources say yes) or was the average mass and coverage lower in general and therefore supportive of your view. None of this tells you whether to buy Miami real estate or sell though. It is merely the past, and the present has significantly different variables involved, not merely the current state of the “balance”, or sun temps, but also new variables that curious people like to consider.
@MarkW- I don’t give evidence of independent thought. At best I would sell it for value, but likely keep it to myself to profit from.
Leland, is now into troll territory, since I showed that the paper is from SCIENCE magazine,even posted the Abstract from the paper.
You have no cogent counterpoint to offer in reply to the science paper.
Leland N criticizes skeptics for saying:
“…”if you can’t explain the pause, you can’t explain the cause”, ergo bias.
It’s not ‘bias’ because that is exactly right. No one in the alarmist contingent can explain why global warming has stopped, for the simple reason that if they admitted CO2 doesn’t have anywhere near the claimed effect, their entire argument crashes and burns.
Not to mention that it would be much more interesting to know if co2 ppm was stable for 500 years before and after, or if it was trending in one direction or the other. Change in systems usually happen on the margin, not in whole, so the trend of co2, or any other input, could be just as important than the nominal level. 18,000 Dow is irrelevant, just a number in many ways, but it goes up or down due to behavior on the margin.
He he,
it has been a longstanding argument on the AGW believers part, that CO2 changed little for thousands of years until the 1800’s,when it then go up and up since then.
YOU need to go beyond babble level, to have something worthwhile, for the rest of us to ponder.
Well, I’m certainly not a believer. Not in many things. And I don’t believe the Patriots will win the next super bowl, I apply a level of expectation, otherwise known as a probability. There is then the upside of being right, and the downside of being wrong. Always try to limit your downside as there will always be another game to bet on. My concern re GW, AGW, ice ages, and bad wine, is that there is only one blue planet, and if we turn it brown because we believe in something false, it would be a shame.
We’re turning it green. Get your vision checked.
=================
Leland Neraho April 28, 2015 at 9:20 pm
“…My concern re GW, AGW, ice ages, and bad wine, is that there is only one blue planet, and if we turn it brown because we believe in something false, it would be a shame..”
///////
Leland
If CAGW is to be believed (and I mean that the C part is a belief rather than something that withstands serious scientiific scrutiny) , we are turning the blue planet bluer; disappearing ice, leading to more blue ocean, with consequent sea level rise leading to less brown land stuff as the sea encroaches.
Of course, in addition, we are turning the brown stuff greener, as CO2 fertilises the bio sphere.
What is there not to like about that? More blue ocean, more grass and forst land. Surely this ought to please any rational Greenie.
Leland N asserts:
Change in systems usually happen on the margin, not in whole, so the trend of co2, or any other input, could be just as important than the nominal level.
Flat wrong. The trend in CO2 doesn’t matter, only the atmospheric concentration matters. Most global warming happened within the first 20 ppm. At the current 400 ppm, any minuscule warming is simply too small to measure.
CO2 could ‘trend’ up by 20% – 30% from here, and we still couldn’t measure the tiny change in global warming caused by CO2. It would still be too small to measure.
What a surprise!
Well, not really.
Sort of have to agree with Nick Stokes April 28, 2015 at 5:47 pm on this one (and others who noted that “winter” will still bring ice.
Trends for January and July from 1951 to 2006 for Alert, Nunavut, Canada. Ice might melt in the summer but it’s 35 below C in January. Both show cooling trend. This is a straight download from the Environment Canada site so I have no idea if the data has been adjusted but the trend is clear. (One more time, not the the difference between the cooling Highs, and the “warming” Lows. It is apparent in most EC downloads from 49N to 82N.)
Other Arctic Canada sites are similar. I don’t worry about the polar bears.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/97o461le8n5v78e/AlertJanTrend.tiff?dl=0#
https://www.dropbox.com/s/97o461le8n5v78e/AlertJanTrend.tiff?dl=0#
Oh heck, double posted January. Here is July:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1z29ej6ds554ye2/AlertJulyTrend.tiff?dl=0
More bomb husk than shell.
Their title is telling. “How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.” Apparently, they think that the models are telling the physical world what to do. It’s the models that are making the world warmer!
It is telling. I have come to the conclusion at this point in my life that a significant proportion of ‘scientists’ simply cannot comprehend that a model is not that which is modeled.
This limitation shows up in art as well. A painting of a tree is not a tree, but try tell them that.
My favorite description of this is the ‘tyranny of the model.’
Ceci n’est pas une pipe …
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/MagrittePipe.jpg
Funny how ‘good’ these models are to bet our future on them but then they state they didn’t contain “how heat moves from the tropics to the poles” and “the seasonal cycle.” Sheez, just a tidbit of a shortcoming ya think? They are clowns.
At least 3 times in the last 5000 years, the planet has been as much as 3C to 5C warmer than it is today. Yet arctic ice recovered.
MarkW– Seriously, I have no idea, but for fun I googled temperature for the last 5000 years, and came up with this on the first go. Could be bogus but if not, you are just pulling stuff…
http://kottke.org/13/09/temperature-chart-for-the-last-11000-years
You guys really have to stop making stuff up. The article though does make a good point, what if we didn’t have the industrial age, how cold would it be?
Here’s the next item on the search:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page3.php
It’s more like in the last 400,000 years according to this one. Shall I go to item 3?
