From the ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH and “it’s an El Niño year” department comes this prediction:
The Arctic is facing a decline in sea ice that might equal the negative record of 2012
Data collected by the CryoSat-2 satellite reveal large amounts of thin ice that are unlikely to survive the summer
Bremerhaven/Germany, 21 April 2016. Sea ice physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), are anticipating that the sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean this summer may shrink to the record low of 2012. The scientists made this projection after evaluating current satellite data about the thickness of the ice cover. The data show that the arctic sea ice was already extraordinarily thin in the summer of 2015. Comparably little new ice formed during the past winter. Today Dr Marcel Nicolaus, expert on sea ice, has presented these findings at a press conference during the annual General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.
Predicting the summer extent of the arctic sea ice several months in advance is one of the great challenges facing contemporary polar research. The reason: until the end of the melting season the fate of the ice is ultimately determined by the wind conditions and air and water temperatures during the summer months. Foundations are laid during the preceding winter, however. This spring, they are as disheartening as they were in the negative record year of 2012. Back then, the sea ice surface of the Artic shrunk to a record low of 3.4 million square kilometres.
“In many regions of the Arctic, new ice only formed very slowly due to the particularly warm winter. If we compare the ice thickness map of the previous winter with that of 2012, we can see that the current ice conditions are similar to those of the spring of 2012 – in some places, the ice is even thinner,” Dr Marcel Nicolaus, sea ice physicist at AWI, said today at a press conference during the EGU General Assembly in Vienna.
Together with his AWI colleague Dr Stefan Hendricks, they evaluated the sea ice thickness measurements taken over the past five winters by the CyroSat-2 satellite for their sea ice projection. Seven autonomous snow buoys, which the AWI researchers had placed on floes last autumn, supplied additional important clues. In addition to the thickness of the snow cover on top of the sea ice, the buoys also measure the air temperature and air pressure. A comparison of their temperature data with the AWI long-term measurements taken on Spitsbergen has shown that the temperature in the central Arctic in February 2016 exceeded average temperatures by up to 8 °C.
Buoy data show: the sea ice did not melt during the winter, but it grew slowly
Contrary to a report published by US researchers, this warmth did not result in the thinning of the sea ice cover in some regions over the course of the winter. “According to our buoy data from the spring, the warm winter air was not sufficient to melt the layer of snow covering the sea ice, let alone the ice itself,” Marcel Nicolaus explains. During the past winter, the growth of the arctic sea ice was significantly slower than the scientists had expected.
In previously ice-rich areas such as the Beaufort Gyre off the Alaskan coast or the region south of Spitsbergen, the sea ice is considerably thinner now than it normally is during the spring. “While the landfast ice north of Alaska usually has a thickness of 1.5 metres, our US colleagues are currently reporting measurements of less than one metre. Such thin ice will not survive the summer sun for long,” Stefan Hendricks, AWI sea ice physicist, explained.
Large amounts of thick pack ice will be carried away by Arctic sea currents before the autumn
Examining the CyroSat-2 sea ice thickness map for this spring, Stefan Hendricks further explained: “The Transpolar Drift Stream, a well-known current in the Arctic Ocean, will be carrying the majority of the thick, perennial ice currently located off the northern coasts of Greenland and Canada through the Fram Strait to the North Atlantic. These thick floes will then be followed by thin ice, which melts faster in the summer. Everything suggests that the overall volume of the arctic sea ice will be decreasing considerably over the course of the coming summer. If the weather conditions turn out to be unfavourable, we might even be facing a new record low,” Stefan Hendricks said.
According to the AWI scientists, the extent of the ice loss will be great enough to undo all growth recorded over the relatively cold winters of 2013 and 2014. AWI researchers observed a considerable decrease in the thickness of the sea ice as early as the late summer of 2015, even though the overall ice covered area of the September minimum ultimately exceeded the record low of 2012 by approximately one million square kilometres. The unusually warm winter has thus contributed to the likely continuation of the dramatic decline of the Arctic sea ice throughout 2016.
