We haven’t spent much time looking at Arctic Sea Ice this year, partly because I’ve rather lost interest in it as any sort of climatic indicator. This year’s melt seems similar to 2011 according to the comparison graph provided by Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research.
Source: https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html?N
The DMI graph also seems to indicate that melt has turned the corner, but shows the 2015 data higher than 2011 unlike the graph above:
Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Arctic air temperature from 80°N is well below the freezing point of seawater now:
Source: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Of course, since sea ice is highly prone to the vagaries of wind and weather, it could still take a turn downward in the next few days before starting back up again.
One of the things that I have come to notice about Arctic sea ice is that it appears to have reached a new plateau or regime, note how since 2007 the data seems to oscillate about the -1 million square kilometer line:
![seaice.anomaly.arctic[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/seaice-anomaly-arctic1.png)
Source: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
My personal opinion is that this new quasi-stable regime is related to increased surface soot and changes in the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation). Since the mid-1990s we have been in a warm phase, Now the AMO is now turning sharply negative, and next year might be quite different than the past eight.
Source: Dr. Philip Klotzbach on Twitter who writes:
12-month running avg AMO continues to drop. August ’15 value (-0.9 SD) lowest since ’94. Cold NAtl persists.
Only time will tell if this change in the AMO will change the future of Arctic sea ice.
Note: [added] You can view more graphs on the WUWT Sea Ice Page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
The title was corrected shortly after publication to remove a repeated word (have) and fix a spelling error.
Don’t feel bad Anthony, for losing interest in it as an indicator of climate behavior. The gloom-and-doom CAGW prognosticators have nearly abandoned it as well. The ebbs and flows of the arctic ice is now a seasonal rhythm like the changing color of the leaves. A rhythm with no direction. I am still interested in the Great Lakes freezing extent. Maybe with El Nino, the lakes won’t freeze so much this year?
I don’t think it means much, outside of the height of the northern summer. The Arctic is basically land-bound, so the sea ice tends to vary less from year to year in those months in which it is in signficant contact with land.
There’s more land in the arctic (North of +60 deg. lat.) than in the Antarctic (South of -60 deg. lat.)
George,
IMO Mike is referring to the situation of the Arctic Ocean, the sea ice of which cannot extend as far toward lower latitudes as can sea ice in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.
However you are right that there is more land north of the Arctic Circle (not just of 60 degrees N) than south of the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Ocean isn’t huge.
Lady Gaiagaia
The Arctic Ocean pretty much fills the entire region north of 80 north latitude – there’s just a tiny corner of Greenand’s north coast that intrudes uppast 80 north latitude’s circle. The rest of the arcti ocean is “trapped” between a rough circle of Canada-Alaska-Siberian north coasts at 70-71-72 north, and splits and curves around the north Canadian islands and two Siberian Islands.
Now, understand that “arctic sea ice” as a term for “an area of ocean covered by sea ice up north” includes more than the nominal 14.0 Mkm^2 area of the “arctic ocean” itself. Those who spend our billions tracking these thigns add the sea ice over Hudson Bay, the Labrador and Baltic and Bering and Gulf of the St Lawrence River and areas north of Norway, etc, etc to the “arctic ocean” itself.
But… Those small areas always melt completely each summer. Most of these seas, bays, inlets, and straits are far smaller than 1.0 Mkm^2, and the largest single area is the Hudson Bay at 1.2 Mkm^2. So they affect ONLY the total “potential” sea ice area at its February-March-April maximum, and NOT ANY areas in the summer and September sea ice minimums.
Thus, it is almost impossible, for “Arctic sea ice” to extend much further south than where it is right now at a minimum 71-72 north latitude. Regardless of how “early” the Arctic coast freezes up, once it freezes, it cannot extend any further south around almost the entire edge of sea ice. Most other seas are bounded as well – and they – most years – freeze over completely. Hudson’s Bay, Bering Sea (north half), Baltic, Norwegian sea? The “arctic sea ice” can only increase in a few places.
Equally, it is physically impossible for ANY Arctic sea ice minimum to get much smaller than 2012’s minimum of 2.2 Mkn^2 area at 81 north latitude average edge.
And, if the Arctic sea ice at minimum extents does become smaller, it will quickly freeze again in the ever-darker skies of late September and October, and re-freeze completely once again.
Arctic land area: 11 million km2 link
Antarctica (the vast majority of which lies within the antarctic circle): 14 million km2 link
I do think you have to go to +/- 60 deg. before the northern land mass exceeds the southern.
” george e. smith September 11, 2015 at 2:17 pm
There’s more land in the arctic (North of +60 deg. lat.) than in the Antarctic (South of -60 deg. lat.)”
But is that as important as the area that contacts the water?
Arctic coastline: 45,389 km
Antarctic coastline: 17,968 km
Definition: This entry gives the total length of the boundary between the land area (including islands) and the sea.
Source: CIA World Factbook – This page was last updated on June 30, 2015
I think it’s an excellent climate indicator, but the problem is the fudging by NOAA / Cryostat / JAXA, in particular their use of the discriminator between surface melt and open water. An audit of their use of this would reveal, I infer, that these were set strongly to “open water” for both the 2007 and 2012 minima. I expect the current fluctuations of the Antarctic sea ice fluctuations are also due to fiddling with this, in almost a “let’s see what we can do” mindset. It is these manipulations which cause me to lose confidence in polar sea ice as a climate indicator, not the concept as such which should be a very good one.
To fill out my point, up to this year there was an operational rule that the meltpond/open-water discriminator should be balanced between Arctic and Antarctic in a mirror-image way, that is, if one side is set to 80% meltpond then the other side is set to 80% open-water, etc. This is why the Antarctic sea ice has been so high, because the Arctic has been set open-water heavy for years and so consequentially the Antarctic has been set to meltpond-heavy for those years (meltponds are counted as ice). This year, I detect, they have been cut free from each other, with the Arctic still held open-water heavy (perhaps even more so) while the Antarctic balance has been turned back to 50-50 at least. Thus, the sudden Antarctic drop of sea ice about 2 months ago. Yes, they are getting things ready for Paris in November, our climate scientist heroes.
NZ Willy
Going to politely disagree with you there: The Arctic IS 35 – 40% covered with shallow melt water during the summer season, but the Antarctic sea ice doesn’t have those melt water ponds. Instead, the Antarctic sea ice tends to “melt from below” with its surface still solid and clean through its entire melt season. Not absolutely clear of melt ponds, but there are very, very few of them compared to up north. The Antarctic surface – because it IS solid and clear of water, has a higher albedo through the season, with fresh snow and clear ice present the whole year.
As a result, the Arctic sea ice albedo drops significantly in May-June_July-August, going as low as 0.43 by July 5.
Are there jumps and skips I cannot explain in the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice records as you point out? Yes. But I am not convinced (yet) that an albedo correction change factor is responsible. (Yet, he said carefully.)
The reason for the sharp drop in the Antarctic sea ice extent was that there were two streams of warm, moist winds that impacted the coastline of the continent for around 3 weeks or longer. All of the heavy melt loss took place at those two spots. One location was just to the west of the Ross Sea and the other was almost directly across the continent from the Ross Sea. The Ross Sea area still has a sizeable below norm hole in the area, and there is currently a wind stream moving straight down the middle of the Pacific that impacts the Ross Sea….http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-206.02,-79.15,302
Gold,
Thanks for practicing science. It’s appreciated!
I think tracking the ice on Hudson Bay might be more interesting.
Thanks, Anthony.
Good information, corroborated by
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr2/extent_n_running_mean_amsr2_previous.png
(University of Bremen, Germany).
Good graph from Bremen.
I’d be surprised if we see the minimum this early. That big dip at the end of Aug won’t be the low point. I’d expect another dimple in the next week or so that will probably tough out in about 7 days time. Anyway, it’s going to be pretty damn close to 2011. to within the data accuracy.
I am very interested to see the effects of a cold AMO and the passing of this el nino in the pacific. I think this will be indicative of the natural cyclical patterns as Joe Bastardi is hoping. Certainly should mess with the linearity of the models.
(I for sure can’t find any “death spiral”.)
Is this a fail? Maybe next year eh.
Tom, get back in touch with Waddhams and ask him what exactly he is an expert in.
PS Whadams has now changed his ice-free Arctic prediction to 2020…see here.
Wadhams’ answer to the question of an ice-free arctic by the end of Summer 2015: ø
Wadhams is the nut who says that a series of deaths were assassinations by the oil industry.
And his models were and are always wrong. In fact they are not models at all. Just a series of predictions based on very poor linear thinking.
Sure sounds like the preacher who predicted the 2nd coming in 2012…
(“…come on back Jesus, and pick up John Wayne on the way!” – Willie Nelson)
Jimbo,
When there is even more ice in 2020 than now, he can uproot and move the goalposts again to 2025 and repeat the process until retirement.
Lady Gaiagaia,
Professor Wadhams is at least 65 years old. I think he is already past his ‘sell-by’ date but, as with a number of elderly environmentalists, he just doesn’t know when to let go.
Billy,
Yes, Prof. Wadhams at 67 is one of those alarmists who need to pass from the scene before real climatology might once again be practiced, but I hope that the Good Lord grants him enough years to update his prediction again when aged at least 72 and then again at 77, from an exalted emeritus status.
Wadhams had forecast 0.98M km2 for the Arctic sea ice in September in the ARCUS sea ice guessing game this year. He was by far the lowest submission.
The trends are tracking toward 4.55M km2 so we can call Wadhams a bad guesser at least but more likely he is just someone to ignore because he is as wrong as it can get.
To go from “best modeller around” to last place in just 4 years would have to be extremely embarrassing.
Exactly!
a bit early for the turn, a little wind change and it could shrink again
I was thinking the same thing too. I thought it was around the 17th – so if it IS the turn then it’s about 1 week early?
Yep …
http://s7.postimg.org/wvtman8zd/Jaxa_Delta.png
I have a similar chart that covers both Jaxa and the NSIDC going back to the beginning of all the records (which is really 1972 – Jaxa uses an algorithm which is very similar to the NASA Team algorithm which goes back to 1972).