Found it on the third try!! But as usual, from more dubious sources (another “science” blog), but at least he admits that the pace of warming is faster now, and warmer than 75% or so of the Holocene.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/07/earths-average-temperature-lower-than-it
Marcott, reconstruction claims was dealt with a while ago, as a bad paper:
Marcott Mystery #1
“Marcott et al 2013 has received lots of publicity, mainly because of its supposed vindication of the Stick. A number of commenters have observed that they are unable to figure out how Marcott got the Stick portion of his graph from his data set. Add me to that group.
The uptick occurs in the final plot-point of his graphic (1940) and is a singleton. I wrote to Marcott asking him for further details of how he actually obtained the uptick, noting that the enormous 1920-to-1940 uptick is not characteristic of the underlying data. Marcott’s response was unhelpful: instead of explaining how he got the result, Marcott stated that they had “clearly” stated that the 1890-on portion of their reconstruction was “not robust”. I agree that the 20th century portion of their reconstruction is “not robust”, but do not feel that merely describing the recent portion as “not robust” does full justice to the issues. Nor does it provide an explanation.”
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/13/marcott-mystery-1/
Further examination reveals NO uptick in his thesis paper:
No Uptick in Marcott Thesis
“Reader ^ drew our attention to Marcott’s thesis (see chapter 4 here. Marcott’s thesis has a series of diagrams in an identical style as the Science article. The proxy datasets are identical.
However, as Jean S alertly observed, the diagrams in the thesis lack the closing uptick of the Science. Other aspects of the modern period also differ dramatically.”
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/14/no-uptick-in-marcott-thesis/
The Uptick is a mystery,even to Marcott himself.
Marcott has admitted finally after some prodding:
“20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/31/the-marcott-filibuster/
The uptick at the far right end of his contrived chart, is dead.
Leland Neraho: I agree, you seriously have no idea. In that first diagram at the climatic optimum 8,000 years ago Pond Turtles were thriving in southern Sweden near where I live. Today they can’t survive North of Brandenburg, about 400 miles south. When they start turning up again in the lakes around here I’ll know it is as warm as it was 8,000 years ago. It ain’t happened yet.
And if you think that it is currently acually the warmest climate in 400,000 years you are seriously deluded. During the previous Eemian/Sangamonion interglacial there were hippopotami in Yorkshire, water buffaloes on the Rhine, monkeys in Bavaria, capybaras in Florida and tapirs and jaguars around the Great Lakes.
I wonder why European pond turtles do not like France or the UK.
Further to the point made by tty (April 29, 2015 at 12:26 am)
The warmist are in historical and archaelogical denial.
The fact is that there is clear and strong evidence supporting the Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods in Northern Europe, and no evidence to suggest that these events were just a localised regional phenomena, and more significantly, there is no known mechanism whereby these could have been entirely localised phenomena.
If Greenland was warmer during the MWP, and it must have been a lot warmer than today for the Vikings with their primative tools and technology to have farmed it successfully for several hundred years, it is almost certainly the case that some part of the Arctic was warmer during this period and that there was less Arctic ice.
Ditto, the Roman Warm Period which is known to be warmer that the MWP and which is known to have extended quite far north (if Scotland and northern Germany were warmer, it is extremely likely that Scandinavia and Greenland were also warmer). The Minoan Warm Period is known to be warmer than the Roman Warm Period, but there is less historical and archaelogical evidence as to how far north it extended. But again, there is no obviousl phenomena that would have restricted it to the basin of the Med.
But warmist use the absence of evidence as proof that something did not exist. Just because the Southern Hemisphere is largely ocean, and to the extent that there are land masses these were relatively sparsely habited with no sophisiticated civilisations to leave their mark, such that there is little evidence for the MWP in the Southern Hemisphere, as evidence that the MWP was a Northern Hemisphere only phenomena. The fact is that we just do not know the extent of the MWP although there is some evidence that the Southern Hemisphere was also warmer, but for obvious reasons the evidence is more sparse. The absence of evidence does not make out the warmist’s case on localised phenomena.
Leland N,
You need to get up to speed. Right now it’s clear you’re a noobie on this subject.
Here is a good starting point. Learn something for a change, instead of getting your misinformation and bogus talking points from alarmist blogs:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/new-study-shows-arctic-sea-ice-extent-6000-years-ago-was-much-less-than-today/
Right, that’s Arctic Sea Ice fixed.
Next!
“We found that two key physical processes, which were often overlooked in previous process models …”
O.K. they added two more components to their model … 1,283 more KEY physical process components to go.
After that they (might) be able to obtain a model of the “earths climate” system that needs to incorporate “two more key physical processes” to be accurate.
I’ve been modeling rainfall/runoff/infiltration and collection systems for more than 20 years now. 5-year event, 10-year event, 20 year event … can’t get better than 30% accuracy ever. The secret is that the collection systems are very forgiving, and a little ponding goes a long way; and always cheat in an overflow that won’t physically impact any thing. Again … somewhere between 3 and 7 variables depending on the complexity of the model/project and a 30% error is expected. I don’t see how these bozos can expect any reasonable or consistent accuracy for a system that has unlimited variables (that are also interdependent).
(I may be a little slow, can someone define what is actually being “modeled” through the GCM’s? air temperature? Ice cover? Ocean temps? Ice loss? Ice gain? Permafrost loss? The temperature of the soup djour)?
I’ve also worked a lot on computer models, of logistical processes in my case. Our models handled a couple of dozen parameters, most of them well understood and fairly determinate. And we thought we were doing dam’ well when we got results that were consistently within 30 % of empirical data.