The sea ice physicists of AWI regularly report on the state of the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice on the online portal, http://www.seaiceportal.de. All CryoSat-2 ice thickness maps and the measurement series taken by the snow buoys are also available from the portal.
###
With NSIDC’s DMSP F17 satellite out of commision, measuring a new record low might be a bit of a challenge.
Update: I’ve been traveling the last couple of days, and so missed this note from NSIDC:
Notice (04/19/2016): Daily sea ice concentration updates have improved. On 04/05/2016 a change in the solar panel position to shade the nitrogen tank on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite was made. In doing so, the integrity of the vertically polarized 37 GHz channel (37V) of the Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS) was compromised. This is a primary channel used in the sea ice processing. On 04/13/16 an additional change in the solar panel position was made.This change has improved the problems we were seeing in the 37V GHz channel. The affected daily files from 04/05 – 04/13 have been removed from distribution.
Update 2: 4/22 7:10 AM PST
Notice (04/21/2016): On 04/05/2016 a change in the solar panel position to shade the nitrogen tank on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite was made. In doing so, the integrity of the vertically polarized 37 GHz channel (37V) of the Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS) was compromised. On 04/13/16 an additional change in the solar panel position was made. This change had improved the problems we were seeing in the 37V GHz channel for data from April 13 to April 19; however, on April 20, the 37V GHz channel started to produce bad data again. Thus, data from April 20 onward should not be used until further notice. The affected daily files from 04/05 – 04/13 have been removed from distribution.
Source: https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0081
It appears the sea ice data is still unusable when they say “data from April 20 onward should not be used until further notice.”
Footnote: NSIDC says conditions with data gathering have improved (on 4/19), but as these screencaps from about 4:26 PM PST today (4/21) show, they still have not announced the issue is resolved and data fully restored.
What a magnificent opportunity for homogenisers. The satellite is U/S.
Oh good, maybe all the yachts that got stuck up there in 2013 can finally get out.
Back in 1967/8 the Russians were going to offer up the Arctic for world shipping, this was cancelled due to a political crisis, The offer was not made formal until 1987 or thereabouts.
Even if it does, it will still be way above what is has been for the majority of the current interglacial.
Comparing sea ice as we cease our rise out of the coldest period in the last 10,000 years is a propaganda mugs game.
So, how did the sea ice fare in 97/98?
You almost sound happy. :-p
If there is a new record there will be plenty of other sensors out there to record it. And I think that by that the NSIDC will have transitioned to the SSMI/S aboard DMSP F18. Let’s hope they do. It’s crazy to think that one day the long-term passive microwave data set stops, simply because there are no more sensors up there.
No, not happy, just tired. I drove over 1000 miles in the last two days and simply didn’t have the opportunity to see the update at NSIDC.
But, you almost seem happy that sea ice is dwindling. Turnabout is fair play and all that.
I’m sure “Jim” will create yet another fake persona to tell me why that’s not true.
I have to wonder though, why NSIDC still shows this on their web page and Twitter page. Neven, you and your two hater friends at that other sea ice blog seem to hell-bent on complaining I missed this, yet NSIDC hasn’t bothered to Tweet (see current screencap) or post an update in their sea ice news section (see current screencap with date/time), nor is there any note about it on the NSIDC main page. Seems like they may not want to claim a fix just yet.
NSIDC still has not updated their Arctic extent graph past March 30th either as of this writing.
Well, it’s a fascinating spectacle to watch, but it actually has me greatly worried. We need that sea ice to keep certain other things stable (weather, Greenland ice sheet, permafrost). Changes this big, this fast, leave us open to all kinds of things we can’t foresee.
That’s right. I talked to Julienne Stroeve at the EGU General Assembly yesterday, and she told me that the problem is caused by a solar panel that was moved to shade a nitrogen tank on the satellite. They moved it again, and this had seemed to have solved the problem. But unfortunately data glitches returned, so now they’re not sure if it can be fixed. Switching to the SSMI/S sensor on F18 takes a lot of time and work.