The sea ice minimum may have been reached on September 8, 2015 (4 days ahead of the average date) The daily melt rates are going positive now including today’s release as of September 11, 2015 numbers.
http://s18.postimg.org/yyta6j2w9/NH_SIE_Daily_Melt_Rate_Sept11_15.png
Jaxa minimum on September 8 —> 4.30M km2
NSIDC minimum on September 8 —> 4.34M km2
NSIDC September minimum (used in the Arcus sea ice guessing game) tracking to —> 4.57M km2
Yes I mentioned “vagaries of wind and weather” in the article.
Why is there any ice at all, in the arctic ocean, given the astronomical quantity of “HEAT” energy (noun) that gets pumped from the tropics (where it arrived on earth as EM radiant energy), by the Gulf stream, Japan current, and the like ??
There is damn little cooling going on in the arctic, which can get down closer to 200 K than 300 K, at which Temperature the maximum radiant emittance would be one fifth of what the global average rate is.
So with pitiful cooling capability, and huge heat convection to the arctic (which mysteriously shows up exactly nowhere in Kevin Trenberth’s global energy budget cartoon) why is there so much ice there.
My guess is that there is actually damn little incoming solar energy arriving in the arctic to try and warm it up.
And with so little solar insolation; I would guess that the arctic contribution to earth’s albedo is about nil.
One related question. With this huge thermal conveyor belt running heat energy to the arctic, how is it possible for land based glacial melting to dilute the gulf stream and similar currents, and mess with the so-called “thermo-haline” circulation ??
I mean what are the five principle equatorial ice fields, that are doing all this melting, and lowering ocean saltiness ??
g
You are right, a little laziness on my part.
What is also interesting is that the Arctic sea ice VOLUME is increasing (disregarding the seasonal changes). Only for 3 year, it may be only a fluctuation, but at least it decreases the long-term trend of decline.
“Of course, since sea ice is highly prone to the vagaries of wind and weather, it could still take a turn downward in the next few days before starting back up again.”
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png
Sea ice extent/area seems to be driven by wind and currents.
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
Can’t find a corresponding antarctic sea ice volume page
I find anomalies misleading. Please use total ice volumes instead on left side.
True, a short-term thickening trend, but strong. An increase in multiyear ice could promote higher summer extent. And the need for ice-breakers.
Last time there was a strong(ish) El Nino and cold AMO was way back in the early 1970’s. North Atlantic ocean temperatures over the last couple of weeks have warmed up a little though, with the cold pool shrinking and weakening. The AMO has a very big influence on Arctic ice due to the ocean currents it covers physically ends up there. Arctic ice predictions have been difficult generally because nobody can predict weather up there longer than about a week or so. The AMO though should be one of the few drivers that is easier to predict and very influential on Arctic ice.
Unprecedented sighting of a Bowhead Whale in UK waters
?w=698&h=436
And sighting of a Beluga Whale of the coast of Northern Ireland this year.
From this site
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/who-is-smarter-scientists-or-whales/
everything is unprecedented these days. I am really starting to hate that word and believe that in most cases, it is not true.
mwhite,
would that image link be the same Arctic bowhead whale seen off Isles of Scilly in February of this year? It must be the ‘unprecedented’ cold waters. 🙂
Here is a story of an ‘Eskimo’ and his Kayak that landed in Scotland in 1760. The poor chap died 3 days later. There was another Arctic visitor in 1818.
http://www.mcjazz.f2s.com/KayaksInuits.htm
Well you said it; the ” sightings ” may be unprecedented; but that doesn’t mean the whale’s presence is unprecedented !!
g
Have you noticed the “new” way the media is using “unprecedented”?
They say: “This event it unprecedented SINCE 1986.” … or similar. They love the word unprecedented. I really laughed when I heard the CBC comment on the recent wind storm that downed trees all over the lower mainland of British Columbia. They called the wind storm “unprecedented for 9 years”. Hmmm. OK.
It’s robustly unprecedented
To a person who is completely confused or suffering from profound memory loss – everything is unprecedented. Everyday is full of surprises.
That’s why I ended up on WUWT – I’m not interested in mass dementia.
Good grammatical observation.
Unprecedented should mean without precedent. Period.
What about sea ice volume? I hear people say that since extent is just area, it doesn’t do a good job of measuring the total amount of ice. Then they point to lessening amount of sea ice volume as a demonstration that sea ice extent isn’t a good measure, etc.
The Arctic Sea Ice Volume Anomaly measurements have been recovering since 2013.
See PIOMAS Arctic Sea Ice Volume Reanalysis, at http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png
The exact same “recovery” you refer to occurred between 1984 and 1988 (and 89-92), and yet the ice volume continued to decline. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that the 2013-2015 period is any different.
1972 Arctic Specialist Bernt Balchen predicts Ice Free Arctic Ocean by 2000:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071212-AP-arctic-melt.html 2007
The arctic is screaming” said Mark Serreze Senior Scientist at the Government’s snow and Ice data center:
http://soa.arcus.org 2010 Climate Scientist Jay Zwally “at this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nerely Ice Free by 2012:
2009 Sen. John Kerry “Ice free summer in 5 years” (2014):
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/sen-kerry-predicts-ice-free-arctic-5-or-10-years 2010 Sen John Kerry “Ice free arctic in 5 to 10 years (2015 – 2020)
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/sierra-club-predicts-ice-free-arctic-in-six-months
Sierra Club Ice free in 6 to 30 months (Sept 2013, Sept 2014, Sept 2015)
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/ice-free-arctic-forecasts
And numerous others care of Steven Goddard dot wordpress dot com
Bryan, you look at quotes, I look at the data. And does it really matter if the year in which the Arctic becomes ice free in the summer is off by 10 or 20 years when it has been at least 8,000 years since that happened?
Chris,
The Arctic was nearly ice free much more recently than 8000 years ago. It happened every summer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which ended about 5000 years ago. It probably also happened during the Minoan Warm Period, which ended around 3000 years ago, during the Roman WP of 2000 years ago and the Medieval WP a thousand years ago.
Indeed for most of the Holocene, a nearly ice free Arctic Ocean at the end of summer was normal. We are still suffering the effects of the Little Ice Age.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/new-study-shows-arctic-sea-ice-extent-6000-years-ago-was-much-less-than-today/
“There is absolutely nothing to indicate that the 2013-2015 period is any different.”
Except maybe …
http://s28.postimg.org/5bo2oj9h7/image.png
Meanwhile at the other end …
http://s28.postimg.org/9w5npq3sr/image.png
Warmer Arctic during the Medieval WP:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/28/inconvenient-study-arctic-was-warmer-than-the-present-during-the-medieval-warm-period/
Lady G said:” The Arctic was nearly ice free much more recently than 8000 years ago. …..” Followed by a link to a paper.
1) The estimates in the paper you referenced were determined by simulations. I thought models were not to be trusted? Or is that only when those models support AGW? And in any case, how can the accuracy of those models be verified?
2) The paper says the cause of the warming then was higher levels of insolation. That is not the case today, so what is causing the sharp decline in Arctic ice now?
3) The paper (at least the summary) does not mention over what period of time the Arctic ice declined. I would be extremely surprised if it was a few decades, as is the case now.
I don’t just look at Quotes but rather the Source of those Quotes.
Ice free arctic has been predicted since 1972 that I have found so far.
Pundits and Scientists alike have constantly predicted the event to happen 5 to 10 years out.
And as many others have pointed out, It is probably 95% probable that Ice Free arctic conditions have occurred much sooner than “At least 8000 years ago” It is even likely that Ice free conditions could occur in possible 1000 – 1200 year cycles…
Minoan Warm Period
Roman Warm Period
Medieval warm period
But if the current rate of accurate “The Arctic is Melting” predictions coming from climate scientists continues to mirror the prior rate, an “Ice Free” Arctic could still be a Century off (if ever) rather than the constant 5 to 10 years out that Climate Scientists and Climate Pundits continue to cast out as Model output inspired failed predictions.
If you write the Model such that “X” increase in CO2 = “Y” increase in Temperatures due to CO2 IR Trapping ability, then ask the model to produce a scenario with an increased level of CO2, the Model WILL almost always produce an end result with an increased temperature and all the predictive associated melting.
We’ve seen just how well these same models have predicted global temperature increases over the last 18 years
Chris,
The fact of lower Arctic sea ice for thousands of years is based upon sediment cores, whale remains and other hard data. It was minimal during the height of insolation, but also during other periods of the Holocene, as I noted.
The decline since 1979 is not sharp, but well within the normal range. Sea ice was low in the 1920s to ’40s, too. It was at an at least 60 year high in 1979.
We can be sure that CO2 has nothing whatsoever to do with Arctic sea ice, since carbon dioxide rose rapidly from 1945 to 1977, while sea ice was growing. Antarctic sea ice is near record levels, despite steadily rising CO2.
Sea ice has declined more rapidly than now not just in the Holocene Climatic Optimum, but during previous years and decades in the past century, as many sources in these comments show.
Chris says:
1) The estimates in the paper you referenced were determined by simulations. I thought models were not to be trusted? Or is that only when those models support AGW? And in any case, how can the accuracy of those models be verified?
Chris,
This is geology. There are other references showing the same thing. You just don’t like it because if the Arctic was naturally ice-free 6,000 years ago, it effectively undermines the current Arctic ice scare.
There is nothing to support Arctic ice fluctuations being caused by humans, other than the assertions of people who want to promote climate alarmism. When you think about it, the claim that humans are making Arctic ice vanish is a pretty silly assumption.
Chris, here is something interesting on Antarctica and the Arctic sea ice. The science is not settled.
The science.
The story as reported.
Lady Gaiagaia,
Here is what you need for future reference on the Holocene Climate Optimum and the Arctic sea ice.
During the 1920s and 1930s there was a huge warming in the Arctic as acknowledged by the IPCC.
Lady Gaiagaia
Affirmed. The north coast of Greenland was settled by Inuit and ice free during summer in the Minoan Climate Optimum. Recovered DNA gives origin and even disease risk of the male studied.
@Lady G.