Yeah, I did that sort of thing for 30 years. We use return periods for 200 year events based on what – 20 or 30 years of data assuming a stable climate and we are surprised when we have to revise our expectations? Or we go into the field and see where the high water mark and erosion levels are compared to our models? The drainage models work well, but need field proofing. Same for river systems, pipelines, water networks, water treatment and sewage treatment models ad infinitum. But, in all those systems, we are usually using empirical formula that can be checked and the number of variables are reasonable. I don’t think the climate modellers know which variables are the important ones and there are simply too many to do a valitidy check and huge inertia in the system that no one really understands. I kinda like Joe Bastardi’s way of doing things for now. Understand the past, understand the potential future.
The running title of their paper is:
How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.
Now that is just plain backwards by any sane science of models vs. real world.
Do climate super-computer simulations now affect the real world, like some quatum entanglement-decoherence solution to Schroedinger’s cat? In Climate science, they obviously can run a computer simulation that commands deterministically what sea will do in the future
How appropriate. That title clearly identifies why Climate Science today is so eff’ed up.
CarlF pointed out this insanity a few posts earlier.
thx Max. I read the posted article, clicked on hypertext link to the article read it and was just struck by both the title and the author’s belief in model drives reality. didn’t see CarlF’s post… scooped.
After having some time to read through all the comments Tabya Aardman has priority on this thought.
Merely append ‘in Models’ to the end of the title and it makes sense. Charitably, I think this is what they showed.
=====================
It’s now PAINFULLY obvious the alarmists’ GCMs got Arctic Sea completely wrong.
Like most climatic variables, Arctic Sea Ice area is sinusoidal that follows closely the AMO and PDO 30-yr ocean cycles. The 30-yr PDO cool cycle started in 2008, which is causing Arctic Ice on the Pacific side of the Arctic to recover, while the 30-yr AMO warm cycle peaked in 2007 and is causing Arctic ice on the Atlantic side to recover.
The 2012 Super Arctic Cylone (one of the strongest and longest Arctic cyclones in 50-yrs) destroyed a lot of multi-year Arctic sea ice, but even with this anomaly, Arctic sea ice continues to recover. The 2014/15 El Niño, the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge and “The Blob” have all managed to lower Arctic sea ice on the Pacific side of the Arctic this year, but all these anomalies shiuld end of this year, Arctic sea ice recovery should be quite spectacular from next year when La Niña conditions are in effect.
The Antarctic Ice Extent is again setting records this year and is currently about 3 standard deviations above the 30-yr ice extent mean.
The current solar cycle is the weakest since 1906 and peaked in 2014. It’s now in steep decline, which will continue for the next 7 years until the next solar cycle #25 starts in 2022, which is predicted by some astrophysics to be the weakest solar cycle since 1715, because Umbral Magnetic Field (UMF–the force that hold sunspots together) continues to collapse. The 30-yr AMO cool cycle should also start around 2022 and the 30-yr PDO cool cycle should also be approaching its coolest phase around 2022.
Penn & Livingston predict that if the UMF falls below 1500 gauss, a Grand Solar Minimum could develop from 2022, which may lead to an 70~80 year global cool cycle, if the Svensmark Effect hypothesis is correct.
As a side note, I find it very strange that the University of Illinois suddenly stopped their daily updates of global, Arctic and Antarctic ice areas almost three weeks ago….. I sent an e-mail to them asking why they stopped their daily updates, but they haven’t replied, nor have they posted any announcement on their website explaining the cessation. I get the impression that they’re coming up with new ice area algorithms that will generate lower values…. We’ll see…
Declining Arctic Ice Extents were alarmists’ last hope of keeping the CAGW hypothesis alive…. Now that Arctic Ice Extents have been recovering since 2007 and Antarctic Ice Extents are setting records on a yearly basis, even this aspect of CAGW is starting to crash and burn.
CAGW is so screwed…
… and to a humanity not prepared for a coming cooling world.
Thanks Sam.
This is why the world is mad not to take advantage of the time that the ‘pause’ has given us.
Whilst I never agreed with the mantra that we only had a few years to save the planet, the fact is that during the past 18 or so years, there has been all but no warming (possibly even slight cooling) such that as at 2015, we are well below the IPCC’s projections for global temp anomalies. This has boght the world considerable time to further evaluate matters, not based upon computer models, but rather upon real life empircal data obtained from real observation.
It would be mad at this stage to sign up to any further draconian steps to curb CO2 emissions and to cut back on energy use and development of the 3rd world. We are now getting the perfect opportunity to see what effect Solar may have on the climate (warming), and what if any climate sensitivity to CO2 exists.
The ‘pause’ strongly suggests that claims regarding climate sensitivity are over hyped (because they failed to take account of natural variation and ocean cycles), so the sensible course is to sit back and see how the ‘pause’ develops.
When AR5 came out, I suggested that it would be irrelevant and would be superseded by events since China had already indicated that it did not plan taking any steps before 2020 (which it has now kicked into the long grass suggesting that it will not curb CO2 emissions before 2030), and if temperatures began to cool in the run up to the 2019/20 climate circus, the IPCC would find it impossible to produce a convincing AR6 without acknowledging that the models are off (outside their 95% confidence band) and that climate sensitivity is towards the lower level such that CAGW is no longer a problem. I suggested that there would be increasing numbers of papers showing ever lowering figures for climate sensitivity. I still consider it probable that that is what will pan out. The Paris circus will achieve nothing of substance (because of China and India’s unwillingness to come on board, aided by Australia’s sceptism), and by 2020, the wheels will have fallen off the wagon.
Of course, the future can hold surprises, and only a fool predicts the future. hence my comment is a ‘projection’ not a prediction!