The real question is: What happens next time a sensor stops reporting accurately? The passive microwave data set based on the SSMI/S sensor is long and continuous. It’d be a real shame if it stopped, if only because we need data diversity.
A new notice has appeared on the NSIDC data page, which I added to the body of the text. Recovery doesn’t look promising. I’d wager NSIDC staff is meeting about right now to decide to switch to DMSP F18 or to the AQUA/AMSR-E data stream. Either way, a lot of calibration and conversion to keep their dataset whole.
What does that have to do with the present scenario?
This El Nino had it’s strongest concentration of heat far west of the 97/98 event (Modoki).
There was no blob of warm water in the northeast pacific.
Are you comparing two El Ninos just because they were strong and recent?
Unless there is some intention to imply that El Ninos (Los Ninos) contribute to ice conditions in the Arctic there is not much point mentioning it in the introductory sentence. If EL Ninos do not have any consitent effect then we might as well have said “its an Election year in Mali dept.”
It is therefore a perfectly valid question to ask how the ice fared in 1997/98, since El Nino was introduced in the post.
Less frozen Arctic wasteland!
The horror!
Bring on the Arctic clover!
will we see the return of the imaginary elusive arctic penguin ???
LOL
Get out the canoes.
I have a question please. The Snow Laboratory at Rutgers University show the extent of snow coverage for the northern hemisphere, measured by satellite has grown over the last 30 years. Rutgers is funded by NASA and NOAA. How does this tally with AGW generally and if ice is not forming to the same extent how come snow coverage is?
Snow is not a measure of temperature as is sea-ice. Snow falls primarily as a function of moisture penetrating above the cold air around Arctic airmasses. Think the “snowmageddons” of recent years – the one over Washington DC had it’s vast quantity of snow driven by air drawn up from the Gulf area. Further, a “wavier” PJS will take snowfields further south.
Sea-ice lives and dies by air temp (and sea temp) only – though this is modulated by air currents from further south – as happened this last winter.
The extent of melting this year will be largely determined by the weather the Spring sees an early melt that creates melt-ponds to reduce albedo.
I don’t think that sea ice in general is a very good indicator of global temperature over shorter terms. Too many other variables affecting it like wind, waves, insolation, salinity, and even the passage of ice breakers. IMO the time to be paying attention to sea ice as a predictor of significant climate change is when the summer melt doesn’t put a good dent in it over a period of several years and it continues to expand year after year. I would be far more concerned if sea ice locked in most of Greenland and Iceland that seeing a time when 400′ ships could travel the NW passage without an icebreaker leading the way. After all we are still in what is known as an interglacial period called the Holocene aren’t we? Isn’t it still supposed to be warming?
“With NSIDC’s DMSP F17 satellite out of commision, measuring a new record low might be a bit of a challenge.”
JAXA is unaffected. Here is a current radial plot. Ice is low at present.
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/2016/4/jaxaapr.png
That radial plot is great. I’ve not seen it presented like that before.
As far as less ice goes – good, we need less.
Recovery from the LIA, the COLDEST period of the last 10,000 years.
Maybe some of the old northern Russian harbours will become usable again after 200 or more years of being frozen in.
Why do we need less ice in the Arctic?
Why do we need less ice in the Arctic?
Meaningless question.
“”Why do we need less ice in the Arctic?
Meaningless question.”
No was asked because someone posted a stupid statement.
In answer to the question – we don’t – it is very bad, as it allows TSI to be absorbed into Arctic waters, which in turn will warm the atmosphere, and alter the PJS’s movement.
Basic meteorological thermodynamics BTW.
Correct, and it’s not just the impact on albedo, but also on weather in North America and northern Europe. It’s not so simplistic as cold = bad, warm = good.
an ice free Arctic would open up huge northern areas to humans. it would also substantially increase heat loss to space, for those worried that the average 15C temperature of the earth is too hot for humans. A species that without technology dies of exposure in anything less than 27C average temperatures.