“Indeed for most of the Holocene, a nearly ice free Arctic Ocean at the end of summer was normal. We are still suffering the effects of the Little Ice Age.”
How true that is. You get exactly the same message if you start looking at Fram Strait biomarkers.
Current Arctic sea ice levels are ANOMALOUSLY HIGH compared to the first 3/4 or so of the Holocene.
Unfortunately, it looks like that small amount of warming out of the LIA may have stopped !! 🙁
Gees, the Geologists even name the period that started about 3000 years ago, the NEOGLACIATION !!!
DBStealey said:”This is geology. There are other references showing the same thing. You just don’t like it because if the Arctic was naturally ice-free 6,000 years ago, it effectively undermines the current Arctic ice scare. There is nothing to support Arctic ice fluctuations being caused by humans, other than the assertions of people who want to promote climate alarmism.”
No, you are wrong. I know that the Arctic was ice free in the past. That in no way undermines the current concern about Arctic ice melting. Your position is analagous to saying that lightning caused forest fires in the past undermine the possibility of man made fires.
I looked at your link. Here is what it says: “However, the scientists are very careful about drawing parallels with the present-day trend in the Arctic Ocean where the cover of sea ice seems to be decreasing. “Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,” Astrid Lyså believes.”
So thanks for posting a link that supports my position, Dave!
Here is more.
The Holocene Climate Optimum was between about 9,000 to 5,000 years B.P.
Chris
“However scientists are careful about drawing parallels”
The “care” being taken is political, not scientific. This quite is merely the epilogue / homily added to the paper to make it PC, not the data itself (which convey a quite different message) and thus this politically inserted string in no way detracts from dbstealey’s comment.
You have constructed for yourself a narrative and mindset which insulates you from the implications of natural climate variation. AGW is founded on the mother of all logical fallacies. It really does matter that the 20th century climate oscillation is similar to about 20 other such oscillations during the Holocene.
Chris says:
“No, you are wrong.”
Chris has now resorted to using assertions as his argument. ☺
I wrote that the Arctic was ice free some 6,000 years ago, which was a natural event that undermines the current climate alarmism. It also undermines the endless, repeatedly falsified predictions that the Arctic would be ice free by now. It isn’t. Far from it, in fact.
There are plenty of references supporting the Arctic being ice free some six millennia ago:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020095850.htm
http://iceagenow.com/Arctic_Ocean_may_have_been_ice_free_6000_Years_Ago.htm
http://www.cgfi.org/2011/11/ice-free-arctic-6000-years-ago-by-dennis-t-avery
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/08/inconvenient-ice-study-less-ice-in-the-arctic-ocean-6000-7000-years-ago
If there is a current “concern” about the Arctic, the reason is clear: The Arctic ice scare is the only prediction that the alarmist crowd clings to, because for a few years it dipped below average.
This is a cyclical event, as shown here (“The Changing Arctic / The Arctic Seems To Be Warming Up” – from 1922).
And as the late, great John Daly writes, the Arctic is often mostly water.
When we look at the big picture, we always find the same thing: there is nothing either unusual, or unprecedented happening with the global ‘climate’. Everything we see now has been observed before, repeatedly, and to a greater degree in the past.
The climate Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. The alternative hypothesis: that dangerous AGW is happening, has no measurements to support it.
I wonder, what would it take for alarmists to admit that their conjecture has turned out to be wrong? Can anything convince them? Or is their religious faith in dangerous man-made global warming so strong that it defies all evidence to the contrary?
@ Chris… yes it does matter because the implication being that the math and the science are correct in relation to the amount of co2 and the amount of heat retained. If its off by 20 years, both the science and the math breaks down, it’s not related. I’ve done the math by the IPCC, in their view the amount of retained heat is enormous. I can’t not disagree given the parameters of how they are viewing…. However, I do disagree with the parameters. Who’s right? the hard evidence that ice hasn’t melted or the models? . The Arctic should have surely melted by now, and that is just a fact. In fact it should have melted sooner. And why is that, because not only have we not curtailed the production of co2, it has increased. Just the sea level rise should be apparent, in cm/year not mm per decade, and what from, the expanding volume of water from heat. AGW is a dead Theory.
The Minoan Warm Period around 1200 BC was in fact a very cold dry type period for the mid latitudes, it caused the demise of the Minoans.
The warmest past of the MWP for Europe was in the 8th century, while Greenland was having the second lowest temperatures of the Holocene.
..warmest *part*..
Jimbo
September 11, 2015 at 1:51 pm
Good sources.
IMO there is also strong evidence of effectively ice free Arctic Ocean summers or at least extent lower than now much more recently than the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
DB mentions some proxy data, such as the entry of the Inuit into northern Greenland during the MWP, even as the Norse were settling in its south.
Bowhead whale remains are the indicator with which I am most familiar.
DBStealey said: “Chris,
This is geology. There are other references showing the same thing. You just don’t like it because if the Arctic was naturally ice-free 6,000 years ago, it effectively undermines the current Arctic ice scare.
There is nothing to support Arctic ice fluctuations being caused by humans, other than the assertions of people who want to promote climate alarmism. When you think about it, the claim that humans are making Arctic ice vanish is a pretty silly assumption.”
I am perfectly fine with Arctic ice having melted in relatively recent times. It in now way undermines today’s events, it simply means that the Arctic can melt for natural reasons as well as man made ones, which neither I nor climate scientists dispute. Oh, and by the way, the paper you quoted was written by climate scientists – you know, the very same folks you denigrate when their findings do not agree with your opinion. And you ignore the key point they made in their article, which I will post again: “Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today.”
Chris quotes:
“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today.”
“Seem”?? Like Chris, they’ve got nothin’.
Upthread, Chris says:
Bryan, you look at quotes, I look at the data.
Ha, ha! You’re kidding, right? You’re looking at data? What “data”??
I challenge you to produce verifiable, testable, empirical data showing that human CO2 emissions are the cause of the recent Arctic ice fluctuations, from around 2006 – 2012. Post it here.
The fact is, all you’ve got is assertions. You posted your baseless opinion, then you asserted that it’s “data”. It’s not. You have no “data” showing that changes in Arctic ice are caused by human activity.
This isn’t some thinly-trafficked alarmist blog that excuses bogus claims like that. If there was any verifiable “data” showing that CO2 emissions were the cause of Arctic ice fluctuations (but of course, not Antarctic ice, which is increasing), the debate would be over.
But it’s not over, only because you refuse to accept reality. Your arguments are based on nothing more than your belief; you came to your conclusions, and now you try to support them with your assertions. That’s not science, that is just your religious argument.
Really, its neither the sea ice extent nor the volume we should be worried about, but the QUALITY of the ice!
Are conditions there for a Gore effect in Paris in December?
It cracked me up that BHO, when in Alaska recently, said he wanted to support Arctic commerce by adding new ice-breakers to the US fleet by around 2020. Surely an unnecessary step if NH ice cover extent is in a death spiral ? Maybe they’re to meant to be used rescue all the climate scientists who get stuck while opining about the decline in NH ice cover ?
[snip – this is wildly off-topic and purely political, snipped per policy – Dave you should know better – Anthony]
I wonder if I can get a free flash drive too?
I suspect BHO knows what the Russians know. Are scientists telling politicians one thing, and the rest of us something else?
I think probably the Russians hope to put the Northern Sea Route between East Asia and Europe into serious use for as long as possible each year. That’ll require ice breakers to extend the season, not to mention hold marine insurance costs down. The Russians will charge the ships that use the route for their support activities.
The Pacific side of the Arctic is the reason the anomaly is so low this year and that is probably because of El Nino, right? Like others have said, I’m very interested to see what the climate indicators do after this El Nino is over and all factors, save anthropogenic, favor cooling.
I assume it is reasonable to presume that if the Arctic sea ice extent undergoes a prolonged expansion resulting from the AMO negative phase our alarmist counterparts will not acknowledge anything particularly meaningful or even claim climate models predicted it?
Or, it will be the AGW icebreaker that begins the collapse of their movement?
Steve, don’t you get it, the alarmist stake out all the possible alternatives as a result of “climate change” and therefore are impervious to being proven wrong? Just yesterday alarmist were claiming that the “Atlantic conveyor” was slowing down so an increase in ice is to be expected!
Yep I read that too. They are raising the prospect of the Day After Tomorrow scenario.
Funny that they can pretend to believe that while at the same time advocating the reduction of the very fuels needed for millions to survive such a scenario.
I guess they simply prefer a mass loss of human planet occupancy?
a significant number of them are not on “team human”
Steve Oregon
“the reduction of the very fuels needed for millions to survive such a scenario. ”
Funny you should put it that way. Recalling the movie. whatshisname survives by lighting gas fires in the restaurant and his son survives by burning books in the library. (CGI wolves were awful)
Even at the time I’m yelling stop burning the books, Start burning the chairs and whatever other wood (more energy dense) stuff you can find. Why are the accepted green solutions always least energy dense and most destructive?
Slows down, speeds up, no trend. Short termism me thinks.
WUWT – 25 March 2015
“NASA refutes Mann and Rahmstorf – Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/25/nasa-refutes-mann-and-rahmstorf-finds-atlantic-conveyor-belt-not-slowing/
Here’s a question for those that study this more than me.
For most of the summer, there appeared to be a “ring” from 135W to 180. It was the retreating edge of the ice. Yet, inside of that ring, there was a large area that appeared to have no ice. Was this just a large melt pond (lake) inside of the retreating edge? And, if so, should we expect a rapid refreeze of this pond? Of course, this is assuming no adverse weather conditions that might affect it otherwise.
Satellites can now supposedly distinguish melt water atop ice from open seawater.
It might differ by agency, but for NSIDC, “only grid cells with at least 15% sea ice concentration contribute to the extent”.
http://icdc.zmaw.de/1/daten/cryosphere/seaiceage-arctic.html
“We haven’t spent much time looking at Arctic Sea Ice this year, partly because I’ve rather lost interest in it as any sort of climatic indicator”
Could the failure of the much heralded and hoped for rebound of Arctic ice have something to do with that loss of interest I wonder.
What failure? The no ice during the summer has failed.