The paper does not say that Arctic ice is rebounding. It simply says that there is a not a tipping point beyond which Arctic ice can never recover. In fact, Arctic ice is not recovering: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“It’s now PAINFULLY obvious the alarmists’ GCMs got Arctic Sea completely wrong.”
It is worse than you think. They have the polar see-saw effect upside down. The warming and cooling of the AMO and Arctic is a negative feedback to solar variability. The 1970’s cooling was when the solar wind was very strong, and since the mid 1990’s it has weakened. All the IPCC models indicate that increased forcing of the climate increases positive AO/NAO, that can only cool the AMO and Arctic:
http://snag.gy/HxdKY.jpg
The Arctic sea ice extent is simply the result of the two and fro of the Beaufort Gyre and the Fram Strait export/Transpolar Drift mediated by how much older ice survives the melt season based on that two and fro.
https://nsidc.org/sites/nsidc.org/files/images//beaufort_gyre.jpg
Animation of the sea ice movement and age of the ice from Mark Tschudi of the University of Colorado from 1987 to the winter of 2014.
In the last two years, the Beaufort Gyre has become more dominant (which continues in the early part of the 2015 melt season) after about 5 years that the Fram Strait export was dominant. I imagine this pattern cycles back and forth depending on various wind/weather patterns.
Bill– Satellite polar ice data only went online from 1979, which was at the peak of Arctic ice extents following the end of the 30-yr PDO cool cycle in 1977. The growing Arctic Ice Extents during the last PDO cool cycle (1943~1977) was why some climatologists were predicting a new Ice Age in the late 70’s….
When both the PDO and AMO are in their 30-year cool cycles from 2022 (and leading up to that event) Arctic Ice Extents and multi-year Arctic Ice should both continue to increase until the 30-yr PDO cool cycle ends around 2035~38.
If we happen to enter a Grand Solar Minum from 2022 and global temps fall 1C~2C as some climatologists are predicting, Arctic Ice Extents may even continue to slowly expand until 2100..
Wouldn’t that throw a monkey wrench into CAGW model predictions…
It’ll be extremely interesting to see what happens to Arctic Ice Extents between now and 2022.
Thanks Bill. I often wonder how much effect the Russian nuclear icebreakers have on Arctic ice extent. I read the Russians try to keep their sea routes open as long as possible and I bet they are smart enough to use those sea currents to help move the broken ice away.
It is very hard to maintain a permanently ice-free route. It is only really possible in protected waters with fast ice and even there it tends to re-freeze unless in constant use. At sea ice is always moving and will normally close up a lead created by an icebreaker within minutes or at most hours.
Welp, they weren’t lying when they said it was all based on ‘simple physics.’ The physics were so simple they didn’t even include convection and seasons.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein
This whole idea of a ”tipping point” and ”permanently ice-free Arctic” has always been completely absurd asnd could only have been dreamed up by ‘scientists’ with no practical experience of Arctic or even Boreal climate. I live by the Baltic Sea. Every spring the winter ice there melts away completely and the sea even becomes warm enough for bathing. And every winter it re-freezes. This has happened every year since the last ice-age, 11,700 times, with nary a tipping-point in sight.
The ringed seal population that was isolated in the Baltic at the end of the ice-age and are dependent on sea-ice for pupping are still there, so if there were actually intervals of ice-free winters during past warmer periods (unlikely) they certainly never lasted than a ring seal’s lifetime. There definitely has never been an ice-free winter in recorded history.
And it doesn’t only happen in the Baltic. It works the same for the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bohai Sea.
It is quite possible that the Arctic was ice free during the Holocene Optimum. But if so, of course, it follows that the ice recovered. As a matter of first principle, the ice must recover as long as it is cold enough for ice to form, so the question is simply: will temperatures in the region only ever increase, or is it possible that tempeatures may decrease (of course, warm/cold currents and wind etc are part of the mix, but I am just looking at matters simplistically)?
The tipping point assertion/conjecture is based upon the premise that with ever increasing levels of CO2, it will become increasingly warmer in the Arctic as time goes by and thus once the ice has disappeared, it will not re-appear because temperatures would be on an upwards trajectory due to ever increasing levels of CO2..
It is all part of the runaway CAGW argument.
The Arctic was probably (almost) ice-free in summer during the Holocene optimum. Based on geological evidence it hasn’t been permanently ice-free at least since the Eocene optimum, at which time alligators were living in northern Greenland.
It will reappear every winter, regardless of summer temperatures.
Up to six months without sunlight will tend to drop temperatures below zero for ice to be able to form!
Sorry, I was being lazy. I thought that we were discussing summer ice (albeit the precise definition of this is uncertain). Obviously proxies are uncertain and should be viewed with a large pinch of salt such that I would not dispute whether it was nearly ice free during the Holocene Optimum rather than ice free.
If one goes deep enough into the past, there was no polar ice (albeit at that the distribution of land masses was very different and the Antarctic Continent was not at the South Pole). This in itself should demonstrate that ice formation and hence ice recovery is always possible. There are no tipping points (at least not until the Sun starts to expand)
Where is the august Jimbo in trying times like these?
“So if global warming does soon melt all the Arctic sea ice, at least we can expect to get it back if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.”
They are hopelessly deluded if they think mankind controls the global climate.
——————————————————————————–
“
The Artic. In summer: Cold. In winter: Very cold. Future prediction: It will remain cold and very cold respectively. Therefore it will continue to have Ice at varying levels all year round.