Oops, some people don’t like to see the ice disappear! The ‘end is nigh’ crowd love to manufacture a good panic. There is nothing to panic about, despite would Neven et al would love us to believe!
I was going to answer Chris et al, but Fredberple has answered it nicely for me.
The North Pole has been ice-free before and I’m sure it will be again, but it won’t happen for a long time.
Remember – we aren’t designed to survive in the cold. It’s not good for us.
Speaking of stupid Toneb is back.
1) Very little TSI falls on the arctic in the first place.
2) Because of the low angle of incidence, there is very little difference between the reflectivity of water and ice.
3) Ice is an insulator, less ice means more of the oceans heat can escape to space.
I just love the way the warmists just keep repeating their lies over and over again, as if anyone cares.
MarkW:
“1) Very little TSI falls on the arctic in the first place”
So you are saying that open waters will not heat up with the sun shining into them?
“2) Because of the low angle of incidence, there is very little difference between the reflectivity of water and ice.
Not large but significant my friend…..
From: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JC010232/abstract
“The trends of the solar heat input into the ocean and the open water fraction for 1984–2009 are found to be positive: 0.3%/yr and 0.8%/yr, respectively, at a 99% confidence level. There is an obvious transition region separating the 26 years into two periods: one with moderate change: 1984–2002, and the other with an abrupt growth in both solar heat input and open water fraction: 2003–2009. The impact of the observed changes on the reduction of winter ice growth in 2007 is estimated to be about 44 cm, and a delay in fall freeze-up as about 10–36 days.
3) Ice is an insulator, less ice means more of the oceans heat can escape to space.”
Yes …. in winter when the sun literally doesn’t come into it.
“I just love the way the warmists just keep repeating their lies over and over again, as if anyone cares”
I just love the way *contrarians* keep repeating myths, over and over again as if anyone cares.
It’s called science and repeating untruths because you read them on a Blog does not in any way make your “truths” true.
Strange, I replied to all the ice-maniacs to say that:
a) we are built for warmth not cold
b) ferdberple has replied with pretty much exactly what I was going to say, but he said it more succinctly. Thank you Ferd.
However, my comment got moderated away. Ho, hum.
I see Toneb is going to double down on stupid.
1) Whether water warms or not depends on many things. Intelligent people don’t have to have this explained to them. When TSI exceeds the energy being lost to the atmosphere, the water will warm, when it doesn’t water will cool. So the amount of TSI impinging on the water matters, plus many other things whether the water is insulated, the temperature of the air vs. the temperature of the water, wind speeds.
To bad the world is not as simple as you and the models are.
2) If it’s not large, then by definition, it isn’t significant.
4) Looks like Toneb has forgotten that there is a lot of ice in the arctic, even in the summer? Either that or it’s getting desperate.
I love the way warmists actually seem to believe that they are doing science.
I guess that’s what they are paid to say.
Fred:
“an ice free Arctic would open up huge northern areas to humans.
it would also substantially increase heat loss to space, for those worried that the average 15C temperature
of the earth is too hot for humans. A species that without technology dies of exposure in anything less than
27C average temperatures.”
No.
Heat lost to space occurs primarily in winter…… when there will be ice cover. Even if melted away by late Sept it would soon grow back in the Arctic night.
As for the rest. Really.
Toneb says, “Not large but significant my friend…..
From: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JC010232/abstract”
This argument clearly demonstrates your misunderstandings. That pay-walled paper only looked at the estimated solar energy flux into the open Arctic waters, not the NET ENERGY BALANCE like MarkW is referring to. The additional heat loss from less ice cover would occur due to basic laws of physics –sea water has higher emissivity than ice and open water conducts heat into air faster than it can radiate through ice and then into air.