The AMO has become cold while Arctic ice levels are back a decade to mid-2000’s levels. What further evidence do you need that is failure of a recovery?
Don’t speak [too] soon Gareth. If it rebounds then you will not be heard from. Here is a heralding.
If it rebounds Jimbo I will be in great spirits and contribute extensively. My loss of interest is that the majority of climate science states that Arctic ice will decrease in extent as the world warms. That seems to be what it is doing. It’s not particularly riveting to see a phenomena predicted 25 years ago slowly happen. The only really interesting bits are the catastrophists who claim it will all be gone on such and such a date, and the skeptics who say it will all refreeze in the near future. Both are profoundly mistaken.
We will have to wait and see on that one. It took Arctic sea ice decline from 1980 to 2007 for the louder alarm bells. I make that 27 years. I say we will see increasing extents within the next 15 years.
In science we have prediction followed by observations. Warmists have predicted an ice-free Arctic for 2013, 2012 and counting.
PS an ice free Arctic was predicted well over 25 years ago.
Gareth, would you say that the Arctic sea ice extent rebounded after the huge warming in the Arctic during the 1920s and 1930s?
Gareth, here are the temps from the past via HadCRUT4. Maybe there is a pattern? Maybe the sceptics are right? We will have to wait and see. Even if we can’t wait and see what can we do about it? Reduce our co2? We have been at it since the first IPCC report and still it rises.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/70-90N%20MonthlyAnomaly%20Since1920.gif
Gareth,
Here is the Arctic temperature anomaly from NASA. Like I said it could be a pattern of ups and downs or maybe not. We still have to wait and see.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
Slightly off topic, but the warming trends in the Arctic (not amount) are the same worldwide compared with the tropics, USA and Australia for example. Arctic temperatures show no higher temperatures over recent years than the 1930’s and 1940’s. There is no evidence that global temperature would overall react in a different trend to these.
SO that leads to the question, how are global surface data sets so different from these obvious observations? There is no evidence that the 1940’s are any different to 2010’s. I think it is clear that tamperature trends have been going on for decades, not just recent decades. HADCRUT and GISS have got the trends roughly right, but the amplitude wrong between historic temperatures and recent temperatures. The obvious reason has been continuous tampering of the data to hide this inconvenient observation which is damn pretty clear.
Gareth, it hasn’t been melting for the last 3 years and counting.
Now that PDO has flipped and AMO is getting close to flipping to their respective cool cycles, I expect ice levels to start increasing, just as it did back in the late 60’s and 70’s.
Thanks for the extensive info Jimbo. My definition of a rebound would be to see the Arctic regain the ice it has lost over the last 27 years. It can be debated whether is has been this low in times past or not, but the general slow decrease over the last quarter century is irrefutable. I agree though that there seems to be some sort of stabilisation at a lower level over the last few years.
Could the variability of the AMO cycle and the limited number of cycles to work with have anything to do with it also? That question will be coming up a lot over the next 10 years or more.
The key statistics to watch now are ice thickness and percent multiyear ice. Arctic sea is greatly affected by melting from below and there has been a pattern of alternating years of increasing vs decreasing as Arctic sea ice since 2007 as ice oscillates around 1 km2 anomaly. That would b expected from an Arctic Iris Effect under a regime of below average multiyear ice extent. As thicker multiyear ice continues to accumulate, we should expect more consecutive years of slightly greater extent. This year’s Ice volume data suggests a smaller volume than 2014, but a greater volume than observed for the 4 years from 2010 to 2013.
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/Bpiomas_plot_daily_heff.2sst.png
Gareth
Your death spiral also failed. So it’s honours even I guess.
Gareth, global sea ice has been above average for most of the past two years. Also there is a great deal more thired, fourth and fifth year ice this year in the Arctic. This is thicker older ice that moves less easily.
Exactly!
Gareth,
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 ( Royal Society Archives)
Well I guess….
When you start in 1979 with an extra 2 million km2’s…
Looks to me like it’s been “normal” all along
Exactly, the 2 M km2 ice above normal makes out it was normal back in even the 1970’s, but it certainly wasn’t. It was the highest extent recorded over the past 60 years with only a few years in the 1960’s and 1970’s matching it.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0485%281979%29009%3C0580%3AAAOASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
The year 1961 showed Arctic ice over 3.5 M km2 BELOW normal and was astonishingly over 5.5 M km2 below the extent in 1979. During the 1950’s and 1960’s Arctic sea ice was often more than 1 M km2 below normal. The spin and exaggeration by some alarmists has been disgraceful over the years with their greatest cherry.
Thanks for the info an link.
Average Arctic sea ice extent must have gotten pretty low by the late ’40s, then struggled to rebuild until reaching a cyclical high in the late ’70s, although even 1975 was about the same as 2015.
I think the AMO connection is pretty solid. We also saw a lot less melting in Greenland this past summer. Note that when the AMO went positive around 1995 it still took about 10 years for any big changes. I suspect we will see ups and downs for several years before returning to the higher ice conditions.
Yes, if there is any science left to witness it.
There will be no highs because declining solar activity.
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo/from:2009/plot/esrl-amo/from:2009/trend
Looks that way but ‘never say never’ on weather. (thanks Joe)
We don’t really have a handle yet on the amount of time it takes for solar changes to influence climate (from what I have read). And, as Joe B said on weatherbell’s Sat. summary, we are starting this grand minimum at a different global temperature and ocean cycle phases than the last one, so they’re unlikely to be identical.
“And, as Joe B said on weatherbell’s Sat. summary, we are starting this grand minimum at a different global temperature and ocean cycle phases than the last one, so they’re unlikely to be identical.”
The global average surface temperature being ~ 0.8C warmer won’t make any meaningful difference to how deep the negative AO&NAO episodes will be, so regional temp extremes will tend be similar to previous solar minima.
The summer sea ice extent is not what is the most interesting thing that’s going on in the Arctic.
What interests me is what’s putting a cap on the summer temps from rising higher in the Arctic. For if the Arctic is getting warmer then why is it just confined to just the winter half of the year
keep an eye on the blob, the north atlantic is not the only ocean area going cold. 🙂 http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.9.10.2015.gif
as for el nino, more like el tinio.
El Chiquitito.
as flagged up across at real climate science-
ice extent in 1971-
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ScreenHunter_10402-Sep.-10-00.31.gif
Vs 1980- 2010-
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AnimationImage97.jpg
I’m disappointed. First the El Nino fading in early 2016. Now sea ice extent in the Arctic “leveling off”.
There was supposed to be a Ka-boom. There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Ka-boom.
Not a Ka-boom, “Shock and awe of climate change” is what you mean.
As for the Arctic, I have been looking at the early snow return in Alaska and Siberia. The ice might not be recovering quickly, but the snow on the ground is rushing ahead (keep an eye on the daily anomaly charts):
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/
The last few winters have seen a large positive anomaly during the fall, as large areas have seen early snows.
I would like to understand why that is.
Early snow is bad and because of man-made global warming, is exactly what all climate scientists have expected and all the models have always predicted it.
Not.
He speaks of Marvin the Martian, from Bugs Bunny fame.
Thanks for the snow link. We’ve cut extra wood again, expecting the 3rd colder than normal winter in a row this year.
I invoked the words of Marvin the Martian to express my disappointment in the lack of real evidence to support the dooming and glooming of climate alarmism. After all the wolf is supposed to show up eventually. Instead we get cold winters not seen for 30 years.
Snow on the ground, since that area is still receiving some sun light, should speed the cooling of the air.
Any snow that falls in the oceans will speed the cooling of the water directly.
cont….
“But it is worse than it seems – 1971 ice was 1.5 million km² larger than the year before, and there are satellite images”
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ScreenHunter_10401-Sep.-10-00.09.gif
During the last major advance of the Laurentide ice sheet, the greatest thickness of the dome was found atop and just south of Hudson Bay, same area as where the “polar vortex” sets up every winter. Besides the Laurentide ice sheet, there was also the Finoscandian Ice Sheet. Siberia and parts of Alaska were relatively ice free by comparison.
It seems to me that the ice in Hudson Bay persisted for a long time this summer. Did it ever completely melt out? Also East Coast ice was drifting as far south as Martha’s Vinyard. Maybe the Arctic Ocean will not necessarily be the place to look for ice extent in the coming years.
Also the British and alpine ice sheets, besides the Fennoscandian in Europe. The extent of glaciation in Siberia remains somewhat controversial.
Much of Siberia was also glacier free. Lots of mastodons and human hunters ran around there and the humans followed the game across Siberia to Alaska and then down to California and into South America and we called these people ‘Indians’ due to mistakes made by European explorers.
The Inuit all came out of Siberia, too, and stayed Ice Age hunters where there were still lots of animals roaming about Alaska.
You mean mammoths. No mastodons in Pleistocene Siberia, although obviously their Miocene ancestors passed through there.
Late Pleistocene North America was home to at least four proboscidean species in three genera and families: woolly and Columbian mammoths (elephant family), mastodons and gomphotheres.
The ice on Hudson Bay has not melted out yet (although it still might and this is only the northern exit from Hudson Bay, the main Bay ice is gone).
I don’t think any ships are getting through this in the current year and let’s remember, they have been navigating this water since 1610 when Henry Hudson first explored the Bay.
Sea ice on the northern exit of Hudson Bay on September 11, 2015 in Red.
http://s28.postimg.org/gsojdzynx/Sept_11_15_Northern_Hudson_Bay_Ice.jpg
Interesting, I was just looking at some various write ups on arctic cyclone impacts and the Fram strait on ice and saw this post.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_etal2013_cyclone_grl50190.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL054259/abstract
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/5/821/2011/tc-5-821-2011.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003JC001785/full
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/1520-0442%282001%29014%3C3508%3AFSIFAA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/1999GL010944/epdf
Yes, I was bored on a conference call and cleaned out some old links 🙂
“We haven’t spent much time looking at Arctic Sea Ice this year, partly because I’ve rather lost interest in it as any sort of climatic indicator.”
Arctic sea ice extent may be an excellent forward hurricanes indicator of a great importance to the Caribbean and the United States, only if we knew how to interpret it.