Now can I have some science money and a Nobel Prize, please?
Here’s an anecdote: a few years ago, I calculated total solar insolation by latitude and orbital parameters, hoping to get some feedback from ice albedo into a Milankovitch cycle model of global temperature.
When I ran it, to my chagrin I discovered that there was no ice at all in the summer in the Arctic. The reason is that the sun shines all day, and net all factors, insolation is too high for a radiative model to predict temperature below the freezing point of sea ice. By the same token, there is no insolation at all in winter, and a radiative model says the sea will freeze, full stop.
To model summer sea ice, you have to start calculating how thick the ice will be before the melt season starts, and how fast it will melt. That leads you on to having to calculate the inter-year accumulation of ice in order to make any sensible model. Even the rate of melting will depend on air temperature, which has memory (heat capacity) and will depend on such inconveniences as wind and clouds. That’s all way before starting to think about geography, ocean currents, ice flow, and the variability of weather.
So I gave up on the model.
But, in summary, sea ice will melt in summer and the sea will freeze in winter. The complexity of saying anything further about ice extent is nicely illustrated by the fact that sea ice is expanding in the Antarctic while it is falling in the Arctic.
R.
This article is based upon DECREASING greenhouse gases.. sorry people but greenhouse gases are INCREASING. Accelerating and increasing… Have you all missed that FACT? Look at the Keeling curve. And where is the so called longterm cooling except in tiny minded imagination? Wakey Wakey.
Phil, that isn’t what it says. From the article:
…global climate models (GCMs) that are more complex than process models found sea ice loss in response to rising greenhouse gases in their computer simulations is actually reversible when greenhouse levels are reduced.
Yes, CO2 is rising. It is not accelerating. But if it was, so what? It is a tiny trace gas measured in ppm, and as we see, the rise in CO2 has not resulted in any of the scary predictions happening, including the endless scaremongering over ‘Arctic ice’.
Furthermore, the rise in CO2 has been beneficial to the biosphere, with no global harm being done. It was entirely accidental that human CO2 emissions increased. That was a byproduct of fossil fuel use. But as it turned out, none of the scary predictions happened. The only problem now is the complete inability/unwillingness of the alarmist contingent to admit: “We were wrong.”
dbstealey commented
This seems to be a trend, actually it’s worse than that, he’s great at quoting stuff he doesn’t understand.
But de navy is “Big Oil”, innit?
Dey got ships wot iz big and oily.
I don’t see any reason for the sea ice to return yet. If the AMO repeats its ~69yr envelope, it should cool in the mid 2030’s, and reach its coldest in the mid 2040’s. I am expecting a large uptick in negative episodes AO/NAO through the next decade, that can only mean a renewed warming of the AMO and Arctic. And it also follows the pattern of the AMO being anti-phase with solar cycles when in its warm mode, and in phase with solar cycles when in its cold mode:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/from:1880/mean:13/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1880/normalise
Yet another political argument put forth to support controlling energy. The only noteworthy part of the article is “our new models show we can reverse if we act” since the old models were just not really that good. The bottom line is the article will be used to show why “The Pause” can be ignored.
In reply to:
William,
Cryosphere today appears to have stopped updating the sea ice coverage. Hopefully they can resolve the problem. Record sea ice both poles is an inconvenient fact. There was and is a physical reason why there is suddenly post 2012 the highest amount of surface ice coverage in the Antarctic in recorded history. Multiyear arctic sea ice has started to increase due to anomalously cold summer Arctic temperatures due to an increase in cloud cover in the Arctic in the summer. The mechanisms that were abating the change in cloud coverage and properties due to abrupt change in the solar cycle have started to abate. The planet is going to significantly cool, with the majority of the cooling occurring in high latitude regions.
Why in the world are you plotting sunspot number vs planetary temperature? If one has absolutely no understanding of the mechanisms the analysis goes in circles.
The variable to plot is the number of solar wind bursts and time between solar wind bursts: The variable that captures solar wind bursts is Ak, the four hour disturbance of the geomagnetic field.
Solar wind bursts primarily caused by persistent coronal holes create a space charge differential in the earth’s ionosphere which in turn causes a movement of electrical charge from the earth’s poles to the equator.
Coronal holes of course have nothing to do with sunspot number. Why coronal holes appear, when coronal holes appear in the solar cycle, and at what latitude coronal holes appear on the sun surface is not known.
The electrical charge movement removes cloud forming ions in the high latitude regions which causes there to be a reduction in low level clouds and an increase in cirrus clouds. A decrease in low level clouds warms the region in question due to a reduction in short wave radiation that is reflected to space albedo and an increase in the high wispy cirrus clouds causes the region in question to warm due to increased greenhouse effect of the high altitude water.
The return electrical current changes cloud properties in the equator and changes cloud lifetimes in the equator. El Nino events occur when there is large movement of electrical charge.
Recently although the number of sunspots has been dropping there has been a large number of persistent coronal holes on the surface of the sun in low latitude regions. It is these coronal holes that are partially responsible for the lack of significant cooling of the earth due to the astonishing slowdown in the solar cycle.
Offset the anomalous number of coronal holes is a reduction in the solar heliosphere density of 40%. The low density of the solar heliosphere (Solar heliosphere is the name for the tenuous gas and magnetic flux that stretches far past the orbit of Pluto.) reduces the rise time of the magnetic pulse that is caused by solar wind bursts which in turn reduces the effect on the earth ionosphere.