You can see from the Ceres data that the net energy balance in the Arctic hardly ever goes positive, with perhaps some positive heat input along the fringes of the Arctic. You can see that by August, before sea ice even really begins to grow, that the entire Arctic begins losing heat into space. You can see that for 10 months of the year the Arctic acts as the Earth’s radiator, and the other two months show barely a net positive balance. Any trend in slightly extra solar energy input into the AO would theoretically be offset by higher emissivity and convective heat transfer into the atmosphere from the areas with less ice cover during the 10 months that energy balance is negative.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/view.php?d1=CERES_NETFLUX_M
More open ocean would also theoretically lead to more primary productivity and more aerosols, leading to more cloud cover and less solar energy reaching the surface. It would pay the alarmists well to look at all the feedbacks, not just the positive ones.
MarkW:
“I see Toneb is going to double down on stupid.”
See later.
1) Whether water warms or not depends on many things. Intelligent people don’t have to have this explained to them. When TSI exceeds the energy being lost to the atmosphere, the water will warm, when it doesn’t water will cool. So the amount of TSI impinging on the water matters, plus many other things whether the water is insulated, the temperature of the air vs. the temperature of the water, wind speeds.
To bad the world is not as simple as you and the models are.
Lets get back to the OP……
“Why do we need less ice in the Arctic?
Meaningless question.”
I am talking of a DIFFERENCE between the Arctic with ice and without ice. Everything else being equal.
Less ice in the summer will ALWAYS result in a warmer ocean. Because TSI is absorbed.
Read the link…
Ice in the winter will always occur and that insulates the ocean from the atmosphere which in that season reduces cooling.
Your many other strawmen are just that.
2) If it’s not large, then by definition, it isn’t significant.
No “not large” can still mean significant. The link quotes figures for the ice that we have lost already and NOT what will happen if all ice is lost by the end of the melt.
Oh, and do try to be civil my friend
It costs nothing – unless my unravelling of your ignorance is getting to you.
RWTurner:
Thanks for your response.
The heat balance is obviously a complex one and that the Arctic is overall a vast sink to space of LWIR is without question – and that there are just 2 months of the year with a +ve anomaly.
However …..
http://polar.erdc.dren.mil/people/personnel_sid/perovichweb/DKPpdf/2007GL031480.pdf
“An important question is how increased solar heating
during the summer months impacts ice growth and melt in
the subsequent year. Shimada et al. [2006] invoke changes
in the wind-driven ice circulation as an important mechanism
of preserving ice-extent anomalies. Francis and
Hunter’s [2006] study suggests that at least in the 1990s
and early 2000s, increased downward longwave fluxes
(promoted by reduced ice concentration) may be one way
for ice extent anomalies to persist.
****However, equally effective
would be a capping of the upper ocean by sea ice before
much of the solar heat has been extracted in late fall,
retaining the warming signal within the ocean-ice system
throughout winter and spring.****
Evidence of substantial
winter ice-bottom melt and halocline warming throughout
the Chukchi Sea [Perovich et al., 2003; Shimada et al.,
2006] suggest that this process is important, though its full
extent and the processes fostering such longer-term preservation
of warming signals are not well understood.
While quantitative attribution requires further work, the coherent spatial
patterns of ice retreat and increases in solar heating shown
in Figure 2 nevertheless suggest that ice-albedo feedback
plays an important role in explaining the observed ice
thinning and reduction in ice extent in the northern Chukchi
Sea and adjacent Arctic Ocean.
Solar energy deposited in the ocean may cause
melting on the lateral edges or on the bottom of ice floes.
However, not all of the additional absorbed solar heat will
contribute to ice melting. Some heat will also be lost to the
atmosphere or stored in the ocean. The partitioning of the
additional solar heat input to the ocean will strongly
influence the magnitude of the ice-albedo feedback and
the overall heat and mass budget of the ice cover. For
example, enhanced lateral melting will directly impact the
ice-albedo feedback by reducing the ice concentration and
further increasing the solar heat input to the ocean. In
contrast, energy stored in the ocean will retard freezing in
the fall, but may not contribute significantly to the ice/albedo
feedback.”
