Arctic sea ice appears to have reached a record low wintertime maximum extent for the second year in a row, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.
Every year, the cap of frozen seawater floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and its neighboring seas melts during the spring and summer and grows back in the fall and winter months, reaching its maximum yearly extent between February and April. On March 24, Arctic sea ice extent peaked at 5.607 million square miles (14.52 million square kilometers), a new record low winter maximum extent in the satellite record that started in 1979. It is slightly smaller than the previous record low maximum extent of 5.612 million square miles (14.54 million square kilometers) that occurred last year. The 13 smallest maximum extents on the satellite record have happened in the last 13 years.
The new record low follows record high temperatures in December, January and February around the globe and in the Arctic. The atmospheric warmth probably contributed to this lowest maximum extent, with air temperatures up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average at the edges of the ice pack where sea ice is thin, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The wind patterns in the Arctic during January and February were also unfavorable to ice growth because they brought warm air from the south and prevented expansion of the ice cover. But ultimately, what will likely play a bigger role in the future trend of Arctic maximum extents is warming ocean waters, Meier said.
“It is likely that we’re going to keep seeing smaller wintertime maximums in the future because in addition to a warmer atmosphere, the ocean has also warmed up. That warmer ocean will not let the ice edge expand as far south as it used to,” Meier said. “Although the maximum reach of the sea ice can vary a lot each year depending on winter weather conditions, we’re seeing a significant downward trend, and that’s ultimately related to the warming atmosphere and oceans.” Since 1979, that trend has led to a loss of 620,000 square miles of winter sea ice cover, an area more than twice the size of Texas.
This year’s record low sea ice maximum extent will not necessarily result in a subsequent record low summertime minimum extent, Meier said. Summer weather conditions have a larger impact than the extent of the winter maximum in the outcome of each year’s melt season; warm temperatures and summer storms make the ice melt fast, while if a summer is cool, the melt slows down.
Arctic sea ice plays an important role in maintaining Earth’s temperature–its bright white surface reflects solar energy that the ocean would otherwise absorb. But this effect is more relevant in the summer, when the sun is high in the sky in the Arctic, than in the winter, when the sun doesn’t rise for months within the Arctic Circle. In the winter, the impact of missing sea ice is mostly felt in the atmosphere, said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
“In places where sea ice has been lost, those areas of open water will put more heat into the atmosphere because the air is much colder than unfrozen sea water,” Francis said. “As winter sea ice disappears, areas of unusually warm air temperatures in the Arctic will expand. These are also areas of increased evaporation, and the resulting water vapor will contribute to increased cloudiness, which in winter, further warms the surface.”
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Source: NASA Goddard
I’ll start worrying when the ice starts growing. Until then, I’ll just keep on enjoying the interglacial.
I know, right?
How in the world was it possible to convince even one single fool that a somewhat less lethally frigid Arctic Winter, or a slightly less ice-choked uninhabitable polar wasteland was somehow a bad thing at all, let alone a terrible disaster or a portent of civilization-ending doom?
Every day ‘religiously’ I check Nullschool Earth for the regions that concern me and my family, namely Australia, Antarctica, Europe UK and the Arctic. Anyone who had been doing the same would have noted that for many months a southerly wind blew continuously across the UK and towards the Arctic and pushed the sea ice back compressing it. This same wind may have melted some of the ice at the fringes but the same maps showed that the temperature fell rapidly to sub zero as soon as it crossed the sea/ice threshold. It looks as though major amounts of snow and ice were deposited on the ice pack and on the Greenland Ice sheet over this past Arctic Winter. Expect a slow melt and high minimums!
There is also satellite imagery from the chilly 1960s:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/04/1960s-satellite-imagery-of-polar-ice-discovers-enormous-holes-in-the-sea-ice/
Large holes in the Arctic sea ice despite cold, as in the ’70s as well. How convenient for Warmunistas that 1979 was the high or near it for the past century.
The ’20s to ’40s were decades of low ice extent.
Umm…Compare the “large holes”, a small percentage of the coverage if you look at the picture, in the ice of the Chickchi (sic) Sea in September 1969 to the nearly ice-free Chukchi Sea in September 2015.
“This year’s record low sea ice maximum extent will not necessarily result in a subsequent record low summertime minimum extent, Meier said.”
What? There’s still ice in the Arctic in the summer? I thought we were supposed to have an ice-free Arctic by now. How could the warmists, with their “settled science,” be wrong about that?
Actually, depending on the method of extrapolation, the estimates for a nearly ice-free arctic summer range from 2020 to 2060. Personally, I tend towards the modelers who put that event as occurring in 2040 to 2060.
Will you hold your breath until then?
The statement: “Arctic sea ice plays an important role in maintaining Earth’s temperature–its bright white surface reflects solar energy that the ocean would otherwise absorb” is simplistic.
It isn’t bright white, old sea ice albedo is about 35%, and water at low angles of incidence, as found in the arctic, can match or exceed this.
Also note that solar forcing in the arctic is relatively weak, at 10` south in the equinox it is ~35 wm^-2 given the global average of ~200 wm^-2
However the greatest impact of loss of ice is the amount of heat the relatively warm arctic can lose through emission, ~300 wm^-2, and evaporation, which is capable of transporting huge amounts of heat out of the system.
Arctic ice loss is a thermostat, not an amplification mechanism.
What is mass doing? A decrease in extent can be an increase in mass and multi-year sea ice. Increase in precipitation and winds and waves can reduce extent and increase thickness. It would also warm the atmosphere as clouds, rain, snow and ice form. And, as the article notes, clouds would reduce cooling where the warm, moist air and water entering the arctic is. A warm arctic in the winter is likely a massive heat dump and may be a sign of ice mass increase.
Record low Arctic ice at any time would, I think, be a prerequisite to the normal peak conditions of a warm interstadial period, which we are currently in. If the paleoreconstruction of stadial and interstadial periods is indicative of business as usual, I see nothing unusual about Arctic Ice being low and thank God I am alive during the peak of an interstadial. God help the poor souls who are on the ride down.
My goodness…my last comment vanished without a trace!
[It’s always a good idea to save your comment draft until you see it in the thread. -mod]
With the massive geoengineering going on, it’s hardly surprising.
“In places where sea ice has been lost, those areas of open water will put more heat into the atmosphere because the air is much colder than unfrozen sea water,” Francis said. “As winter sea ice disappears, areas of unusually warm air temperatures in the Arctic will expand. These are also areas of increased evaporation, and the resulting water vapor will contribute to increased cloudiness, which in winter, further warms the surface.”
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In the 100 mills of years of glaciation / deglaciaton. More, less ice coverage of the poles. Maybe more then once arctic water near icefree. A proof for high positiv feet back atmospheric warming threatning human live and biodiversity we can’t get – we were’nt here.
And that’s the proof against possible positiv feet back atmospheric warming threatning human live and biodiversity – we are here, curious as ever
I believe you made a serious error in judgement when you edited Mr Hunt’s comment and pasted that composite of two comments from his blog. I am afraid you played right into their hands, proceed with caution in the future. Aren’t all you guys a little too old to be participating in a blog war?
[Reply: It is simple, easy, and free to start your own WordPress blog. Then you can run it as you see fit. ~mod]