Now finally the size of coronal holes on the surface of sun has started to shrink and the coronal holes have started to move to high latitude regions on the surface of the sun where they no longer affect the earth. Bingo, there will be a significant increase in sea ice in the Arctic and the planet will cool. We are experience the cooling phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle.
http://gacc.nifc.gov/sacc/predictive/SOLAR_WEATHER-CLIMATE_STUDIES/GEC-Solar%20Effects%20on%20Global%20Electric%20Circuit%20on%20clouds%20and%20climate%20Tinsley%202007.pdf
The role of the global electric circuit in solar and internal forcing of clouds and climate
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MmSAI/76/PDF/969.pdf
“Why in the world are you plotting sunspot number vs planetary temperature?”
Err the AMO and sunspot number. The phase reversals are apparent in a number of different studies.
“If one has absolutely no understanding of the mechanisms the analysis goes in circles.”
Yes that’s what happens with the assumption that natural variability is internal, including the AMO.
Witches! burn the witches!
amazing that anyone thought there was a problem-
1923- NORTH POLE MELTING. MANY GLACIERS VANISHED.Daily Mercury (Mackay, Qld. : 1906 – 1954) Saturday 7 April 1923 p 9 Article… that part of the world? Science is asking thesc questions (says Popular Science Siftings”). Reports … from ‘fishermen, seal hunters, and’, explorers who sail the seas around ‘Spitsbergen and the eastern … 1170 words
1937- Alaska “All of the major glaciers of the country have been retreating instead of advancing in recent years.There has not been nearly enough snow in recent years to start them advancing toward civilisation.
This, plus the fact that all other
great glaciers throughout the world
are receding”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/de…
1947- Dr. Ahlmann added that temperatures in the Arctic have increased by10 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/de..
1911- Warming Up The Artic
” In this part of the Arctic Ocean there is quite a remarkable absence of floating ice and it looks as if the famous hot water system which originates in the Gulf of Florida, after traversing the North Atlantic Ocean, finds its way to the Arctic to keep an open sea route to Siberia”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/de…
Arctic 1923 – “At many points where glaciers extend far into the sea half a dozen years ago they have new entirely disappeared”
eeek- “Seals which used to be plentiful in
those seas, have almost entirely disappeared”
“Last winter the ocean did not freeze over
even on the north coast of Spitzber
gen”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/de…
1951- “Glaciers present the most striking evidence . The Americangeographer, F. E. Matthes, has re-ported that ”glaciers in nearly all parts of the world receded regularly during the last 60 years, but especially rapidly during the 1930-40decade.”
Antarctic melting : the disappearing Antarctic ice cap / Michael A. SommersSommers, Michael A., 1966-
Melting away : a ten-year journey through our endangered polar regions / Camille SeamanSeaman, Camille, 1969-
‘MELTING DOWN’ OF ANTARCTIC BRINGS FRESH CLAIMS[coming soon]Daily Mercury (Mackay, Qld. : 1906 – 1954) Saturday 21 August 1948 p 5 Article
WORLD IS WARMER Glaciers MeltingWorker (Brisbane, Qld. : 1890 – 1955) Monday 15 October 1951 p 11 Article… . If the Antarctic Ice regions and the major Greenland Icecap should continue to melt at their present … WORLD IS WARMER Glaciers Melting
Antarctic Area Free Of SnowThe Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 – 1954) Monday 31 January 1949p 5 Article… journey which reached a point 305 miles south of the Antarctic Circle, discovered mountains which were … ‘ completely free of snow, with manymelted streams, and lakes up to a mile ia length.
RIDDLE OF THE GLACIERS. Ice Retreating. GEOLOGISTS STILL PUZZLED. CANBERRA, Thursday.The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954) Friday 13 January 1939 p 13 Article… being about 50 feet a year. The Antarctic ice- sheet also showed signs of recent retreat.
SNOW-FREE RANGE IN ANTARCTICBarrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW : 1888 – 1954) Tuesday 1 February 1949 p 3 Article… SNOW-FREE RANGE IN ANTARCTIC .
WORLD GROWING WARMER.The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 – 1954) Saturday 7 October 1922 p 7 Article… fringes of both poles are retreating
BRITISH EXPERTS DISCOVER WARM AREA IN ANTARCTIC LONDON, Sunday.The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995) Monday 31 January 1949p 1 Article… Antarctic Circle, discovered mountains which were snow free with many melted .streams and lakes, up to a … BRITISH EXPERTS DISCOVER WARM AREA IN ANTARCTIC
Photos Showed Antarctic Getting Warmer “Herald” Service.Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW : 1876 – 1954) Friday 11 April 1947 p 7 Article… Photos Showed Antarctic Getting Warmer “Herald” Servlqe. NEW YORK, April 10.-The Antarctic is … getting warmer, it is concluded from a preliminary study of aerial ahotographs taken by the Navy task
Antarctic May Be Warmer “The Mercury” Special ServiceThe Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 – 1954) Friday 11 April 1947 p 17 Article… Mercury” Special Service ]^EW YORK, Thurs. – The Antarctic is becoming warmer. This is the conclusion from …
WORLD NEWS ROUND-UP Antarctic Getting Warmer, Southern Ice Cap RecedesBarrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW : 1888 – 1954) Saturday 12 April 1947 p 6 Article
oh and in the 1950s the arctic sea lanes were open for 8 months of the year.
and on and on and on.
“How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability”, are they suggesting models have an effect on sea ice? Models are for climatologists to play with whi.e the real scientists are working.
Just to paraphrase:
I have written a model that does not match reality.
I have changed my model, it still does not match reality.
I am now happier.
Is this progression?