In the summer months as ice retreats, the atmospheric pressure in the Sub-Arctic area is influenced by atmosphere’s direct contact with free sea surface, as the Icelandic Low moves much further north.
Dr. Judith Curry in her paper shows a graph of major hurricanes
http://www.eas.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/ins_tampa_09.pdf
Here I superimposed the summer Arctic pressure on the above graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NATL.gif
I find it hard to believe that similarity between blue and red lines is just ‘spurious’ coincidence. If it is not, then the Arctic ice extent (to which change in the summer Arctic pressure appears to be directly related) may produce even better correlation, providing good predictive indicator for the major hurricanes.
I think it’s turned the corner.
I’m not convinced that Arctic sea ice has reached its minimum yet (today, 10 September) but clearly it is near its yearly low.
On the other hand, as each day goes by, the effect of the daily sunlight difference (the difference in heat energy being either reflected (by excess sea ice) or absorbed (by the absence of sea ice above the “darker” ocean surface)) gets lower and lower.
For example, on 1 September this year, the ever-rising Antarctic Sea Ice area already was more important to the earth’s daily heat balance than the Arctic sea ice area. By September 22 – 26, each square meter of Antarctic sea ice area will be more than 10 TIMES important than the Arctic sea ice.
Hate to burst your bubble folks but arctic sea ice extent is trending downward at the same rate it has been for the past two decades. All indications are we are still in the midst of a long-term decline.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2015/09/monthly_ice_08_NH.png
Luke:
If the arctic sea ice extent is a triangle wave of period of about 70 years then you would get the “long term” trend noted above taken over a period of 32 years.
“long term” isn’t long enough until you’ve satisfied Nyquist – you need two periods. Since the various ocean oscillations have periods on the order of 60-70 years, and the evidence prior to 1979 is that 1979 was a maximum, and there’s anecdotal evidence that ice extents oscillate between the Arctic and Antarctic, you can’t rule out the possibility that we’re just seeing one portion of an oscillation.
In summary a valid Null Hypothesis is that the downtrend in Arctic Ice Extent is just a subsample of larger period. We need to wait until 2099 to invalidate this Null Hypothesis.
I realize it’s tough to wait that long. Humans have different lifespans than natural cycles. Them’s the breaks.
Peter
“Hate to burst your bubble folks but arctic sea ice extent is trending downward at the same rate it has been for the past two decades. All indications are we are still in the midst of a long-term decline.”
All indications are we are at the end of long-term decline would be more appropriate.
1) Solar activity in a slumber.
2) AMO increasingly negative.
3) NH snow cover significantly increasing over recent years.
4) Recovery of Arctic sea ice and volume during recent years.
5) Cooling global temperatures (the current strong El Nino may have a very slight short term delay affect)
6) Reached the end of the cycle that mirrored the period between the 1930’s and 1970’s.
The linked graph doesn’t tell us the whole picture because it is only one month. (August) Not even the month when the minimum occurs each year. (September) We know there has been a decline since the late 1970’s, but there are many signs this is about to change and it has nothing to do with CO2.
The 1950’s had similar ice anomalies compared with the 2010’s.
The early to mid 1960’s had lower ice anomalies compared with 2010’s.
The late 1960’s to early 1970’s had higher ice anomalies compared with 2010’s.
The years 1974 and 1975 were little different from anomalies compared with 2010’s.
The 1950’s until the 1970’s showed an increase in Arctic sea ice and currently levels now are no lower that at times during these decades. The lowest Arctic sea ice recorded since the 1950’s was in 1961 and that year had over 5.5 M km2 below the ice extent during 1979.
Peter Sable,
To expand further Luke should read the following on the previous Arctic Warm Period of the 1920s and 30s.
Peter Sable said: “In summary a valid Null Hypothesis is that the downtrend in Arctic Ice Extent is just a subsample of larger period. We need to wait until 2099 to invalidate this Null Hypothesis.”
So why is a period of only 18 years of relatively flat RSS data sufficient to disprove AGW?
Because we are talking about Arctic Ice Extent here…
Peter
Peter,
So let’s review what you are saying. The Arctic ice levels are affected by long term natural trends whose cycles are greater than the 35 years of Arctic sea ice data that is available, therefore we can’t draw any conclusions about the significance of the current decline.
Global temperatures apparently are not affected by any natural phenomena with long cycles (or at least cycles are greater than 18 years). Even though the Arctic, which you say has long cycles, is part of the planet. Even though the AMO is 20-40 years in length. Even though the PDO is 20-30 years. All of which are longer than the 18 year pause that is trumped here as proof that AGW is insignificant.
Is that what you are saying?
To me AGW is real. The question for me is how much of the warming since the mid-1970s is due to man’s greenhouse gases?
Your question could be directed at the proponents of global warming is MOSTLY man’s fault. Read on.
Chris wrote:
Not sure where you are getting that.
AMO 60-75 years:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v367/n6465/abs/367723a0.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008JD010036/abstract
PDO 50-70 years:
http://research.jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
There’s also beat frequencies to consider between the two as they are probably out of phase (which is why you need 2 periods… you can get away with a little over one period if you are absolutely sure there’s only a single source of oscillation through some mechanistic explanation…which you can’t in this case).
Perhaps you were confused by the half-period numbers? These “events” last half of the period. Or, approximately the length of the commonly published Arctic Ice Extent. The unpublished “proxy” data Mr Goddard is finding shows that there is likely an oscillation, or at least we don’t know what the true average extent should be.
Yes, but when it comes to globally averaged temperatures, the Arctic is a blip because the it’s surface area is so small. Keep in mind the globally average temperatures include huge surface area of the tropics. In fact you can see ENSO signals in all the temperature data sets I’ve looked at so far. But you can barely see them (hovering at just above 95% confidence level), Which means that arctic ice extent changes would likely not be visible in all that noise.
Also, I didn’t say “Arctic Ice Extent has long cycles”. That’s a Boolean Logic interpretation. Science is (at least) tri-state, either “yes”, “no” or “unproven”. I said it’s unproven that the Arctic Ice Extend doesn’t have cycles, and there’s enough data to suggest that “Has Cycles” is a valid Null Hypothesis against the idea that the Arctic Ice is in permanent decline as shown by the 1979 present. A possibly subtle but very important distinction.
Peter
Ooops, I missed one. “Not even Wrong” is a valid designation as well… and the proper designation for much of CAGW hysteria.
Let me amend that to Science has these basic things to say about any particular hypothesis: “proven yes, proven no, unproven, unprovable”…
Peter
Peter,
My point is that you say that the downward Arctic trend cannot be confirmed yet due to long term cyclical factors such as AMO. Yet somehow it IS ok to say that the warming trend claimed for AGW is not happening due to the relatively flat RSS data. Why doesn’t the same caveat you stated about the Arctic apply to global temperature, which is also affected by long term cyclical factors such as AMO, PDO, etc?
Well, some may think it’s okay to say that. I don’t think so. For me this is in the category of “interesting, but unproven”.
I think it’s valid to say that the RSS zero trend for 18 years invalidates the climate models, by the climate model’s own criteria. I think that’s the strongest statement made by Mr Monckton and it’s a valid statement.
I note the climate models do a poor job of showing AMO and PDO…
Peter
Matt G
“The linked graph doesn’t tell us the whole picture because it is only one month. (August) Not even the month when the minimum occurs each year. (September)”
I used August because it was the latest data. All of the months show a similar decline but since you asked about September, here is it. Nothing you suggested in you reply really addressed the point that I was making. All evidence suggests that we are witnessing a long-term decline in arctic sea ice which is unprecedented in the past 1450 years (url below). I see nothing that suggests it is turning around.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2014/10/monthly_ice_NH_09.png
Jimbo,
It appears that there was a slight decline in arctic sea ice extent in the 1920s and and in the 1940-50s but nothing like we have witnessed over the last two decades.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html
Luke,
How do the authors explain Antarctic sea ice growth, if man-made GHG has caused Arctic sea ice decline?
Their reconstruction is contradicted by actual observations of Arctic sea ice in the 20th century, as during the pronounced decline from c. 1920 to 1945, followed by general gain into the late ’70s, with some exceptional years. Naturally there is less ice now than was normal during the Little Ice Age, c. AD 1400 to 1850, but lMO there are good proxy data showing less sea ice than now during the Medieval Warm Period, c. AD 900 to 1400. They’re outside of the study period, which includes part of the Dark Ages Cold Period, but sea ice extent was less during the Roman and Minoan Warm Periods and the Holocene Climate Optimum, too.
The fact is that present sea ice extent occurred as recently as 1975, so how can it be unprecedented in 1450 years?
At least the authors recognize large uncertainties in their reconstruction.
Chris
September 11, 2015 at 9:41 pm
The 18 year temperature plateau matters because it was preceded by only about 20 years of warming, which followed around 32 years of cooling, despite CO2 rising at roughly the same rate since 1945. Indeed, to the extent that the rate of rise has accelerated, this has happened during the plateau.
These facts show the hypothesis of man-made global warming to be false and the GIGO climate models to be worse than worthless, except to demonstrate that their assumptions are faulty at best.
Matt G said:
“4) Recovery of Arctic sea ice and volume during recent years.”
How do you draw that conclusion? Here’s extent: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ (Figure 2). 2015 is tracking well below 2013 and 2014, and on track to be below 2011. Here is volume: http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1_CY.png
2015 is well below 2014, and will likely be at the level of 2013 or slightly lower.
“The 1950’s until the 1970’s showed an increase in Arctic sea ice and currently levels now are no lower that at times during these decades. The lowest Arctic sea ice recorded since the 1950’s was in 1961 and that year had over 5.5 M km2 below the ice extent during 1979.”
What data do you have to support that statement? It’s not what the NSIDC data shows: http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
Luke, If I’m not mistaken, your rock-solid trend takes us to ice-free by ~2100. Looks like you should agree that Wadhams was/is quite bonkers.
The now trend is flat, ie the past several years.
No, 2015 will finish well below both 2013 and 2014. The gap will be something between 500,000 and 1M km2. That is not a flat trend.