**** my asterisks
According to Jaxa, in 2012 on April 20th Arctic sea ice was highest (in history of Jaxa – 2002).
Yes, you can see it as the purple curve on the enlargement.
This basically means that you can conclude nothing about the future of sea ice from the April 20th extent.
Everything appears rather nominal for those 14 years, nice fat chart plot there.
The best thing about Nick’s radial plot is that the radial axis extends all the way to ZERO! Thus we see the actual variation in maximum extents as a small. Even the minimum extent variation is not dramatic with the 2012 outlier excluded. When I see the Arctic ice variations portrayed in this manner, I think Occam’s Razor tells us natural variation. But I don’t think this is the message that Nick intended to convey.
I can never get past the “glee” contained in these studies.
When the ice begins to encroach again, as past history indicates it will, they will be nothing more than another data point.
Summoning ‘seaice1’…
Somebody called?
The offer of the bet is still open if you have faith in recovering ice.
Wow, it “might equal the negative record of 2012”? A record that held for almost 4 years? And it was a “negative record”! Head for the hills!
/snark
Show a bit of empathy people please. This is dreadful news for fans of sea ice everywhere and not something to be mocked *tsk*.
Like…Prince died from melting sea ice…or sumpin’…
Lol!
The former artist known as Prince?
What? Too soon?
“The Arctic is facing a decline in sea ice that might equal the negative record of 2012”
maybe so but does that have anything to do with fossil fuel emissions?
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
Hay chaamjamal! ” does that have anything to do with fossil fuel emissions?”
That, of course, is the important question; is there a connection? CAGW enthusiasts seem to assume that there is, even in the face of historical evidence that what we are observing is nothing out of the ordinary.
By the way — nice paper you linked to. Good job!
looks like there is some preconditioning going on here,and not of the ice ;). i have read alternate reports that suggest while extent is low volume is up in some areas due to some of those big atlantic storms early in the refreeze season piling layers of ice on top of each other,with much of this pushed into the eastern arctic .
a warm winter in scotland usually sees a cool summer following it, will be interesting to see what happens this year once again in the arctic. my prediction is some ice will melt,and then it will freeze over again the following winter.
one thing is for sure, the entertainment provided on the arctic sea ice forum by frivolousz21 , jd allen, buddy and a few others regarding blow torches, tipping points, new arctic era, apocalyptic melting and were all gonna die pronouncements will be unsurpassed by any other alarmist site .
looking at what is happening in the oceans at the moment, this may be jim hunts only opportunity to have a chance at winning our bet .
Will the cult of CAGW celebrate if there is record sea ice in Arctic?
Will there be no extreme weather events if the planet abruptly cools? There are unimaginable cyclic rapid cooling events in the paleo record.
There was a physical reason why there was suddenly the highest sea ice extent in recorded history in the Antarctic. (P.S. The temporary cession of record sea ice in the Antarctic was due to appearance of coronal holes on the sun which create a space charge differential in the ionosphere which causes warming in both hemisphere and warming in the equatorial regions. The coronal holes are thankfully over so we can get back to global cooling.)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
There is and was a physical reason why there was a delay in cooling in the Northern hemisphere.
The cult of CAGW should be having a party there is cooling both hemispheres and there is now the start of cooling in the equatorial regions.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2016/anomnight.4.21.2016.gif
Will, hush your mouth!
You’re not supposed to show us the Southern Hemisphere sea ice anomaly. Neven and the haters will be mad as it doesn’t fit in with the “end is nigh” narrative!
I think they are just wrong. “Sea Ice” is a 15% construct. Meaning what winter sats ‘see’ is also 85% open water. Wind, waves, and currents affect that edge greatly. Willing to put money down on early October minimums not being a record minimum, as multiyear ice has built up since 2012.
Yes, the lack of reference to the increases in 2nd through 5th year ice is curious.
…as seen here…
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Iceage_2015-2016-2.gif
No, not really as the 2012 melt was the anomaly and that it did not persist thereafter to the same extent was not a surprise.