In England they were growing grapes as far north as York in the 13th Century. No industrial complexes pumping out huge quantities of CO2 then. In the 17th Century we had the start of the ‘Little Ice Age.’
Climate change is a natural process. It has nothing to do with us humans!
Exactly right. During the “warm period” which ended a few years ago, we were treated to stories of great vineyards and a thriving wine industry in Canada and North U.S.. For the last few years though, we are seeing more stories like this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/ontario-wine-good-quality-but-smaller-crop-after-cold-winter-1.2716099 and this: http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/winemakers-say-cold-weather-has-hurt-grape-crop/31651096
Some day, probably in the next decade, the Canadian wine industry will be an historical anecdote, regardless what the CO2 level is.
And they’re growing grapes even further north than York these days, so what’s your point?
http://www.englishwineproducers.co.uk/vineyards/north/?ccm_paging_p=1
Not the same grapes Phil, the modern grapes have been bred to be cold tolerant.
That’s nice story Mark but vineyards exist still growing the same varieties as they did many years ago, e.g. Hamilton’s vineyard in Surrey still produces wine using the same variety that was grown there in 1740. Most medieval vineyards were associated with monasteries and the major hit to the vineyards occurred after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in the 1530’s. Final cessation of commercial wine production ceased following WWI, not weather related.
“Our physical models lack important details on the processes controlling ice formation and melting”
“We found that two key physical processes, which were often overlooked in previous process models,….One relates to how heat moves from the tropics to the poles and the other is associated with the seasonal cycle. None of the relevant previous process modeling studies had included both of these factors..”
Well blow me down! If the clime syndicate and its model consigliere don’t know the processes controlling ice formation and melting, forget about all the rest of the stuff! If we didn’t inform the models on how heat is moved from the tropics to the poles and what happens during the seasons, what do we know?
They didn’t know about, or include, SEASONAL CYCLE process… now they do and it is included. This leads me to wonder about the peer review process.
Does “Peer Review” mean that the reviewers (as peers) are required to be as incompetent as the authors of the original papers?
Who dresses these guys when its cold outside? Does their mom still stand at the door with their coat to make sure they take it when they leave the house?
The next models will be based upon science even a child can understand. Everyone knows that hot air rises and cold air falls. Most of the CO2 belching countries are located in the northern hemisphere, causing all the new hot air to rise to the north pole and melt ice. Then all the remaining cold air falls to the south pole and makes even more ice down there. Now some might ask, “How did so much ice end up on top in the first place?” and the answer is very simple: Geomagnetic Reversal every half a million years or so. So really, all we need the IPCC to do is to start lobbying countries to fund an effort that figures out how to induce a man-made Goemagnetic Reversal whenever we need more ice at the north pole.
Models that are of questionable value in forecasting climate are now telling us that we can reverse the disappearing ice caps if we reduce greenhouse gases. Hmmm!
Scenarios of a sea ice tipping point leading to a permanently ice-free Arctic Ocean were based on oversimplified arguments.
The argument was, “Tell everyone the arctic will be ice free soon or you lose your funding!”
All glibness aside, this illustrates the problem with the claims that computer models prove human-caused global warming. Computer models cannot prove anything. They merely forecast the outcome of the assumptions programmed into them. If the assumptions are wrong, or do not include all possible factors (as they are now admitting was the case) the results of the computer run will not match what is going on in the real world.
None of the computer models used by Al Gore’s minions accounted for variations in solar activity and no climate model can account for the volcanic activity on the floors of the world’s oceans because nobody knows how many are down there. Even on land the known volcanoes can still behave unexpectedly as the sudden activity at Calbuco in Chile and Kilauea here in Hawaii demonstrate. Every computer model uses a limited set of assumptions and the universal unprogrammed assumption that no other factors will influence the outcome!
What! They found out that when it’s cold, ice forms where there was none before! Give’em an extra fat round of money stolen from working people!
I also found out that when the ice forms there will be ice where it is actually forming…because it is cold
People throughout the model world are relieved.
The conclusions of this paper should be an eye-opener for those who put their faith in unvalidated models. Nevertheless, the title “How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability” reveals the chronic confusion between model results and physical reality that permeates “climate science.” Model complexity cannot have any material influence on in situ sea-ice stability, which is independent of all modeling efforts.