Nope, volume is up, third through fifth year ice is up, thickness is up.
David A said:”Nope, volume is up, third through fifth year ice is up, thickness is up.:
Nope. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Wrong link on volume, the correct one is here: http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1_CY.png
2015 volume is clearly below 2014, by roughly 1.5 M KM3. It will end up similar to that of 2013. And in any case, the figures are well below the average from 1979-2014.
Chris does not seem to like the early 20th Century Arctic Warm Period….I wonder why? Why did things recover after the 1940s? Recover = Arctic colder. 1979 celebrated extent.
Jimbo said:” Chris does not seem to like the early 20th Century Arctic Warm Period….I wonder why? Why did things recover after the 1940s? Recover = Arctic colder. 1979 celebrated extent.”
If you have data on the early 20th Century I’d be happy to look at it. As far as recovery after the 1940s, um, no. Here is data from NSIDC – there is a slight increase in the late 1960s, but basically a steady decline thereafter. http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
Chris,
Can you supply me with information as to why there was an Arctic warm period in the 1920s and 1930s?
Chris,
The link you provided me from the NSIDC has a graphic that STARTS at 1953. That does not tell me what sea ice extent was from 1920 to 1945.
http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
http://nsidc.org/icelights/files/2010/11/mean_anomaly_1953-2010.png
Chris
Here is a graph from the IPCC’s First Assessment Report 1990. See the early 1970s and 1979.
http://kaltesonne.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/nord2.gif
You can approximate part of a sine function with a straight line to within 99%.
Steve from Rockwood
Key words: “Approximate” and “part of” …
very approximate, and only for a very small part of that sine wave.
So, if the Arctic sea ice has a 66 to 96 year oscillation cycle – like the very well known PDO or AMO cycles, both of which follow the shorter 66 – 70 year cycles, how many “straight lines” has our data of Arctic sea ice demonstrated since we first had data in 1979-80? We are not yet through the first half-wave!
Luke, you chart shows a difference of 2 million km2 between 1979 and the present…
1979 was a record high year……a record 2 million km2
It’s not a decline…it’s a return to normal
1979 was not a record high year: http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
I never really liked arctic sea ice anyway.
Good riddance, I say!!!
Luke-
ice extent was known pre- 1979-
go figure why they take it from a high in 1979!
The standardized satellite record started in 1979- hence the time period. Bu your right, ice extent was estimated using other methods prior to 1979 and I see no evidence that 1979 was at a high, in fact it had been fluctuating around an extent of around 10 million square kilometers until 1970 and then started declining dramatically and I see no evidence it is turning around.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html
Sea ice was observed by satellites in the 1960s and 1970s. Before that it was observed by aircraft and ships. Present Arctic sea ice extent is not unprecedented.
And 1979 was indeed a record high sea ice extent year. There may have been greater extent early in the 20th century but not in the approximately 60 prior years.
sturgishooper said:”And 1979 was indeed a record high sea ice extent year. There may have been greater extent early in the 20th century but not in the approximately 60 prior years.”
What data do you have showing 1979 as higher than any point in the 60 years prior? That is not what the NSIDC shows: http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
A satellite called NIMBUS observed the Arctic sea ice in the 1960s.
I should add it also observed Antarctica too.
https://nsidc.org/data/nimbus
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141020-first-space-pictures-earth-satellite-photos/
Nimbus satellite with huge Arctic holes
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/04/1960s-satellite-imagery-of-polar-ice-discovers-enormous-holes-in-the-sea-ice/
Chris,
Please don’t assign any credibility to USHCN “data”:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ScreenHunter_10009-Jul.-27-12.16.gif
DBStealey, you post a GIF without any supporting documentation or explanation????? Sorry, that doesn’t cut it in scientific discussions.
Luke,
we did not have the technology like today of satellites. Yet the scientific literature is clear – there was a ”
huge warming of the Arctic” during the 1920s and 1930s. Sea ice recovered after that huge warming of the Arctic. Climate change is always with us.
Jimbo,
Show me some data, anecdotes don’t cut it.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html
http://photos.mongabay.com/11/1124seaice_full.jpg
I see Luke ‘reconstructed’. Show me the observations of the past.
Luke,
Pre-satellite era extents are not as easy to determine than you think. Below is someone who wrote to the NSIDC and got a reply. Please read it.
Reconstructions don’t cut it.
Jimbo
Sorry but a blog post by Judith Curry doesn’t cut it. Provide some peer-reviewed scientific papers that find problems with Kinnard’s reconstruction and we can have a conversation.
Luke,
The post was not from Judith Curry but from Tony Brown. This indicates to me that you most probably did not read it. Secondly, read the referenced peer-reviewed papers’ abstracts and data sources.
Since you insist on peer review I have to wonder why I should take anything the IPCC seriously. They reference NON-peer reviewed literature in ALL of their reports. Take a chill pill.
IPCC non-peer reviewed notes on pages
Here is Dr. James Hansen.
Chris & Luke:
When your response is that a link “doesn’t cut it”, what you’re saying is you have no answer. If you did, you would have posted it instead of making that lame comment.
.
I was quite caught of guard by the turning point this year. There’s been no exaggerated, falsified data by Suzanne Goldberg at the Guardian so far. Not a whisper. In fact today they are preferring to talk about a paper predicting that Antarctic ice will be mostly gone several MILLENNIA from now.
Now that’s what I call extrapolation !!
We have barely got around to measuring _approximately_ what polar ice volumes are and they are extrapolating millennia into the future. The paper is, of course, from the damn potty Potsdam Institute.
So no claims of ice free summers form Whacky Wadhams, and “don’t look up, look down” from the Guardian. No mention of how we must focus on saving polar bears and the Arctic in the ‘last hope for the world’ conference in Paris. This tells me we probably should be looking closer at Arctic sea ice.
Since the whole idea of an Arctic ‘tipping point’ has (thankfully) fallen apart since 2007 the alarmists seem to have gone off talking about it Odd that, you’d think they would be pleased. They seemed so concerned about it at one time.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
Thanks. Confirming my reply to Luke on the flattish “now” trend, despite the cyclone-driven lows in 2007 and 2012.
This study has some good graphs showing historical Arctic air temperature and sea ice extent, putting the decline since 1979 in context of prior natural fluctuations:
https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/mahajan_amoc_arctic.pdf
The authors attribute changes in the Atlantic-connected Arctic to the AMOC, and note that usually the greater sea ice loss occurs on the Pacific side, less influenced by the AMOC.
From the study you posted: “A strengthening AMOC could have contributed to the observed decline in the
Arctic Sea-ice in the Winter, but not in the summer based on GFDL CM2.1 results. ”
So the study is saying that Arctic summer ice is NOT impacted by the AMOC.
I see no justified reason why a MODEL thinks that the AMOC has no impact in summer.
The AMOC has been blamed on causing huge differences in temperatures and ice age conditions, yet apparently has no impact in summer. Sorry that is a load of nonsense because if it had no impact, sea ice during summer would not have declined over the past few decades. Ice ages would not be able to occur via any changing in the AMOC. DMI shows the atmosphere above the Arctic ice for the region 80N+ is not warm enough to melt the ice even during middle of summer. It requires warmth from the ocean to melt it from below and if the AMOC can’t do it then what does?
“AMOC seems to have little impact on Pacific sector of the Arctic in GFDL
CM2.1, where the observed decline is the strongest in the summer.”
Fair enough as the current from AMOC directly affects the Atlantic side, so a bit obvious. Although more ice on the Atlantic side will prevent warmer waters reaches the Pacific side. The Arctic is affected far more by the Atlantic side than the Pacific side in any scenario during past history.
a degree of correlation to the solar wind flux energy
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SW-Ice.gif
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 Minutes of Council, Volume 8. pp.149-153, Royal Society, London.
20th November, 1817.
Those new to this might like to look at John L. Daly’s site:
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm
Also, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/ice-at-the-north-pole-in-1958-not-so-thick/
Don’t forget that JAXA redefined how they measred arctic sea ice just before the annual minimum a couple of years ago, rendering their data useless for inter-annual comparisons. You should remove any graphs of data based on JAXA sources that show annual comparisions: they are unscientific and misleading.
Should we apply the same theory to the UAH MSU temperatures?
That’s very different to just having to recalculate orbital changes. What makes me laugh is people in favor of surface data still like the Arctic ice using SATELLITE data. Shows nothing other than they only don’t like the satellite data for temperatures because they don’t like the results. Political agenda related that has nothing to do with science. Why is the satellite good enough for Arctic ice extent, but not temperature? The fact it is because it can deliver such good results with Arctic ice trends shows it’s much better product than if tried to do the same thing with surface sea ice Arctic observations.
The UAH changes to their satellite product was far more than changing orbits, the whole methodology was changed, the computer program was completely rewritten, the contribution from different altitude ranges was changed.
The different between the two measurements is that the satellite ice extent makes a measurement of signals originating from the surface so is measuring the same parameter. In the case of the satellite temperature measurements they are of a distributed temperature over 12km of atmosphere not of the surface!
“The different between the two measurements is that the satellite ice extent makes a measurement of signals originating from the surface so is measuring the same parameter. In the case of the satellite temperature measurements they are of a distributed temperature over 12km of atmosphere not of the surface.”
The sea ice data still has some of the satellite errors to correct that are needed for temperature. They both measure the same parameter and there are no inconsistencies when the errors are corrected. These errors are not difficult to correct mentioned in the link below, unlike the surface data record would be. There is a big difference to calibrating everything the same to having thousands of points varying differently in many ways and sometimes not even using them and changing them whenever they feel like it. (surface data) It is much easier to correct the error with satellite then it could ever be with surface data. I’m not sure how the surface data could ever be corrected with so many unaccounted changes. Satellite temperature measurements are from very near the surface right up to well above the troposphere. Different channels are used to distinguish between different bands.
The satellites are always measuring the same parameter just much more accurately, cover greater coverage of the planet like it does for sea ice. It doesn’t matter that is not measuring the direct surface when the idea is you want to measure the energy changes of the planet. To complete this goal the satellite method is by far the better technique. Surface is better for humans to know how warm and cool it will be in weather forecasts, but for climate satellite it is by far the best to use.
They measure the atmosphere very near the surface up to 0.1 hPa. It is very clear the reason you and others don’t like them is because it is not recording want you want them to show. If the surface were recording cooling and satellite warming, there would be many alarmists that would change their view. In fact it was only a few months ago the surface was showing cooling, until the intended change to them.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/01/how-the-uah-global-temperatures-are-produced/
The quality in the data is compared to a CRN 1 weather station.
“John Christy has spent a lot of time comparing our datasets to radiosonde (weather balloon) datasets, and finds very good long-term agreement.”
If you listen closely, you can hear the arctic screaming.
Apparently, it can’t take any more of the alarmist nonsense.
I know how it feels.
Re NZWillie’s comments on data manipulation.
The Antarctic graph for the third year in a row (Southern Heisphere Sea Ice Extent with Anomaly) has numerous small black spots scattered around the coast but also through the ice mix.
These are obviously areas that count as having no ice reducing the extent.
They may be examples of computer melt ponds as he suggests,
Or someone is just pencilling them out to reduce the extent.
Happening every year and very unscientific.
On the Arctic there was a ring of disappearing ice which broke up but one remnant has remained above Greenland.
Hope is high that this will seed a super fast recovery in the next 2 weeks as there may be a lot of thinner ice just ready to rejoin.
Fingers crossed.
Well all the pretty graphs and we’ll reasoned arguments aft and to, what of the cry to arms, the Arctic is now ice free? When IPCC? When will the Arctic be ice free? Surely, the increased co2 and all of that retained heat will completely melt the Arctic. The sea level rise will be devasting. When, oh when? By the end of the century? Why so long when the science is settled? I need to see the science so that I can be reassured you aren’t making this stuff by the seat of your pants.
I recall an article about this time last year making the same call. Then the ice started melting again and the low didn’t occur for another 5 or 6 weeks.
Let’s wait at least a week or two before getting excited. A few days of uptick is meaningless.
Make that one or two weeks. Not 5 or 6 weeks. Don’t know what I was thinking there.
I’ve tried to view the graph at https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html?N, but it doesn’t display properly. I’ve tried IE11 and chrome and got the same result with both. Does that link work?
(The corresponding graphs on the sea ice reference page aren’t rendering for me either.)
I found that I can view the graphs from within an InPrivate IE11 session. An Incognito chrome session doesn’t work. Anyone else experience this?
Have there been any successful Northwest Passage voyages this summer?
[None that have been publicized. .mod]
At least nine yachts have completed the passage this summer, even the northern route is open at present. Wind was apparently the biggest issue this summer rather than ice, there was a particularly nasty storm off Barrow a couple of weeks ago that eroded the beach. I guess such crossings aren’t publicized any more because it’s become routine?
One that just completed the E-W transit is attempting to sail back the opposite way, now sailing through Parry Channel, Andros.
Let’s hope. The polar bears will thank us for the food-trash thrown overboard. They particularly like Coke bottles.
Do you have a link for that info? I don’t think any got through last year (or was it the year before)?
I think the route along northern Russia is open more often.
Ice conditions still severe in the NW Passage despite supposed melting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/10/why-the-northwest-passage-probably-wont-be-ready-for-shipping-any-time-soon/
What looks clear to a satellite appears differently on the surface.
Condition at end of August not all that great. Amundsen of course managed to traverse the NW Passage in 1903-06:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=86589
Not too many today want to leave their vessels in the ice, however. Yet some have gotten stuck in recent years.
J. Philip Peterson September 12, 2015 at 4:45 pm
Do you have a link for that info? I don’t think any got through last year (or was it the year before)?
At least ten got through last year:
How many vessels completed a west to east 2014 Northwest Passage? 3 vessels.
1) S/V ALTAN GIRL (CA) Route 6 East – 36 feet/25 hp – Erkan Gursoy solo passage.
2) S/V LADY DANA (POL) – Route 6 East, 14.3m, Ryszard Wojnowski – wintered over at Vancouver Canada – Completed a two-year Arctic East Circumnavigation on 20140927 in Sopot Poland
3) M/V TRITON (MH=Marshall Islands) – Route 6 East, 163ft, Captain Paul Johns.
How many vessels completed an east to west 2014 Northwest Passage? 7 vessels.
1) S/V DRINA (Australian) Route 6 West – Michael Thurston
2) S/V NOVARA (GBR) Route 6 West – 19.65m, Stephen Brown
3) S/V ARCTIC TERN UK (GBR) Route 6 West – 43 ft, Les and Ali Parsons – wintered over in Lewisporte NFLD
4) S/V GITANA (USA) Route 6 West – 44ft, Mike Johnson – wintered over in Cambridge Bay NU
5) M/V LATITUDE (KY=Cayman Islands) Route 6 West – 173 foot, Captain Sean Meagher
6) M/V NUNAVIK (MH=Marshall Islands) Route 2 West – 188.8m, Captain Randy Rose
7) M/V SILVER EXPLORER(Ex-Prince Albert II)(BS=Bahamas) Route 5 West – 108.11m/2x2250kW/Ice Class DNV 1A – Captain Alexander Golubev
In addition MV Nunavik carried nickel ore cargo from Deception Bay through the NW Passage to China last september. (19 September left Baffin Island – 1 October entered Bering Strait).
http://www.fednav.com/en/voyage-nunavik
sturgishooper September 12, 2015 at 5:05 pm
Ice conditions still severe in the NW Passage despite supposed melting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/10/why-the-northwest-passage-probably-wont-be-ready-for-shipping-any-time-soon/
What looks clear to a satellite appears differently on the surface.
Particularly if you pretend that photos taken in October 2006 are current!
Here’s a shot from Beechy Island a few days ago.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oJs9xZtC1bQ/VfZaeeC343I/AAAAAAAAy_8/IKtgWVFM_AE/s1600/20150913_Beechey_Island-5.jpg
Interesting observation you make, Anthony, with this comment:
“…One of the things that I have come to notice about Arctic sea ice is that it appears to have reached a new plateau or regime, note how since 2007 the data seems to oscillate about the -1 million square kilometer line.”
I checked your graph for the 1979 to 2008 baseline and there really does seem to be some sort of change or reorganization taking place. I have determined that the Arctic warming itself is not caused by any imaginary greenhouse effect but is due to a rearrangement of pcean current flow patterns of the North Atlantic Ocean at the turn of the twentieth century. I had a paper out on that and gave you a chance to post it but you turned me down with an incredibly ignorant non-scientific argument. The title of my paper was “Arctic warming is not greenhouse warming.” You must object to to this, I thought, and dropped the subject. I had planned to shorten it because I doubted that you would accept a six thousand word document but we never got to the technical part. But be that as it may be, the result is that all comments about Arctic temperature changes you have published completely ignore Arctic history. Let me outline it. For most of the last 2000 years Arctic history was boring – nothing happened except for slow, linear cooling for almost 2000 years. The most likely cause of this was a steady, orbitally-driven reduction of summer insolation. This came to an end at the turn of the twentieth century when the Arctic temperature suddenly turned up and assumed a hockey stick stance. Kaufman, whose data I used, did not have sufficient resolution to show what happened at that point but fortunately NOAA had published a high-res Arctic temperature graph for the twentieth century. Their graph showed that during the twentieth century Arctic warming went through three phases, with abrupt transitions between them. The first phase was a strong warming from the beginning of the century until about 1940. At that point an abrupt cooling set in that lasted for the next thirty years. In 1970 another abrupt change took place and the warming that had been interrupted now resumed again. None of the comments on Arctic cooling that have been published by you give anybody an inkling that this is what was going on just prior to the start of their observations. Their comments all start after 1970 when the major changes had already happened. As far as the cause of warming goes, it is quite impossible for any greenhouse warming to do it. First, there was no increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide that laws of physics require to start a greenhouse warming from scratch. Second, the abrupt changes in the rate of warming/cooling documented by NOAA also rule out the greenhouse effect. The only thing left that is not contradicted by physics is a change in the flow pattern of North Atlantic currents that began to carry large amounts of warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. Satellite photos I was able to obtain do show a large amount of warm water entering the Arctic Ocean in a broad front between Iceland and Norway. If I were to estimate the extent of ice melt they cause from these photos I would guess that they are responsible for one quarter to one third of the ice melt in the Eastern Arctic Ocean. Another aspect of Arctic warming is the abrupt changes that took place in 1940 and 1970. They cannot be explained by any kind of greenhouse effect but they are easily understood as a temporary resumption of the former pattern of ocean currents. Since we don’t know what started it a repeat of this is not out of the question. Your observation of a change in the pattern of ice melt fits in here easily as just one more change in the Arctic ice story. And don’t forget that the Arctic is now the only part of the world that is still warming because it does not depend on the greenhouse effect. The rest of the world is experiencing a a ‘pause’/’hiatus’ that makes global temperature stand still.
It looks like wind and not melt is the big player again, this year regarding area. From what I read the multi-year ice is on the rise regardless of the area of coverage. Might be worth reviewing the data from the orbiting gravitometers to understand what the ice mass delta might be. Area isn’t that helpful.
The ice mass is still low and not recovering…
http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b01bb086e5178970d-pi
the trend is still down:
http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b01b8d153ede6970c-pi
The extent for 2015 is lower than both 2013 and 2014, which were billed as a recovery
Multi year ice has basically just vanished away in 2015 – if you look at this chart from August
ftp://ccar.colorado.edu/pub/tschudi/iceage/gifs/age2015_32.gif
and then the current state, you see all the 5yr plus ice melted.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
Then the ice thickness isn’t good – the last of the really thick stuff came unstuck from the coast and there’s not much of it…
Really with 2015 no better than 2011 and the ice in a worse state, 2016 isn’t looking good ?
and with 3 of the top 4 record lows in the last 5 years, why should it…
Egriff,
Thanx for the photoshopped pic. You didn’t think that was an actual photo, did you?
The “Vanishing Arctic Ice” scare is a zombie that keeps coming back:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/ice-free-arctic-forecasts
Polar ice fluctuates. It’s cyclic, see?