Here we go again with ignorance of Arctic climate. These guys still think that Arctic warming is part of global warming by the greenhouse effect when it can be demonstrated that this is wrong. Arctic happens to be the only place in the world that is still warming but no thanks to CO2. But If you believe them CO2 must be a miraculous gas, able to zero in on the Arctic and ignore all the rest of the world. I made it clear, both in my book [1] and in my Arctic paper [2], that greenhouse warming in thArctic is forbidden by the laws of physics. Fact is, these people don’t even know that today’s Arctic warming did not start until the beginning of the twentieth century. Before it there was nothing there except a slow, linear cooling for two thousand years. But Kaufman et al., [3] who disoivered this, still insist that it was caused by a combination of “…natural variability and positive feedbacks that amplified the radiative forcing…” I told him what caused it (change of currents) but he still insisted on passing on that piece of gibberish as science. They spent four million dollars exploring Arctic lakes, with the help of volunteers to do the digging, and brought back useful data on the history of the Arctic. But having obtained the data they simply had no idea what to do with it and tried to absorb it into their global warming paradigm. Their two thousand year long Arctic temperature curve did look a lot like Mann’s hockey stick and Mann’s collaborators quickly jumped on the bandwagon and got their names added to the author list. But nothing came of it except for a listing by Joe Romm. I proved that laws of physics eliminated carbon dioxide as a cause of Arctic warming. That left a change in the pattern of North Atlantic currents as the only possible way to bring a large mass of warm water into the Arctic as quickly as their timetable required. This massive change of ocean currents obviously had to include redirecting the Gulf Stream flow into the deep Arctic. The change at the beginning of the century was at first tentative and the cold returned in mid-century for another thirty years. Warming in the first part of the century was rapid but it turned around to to cooling by 1940. This is shown in NOAAs Arctic Report Card for 2010 in my book. A new warming started in 1970 and has continued to this day. It is likely that the cool spell corresponds to a temporary return of the original flow pattern of currents. It had a distinct beginning and a distinct ending point, something that is quite impossible for carbon dioxide to create. But all that history is left out by the large number of papers about Arctic warming because they all start their observations at or after 1979. What troubled me about that mid-century cooling was the fact that what has happened in nature can happen again. It is not out of the question that another cool spell would not interrupt the present phase of warming because we have no idea what caused the original cooling in the first place. This is not the same as the tipping points they keep babbling about. It is simply something for climate science to explore because of its importance to Arctic resource development. But these guys don’t even know that there is a problem. Their problem is that they just did not do their homework and are now hung up on idiotic stuff like “…simulations of 21st century climate in an atmosphere–ocean general circulation model…” Those nodels are the models I have been requesting to be shut down. They have an unblemished record of being wrong all the time. As a result, these pseudo-scientists don’t know even the simplest things about the Arctic that they could have learnt by simply looking in my book or in my Arctic paper. One of these is tipping points: “…Ever since the striking record minimum Arctic sea ice extent in 2007, the ominous scenario of a sea ice tipping point has been a fixture in the public debate….” It has been a fixture only in their minds, not in the real world. It is explained away in my book and in the paper as well which they skipped before writhing this paper. Their “record minimum” has nothing whatsoever to do with any tipping points. It was caused by exceptional pole-ward winds that year which brought extra warm water into the Arctic Ocean via the Bering Straight. If you look at the picture of Arctic ice cover in my book you see that in 2007 there was a huge batch of open water just north of the Chuckchi Sea. It was not there the year before nor was it there the following year. At the same time the Russian side of the ocean stayed undisturbed throughout. It is safe to assume that they don’t know any more oabout the rest of the Arctic as they do about this ice melting incident. How else do you explain this babble: ” if global warming does soon melt all the Arctic sea ice, at least we can expect to get it back if we somehow manage to cool the planet back down again.”…Unfortunately people like that whose science is worthless get published in prestige journals their buddies control and showered with billions of dollars of raxpayers money by governments taken over by the global warming clique.
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[1] Arno Arrak, “What Warming? Satellite view of global temperature change” (CreateSpace, 2010), pages 27-36
[2] Arno Arrak, E&E 22(8) (2011):267-283. I offered this one to you, Anthony, when it first came out but you acted like your alter ego, the Oxford professor. I was not polite enough and did not use some idiotic cycle you thought belonged there.
[3] Kaufman et al, Science (4 September 2009)
Arno, Can you kindly comment on Mr. Shore’s review of your book:
By Joel Shore on June 3, 2011
Format: Paperback
This book is nonsense. Both major analyses of the satellite record show that lower troposphere temperatures have gone up at a similar rate to the temperature at the surface since 1979. One of these analyses is UAH, by Spencer and Christy who are both AGW (anthropogenic global warming) skeptics.
Furthermore, the statement in the blurb that says: “In 2007 we got some serious cooling while climate models using carbon dioxide theory insisted on relentless warming at the same time” is also utter nonsense. The climate models forced with steadily-increasing greenhouse gases show the same sort of ups-and-downs in average global temperature from year-to-year that we actually see. In fact, in the models it is not uncommon to have periods of, say, a decade or so when the temperature trend is zero or even a bit negative.
Clearly, the author of this book has absolutely no clue what he is talking about.
There is a mistake in the article. The lowest ice volume was in 2012 not 2007. What will happen to
Christmas if the North Pole melts???
ed
Depends on your definition of Santa Claus, I suppose.
If, in September, “all” of the Arctic sea ice melts, then (by December 24 – chose your time zone for your local region) the Arctic sea ice will have re-frozen.
Thus, if as required by tradition and the “consensus,” the world’s (Christian) presents are all delivered between 23:59 and 24:00 Christmas Eve (in each time zone of interest), then such “presents” – for each Christian household’s children of non-coal pre-requssities and satisfaction – will not have any problem being produced and distributed for all such non-coal presents as may be desired. Right?
So they have confessed the earlier models were too simplistic and have revised them. Good on Scripps.
Now if they could just have a chat with the GCM modellers and tell them how good the honesty feels we might be getting somewhere.
“How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability.” It does no such thing, of course. It’s a computer program. The sea ice will be stable or not depending on physical factors in the real world, regardless of whether they’re correctly represented in the model (or even represented at all).
But I find the title telling of the confusion between model and reality which seems to be typical of the field. Surely it’s easier to type at the keyboard than actually going out where it’s unpleasantly cold to measure stuff, and you get the grant either way.
Wow! I can’t believe that they really named their paper, “How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Complexity”.
Am I seeing things, or is this one HUGE Freudian slip straight from the depths of the environmentalist collective unconscious? Does anyone else see the revealing insight into how these folks actually think?
Here we go again … climate models … today’s God of climate science. It’s a crying shame seeing individuals with letters after their name treating climate models as science. Incredible!!!!