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/arctic-has-gained-hundreds-of-miles-of-ice-the-last-three-years
The government bureaucrats who fabricate their factoids are fibbing for job security, they are not practicing honest science. If they were being honest, they wouldn’t cherry-pick the high point in Arctic ice cover:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/starting-graphs-in-1979-world-class-fraud
Looking at a data-based chart instead of your photoshop shows that 2015 is about average for the past decade, and the two prior years were above average:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ScreenHunter_3036-Sep.-11-09.15.gif
You can see in the links above that the endless alarmist predictions of disappearing Arctic ice have all been flat wrong. No exceptions; the alarmist crowd has been 100% wrong in all their scary predictions. That makes me think that the reason the ‘Arctic ice’ alarm keeps coming back is because the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ scare has become a new religion. It is certainly not supported by any empirical, testable measurements, because there are no measurements of AGW.
So, what would it take for you to accept that the global warming and Arctic ice alarms have been debunked? Anything? Or can nothing ever convince you? Please tell us what it would take for you to throw in the towel on that nonsense.
Or is ‘dangerous AGW’ your new religion? If so, then I can understand that your faith overcomes all doubt.
This sums it up below, you like the alarmists are putting a line to a sine-wave and continuing ahead for scary claims that are rubbish.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/–pAcyHk9Mcg/VdzO4SEtHBI/AAAAAAAAAZw/EvF2J1bt5T0/s1600/straightlineproj.jpg
“The extent for 2015 is lower than both 2013 and 2014, which were billed as a recovery”
Stong El Nino is going to have some influence don’t you think with it warming the lower atmosphere a little?
“and with 3 of the top 4 record lows in the last 5 years, why should it…”
There are not record lows, the peak in 1979 was cherry picked as a starting point and 1961 had lower ice extent than any of them by far. The early 1960’s had ice extent lower than most of the recent years. 1975 had ice extent 2 M km2 lower than 1979 which is around the level today.
NattG
Presumably you have some evidence that ice extent in the early 1960s was “around the level today”?
Egriff, do you agree with Dr. James Hansen when he wrote the following? If not why not?
Meh. Just wait 6 months & all will be well (if you like a frigid, pretty much lifeless & uninhabitable, continent-size icecap).
And Antarctic sea ice seems to be back near the average this year. Any idea why such a rapid change over last year’s conditions?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries_thumb.png
Yes, Barry, there is a reason why one year is different from another year: Polar ice is cyclic. It fluctuates from year to year.
Right now Antarctic sea ice is at its 1981 – 2010 average. Try to figure out how you can make that into an alarming factoid.
It had to do with surface wind patterns in the Southern Hemisphere that carried focused streams of warm moist air to two points on the Antarctic coast line. These flows held in place for weeks, with the result being large sea ice loss in those two areas of the sea ice shelf. The same pattern has shifted to new areas around the continent, and you can see that the melt as shown on NSIDC is concentrated in the areas that are impacted by southward flowing warmer moist surface air….http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-206.02,-79.15,302
Anthony, irrespective of whether arctic ice is indicative of climate change, it’s still an interesting topic, and one which the AGW community continues to use as a drum to beat. I hope you continue to cover it and that you will maintain your sea ice page.
The Arctic ROOS website seems to have a problem. For the link http://arctic-roos.org/observations/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic, the title reads “Daily Updated Time series of Arctic sea ice area and extent derived from SSMI data provided by NERSC. (NB! Error in data after Aug 5)”. Does anyone know what their problem is?
I noticed that as well. The updates stopped for a while after Aug 5th and when they were finally updated the charts showed a bizarre steep drop for a few days followed by an almost vertical drop for the next day. Then the updates stopped again. Then two or three days ago the site was completely updated but the charts were back to Aug 5th again. Very strange?
Luke,
“All evidence suggests that we are witnessing a long-term decline in arctic sea ice which is unprecedented in the past 1450 years (url below). I see nothing that suggests it is turning around.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/nature10581.html”
The nature link is wrong in the first place because it ignores observation data that we have before 1979. The king of cherry pickers choose the highest extent in the data to begin with. The September chart you linked to does show a decline from 1979 and this is not the issue.
“Arctic sea ice extent is now more than two million square kilometres less than it was in the late twentieth century” from nature link.
Did you know 1975 ice extent levels were ~2 M km2 lower than 1979, which is the highest peak in the September graph and the point nature is referring too. The 1975 sea ice extent levels were only a bit lower than normal going back to the 1950’s. I find it rather funny that you choose ignore real data and prefer to choose a reconstruction from Nature.
Fair enough if you think the list on my previous post doesn’t suggest it’s turning around. Why isn’t it turning around and what science observations support it?
Please read this below from observational data that has been ignored from the charts you linked.
The 1950’s had similar ice anomalies compared with the 2010’s.
The early to mid 1960’s had lower ice anomalies compared with 2010’s.
The late 1960’s to early 1970’s had higher ice anomalies compared with 2010’s.
The years 1974 and 1975 were little different from anomalies compared with 2010’s.
The 1950’s until the 1970’s showed an increase in Arctic sea ice and currently levels now are no lower that at times during these decades. The lowest Arctic sea ice recorded since the 1950’s was in 1961 and that year had over 5 M km2 below the ice extent during 1979.
Some of the original Arctic ice observation journals before 1979 that the alarmists decided to ignore are here.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0485%281979%29009%3C0580%3AAAOASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
No it didn’t. Where did you get this nonsense from?
And what do you think your link shows?
“The 1950’s until the 1970’s showed an increase in Arctic sea ice and currently levels now are no lower that at times during these decades. The lowest Arctic sea ice recorded since the 1950’s was in 1961 and that year had over 5 M km2 below the ice extent during 1979.”
This was the result from linking several papers together. The 1970’s early satellite observations matched the trend in ground sea ice observations in the link during the 1970’s. The year 1975 had 2 M km2 less sea ice then during 1979 based on other paper published by the NOAA for the northern hemisphere. The journal has been used for constructing high sea ice extent periods during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, but ignored for the earlier periods.
With 1975 2 M km2 less than 1979 it is reasonable to say that using the sea ice observation in the link below that sea ice extent was likely lot lower during the early 1960’s. 1975 was the minimum ice extent since the early 1960’s.
The link shows Arctic temperatures above 60N cooling between 1950’s and 1970’s with increasing sea ice extent. The 1950’s and early 1960’s had lower ice extent than the late 1960’s and 1970’s.
Which papers?
The paper you linked to shows nothing which supports your claim.
The sea ice extent in 1975 was not “2 Mkm2 less than 1979”. You have not . provided any evidence that it was. The one paper you linked to does not support what you say.
Matt G said: “The 1950’s until the 1970’s showed an increase in Arctic sea ice and currently levels now are no lower that at times during these decades. The lowest Arctic sea ice recorded since the 1950’s was in 1961 and that year had over 5 M km2 below the ice extent during 1979.”
Here is data from NSIDC for the period from 1953-2010: http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
There is a slight increase from the 60s to the early 70s, and then a decline. 1979 is not the peak, it is below the prior years – so that date is not cherry picked, contrary to what has been said on this thread. 1961 is a bit lower than the 50s and later 60s, but all ice data since 1980 is well below that of 1961. Current levels are not the same as the 50s to 70s, today’s numbers are far lower.
Chris September 13, 2015 at 9:41 am
“There is a slight increase from the 60s to the early 70s, and then a decline. 1979 is not the peak, it is below the prior years – so that date is not cherry picked, contrary to what has been said on this thread. 1961 is a bit lower than the 50s and later 60s, but all ice data since 1980 is well below that of 1961. Current levels are not the same as the 50s to 70s, today’s numbers are far lower.”
That view is based on one paper, Polyak, L, et. al. 2010. I am showing an alternative view based on one observation paper that the later one ignored. Both show different views on how Arctic ice extent was between the 1950’s and 1970’s. The paper I linked was all observation based (proper science) whereas Polyak.L, et. al. 2010 was mainly a reconstruction before satellite data. Why was it ignored when better data was available at the time?
Concentrating only on what’s in this paper.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0485%281979%29009%3C0580%3AAAOASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2
“Fig. 6 shows the time series (24-month running mean) of the area averaged surface temperature for the polar cap north of 60N. The plot was constructed by adding data for the years 1976 and 1977 to the temperature set described by Walsh (1977). The slope of the linear regression line fitted to the temperature series is negative, implying a net temperature decrease over the past 25 years;”
“A comparison of figs. 5b and 6 reveals some corresponding features. Above-normal temperatures during 1959-62 were followed by a rather pronounced cooling to a 1965 minimum. The increase in ice extent during the cool period is apparent in Fig. 5b. A return to the 25-year mean by the mid-1970’s is seen in both the temperature and ice plots.”
Fig 5a/b & Fig 6.
Arctic temperatures above 60N are shown cooling between 1950’s and 1970’s with increasing sea ice extent. The 1950’s and early 1960’s had lower ice extent than the late 1960’s and 1970’s. The years 1974/1975 had higher sea ice extent then a few years in the early 1960’s.
“Current levels are not the same as the 50s to 70s, today’s numbers are far lower.”
The sea ice extent used in the IPCC report disagrees and shows almost 2 M km2 lower than 1979. The alternative observation paper shows that the levels during the 1960’s were even lower. Today numbers are around 2 M km2 lower than 1979 similar to 1975 shown below.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2014/10/monthly_ice_NH_09.png
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/ipcc_1_extent_anomalies_fig_7-2ab_zpsuyoii8cf.png
Therefore which paper is most likely to be correct for the 1950’s to 1970’s period when there was a temperature decrease over the past 25 years. Do you really expect to find decreasing sea ice extent during a cooling period using reconstruction or do you expect it to increase like is does in this observational paper?
This paper only goes up to 1977 can’t compare Polyak, L, et. al. 2010 with this one after then, without other methods comparing different techniques.
Just noticed a post I have missed and you wondered which one I support more than the other. Well I always support observations over reconstructed data and the clincher for me are the temperature decrease over the past 25 years with it.