Tony, you miss the point. Here is what was being said then…
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2016-04-21211812.png
Multi year ice is much thicker and does not move as easily. Also wind patterns are not as favorable to moving the ice out of the Arctic as they were in the recent past, as can be seen by the video.
BTW, it was not an anomaly then, it was a “death spiral”, the arctic was “screaming”
There has been no real trend in arctic ice for almost a decade now. (The sea ice pause) Global sea ice has been above average more then not for several years now.
Also Tony, NH snow cover has if anything increased or remained flat, and that is an indication of cooling, or at a minimum no meaningful increase in T. In the far polar regions where it so cold it can snow anytime moisture is available, you are correct that T is not the controlling factor in snow fall, but as one moves toward the equator, both elevation and latitude become critical, and the no snow predictions are, like all the other CAGW predictions, completely failing to materialize.
Tony, you also stated,
“Think the “snowmageddons” of recent years – the one over Washington DC had it’s vast quantity of snow driven by air drawn up from the Gulf area.”
===============
Sorry Tony, but that was the result of very cold air taking no more then average moisture for such an event and precipitating it for all its worth. Therefore the moisture content in the snow was extremely low Great for skiing though. You also claimed T primarily drives sea ice. Not so. In fact Summer arctic air T have been fairly low (average or below) for several years now. However ocean and wind currents have been favorable to removing sea ice rapidly. .
http://realclimatescience.com/2016/04/nsidc-caught-cheating-yet-again/
David A,
I really liked their maps, but suddenly the NSIDC “disappeared” nearly half the five-year-old ice and a third of the four-year-old ice. There was a large bulge of red extending north from the Canadian Archipelago toward the Pole. They switched to newer maps, and that red, five-year-old ice vanished over-night.
When they do this sort of “adjustment” they really should explain their reasoning, but they haven’t.
Maybe they though no one would notice or care. They may offer an explanation if enough people reblog Goddard’s expose.
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/nsidc-busted/
@caleb ‘When they do this sort of “adjustment” they really should explain their reasoning, but they haven’t.’ – they did explain their reasoning, I have been just reading about it; And it is not an adjustment it is a new version.
Well, not quite. It means at least 15% ice. Anything more also qualifies.
The wind did not blow nearly as much ice out of the central Arctic this year as it did in 2012. This shows clearly in the PIOMAS data. Since that data doesn’t predict a large loss of ice it is now ignored by the fear mongers.
As usual the actual minimum will be determined by winds in the next few months. I’ve seen nothing yet to make me think they are going to blow a lot of ice out into the Fram Straight. If a low minimum does not occur these folks will never admit they got it wrong.
Why don’t they just wait till summer and measure it then? If prediction is that difficult, because the parameter you’re trying to predict is dependent on so many other variables, non of which you can predict with any confidence, then don’t bother to predict. That would be my advice.
Smart Rock
You have hit the CAGW nail on the head: If “climate change” is so hard to predict, why don’t we just wait a while & see what happens?
Of course, the guy who get research funding from all the scare tactics would raise hell, as would England’s Prince Charles, who (quite a while ago) calculated the earth only had six weeks before runaway destruction.
“If “climate change” is so hard to predict, why don’t we just wait a while & see what happens?”
Because AGW has adverse impacts, and the severity of the impacts the longer we delay taking action.
Because AGW has adverse impacts
====================
it also has hugely positive impacts. it all depends on where you are and what preparations you make.
because we can be very sure, that the long term climate impact without AGW is that we return to ice age conditions, with miles of ice covering most of the major cities of the world, and the likely collapse of human civilization around the world.
Global birthrate per capita has been falling since 1965. Nobody is near as concerned as they are about 0.7C rise in global temperature after 40 years of hyper solar activity.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-afkuoTJyd4g/TyYs6TjVykI/AAAAAAAAIco/0U-erGqbkYY/s1600/archibald_1749_2049_projected_solar_cycle.png
The claim that AGW has severe impacts has been refuted by examination of the real world.
Wasn’t the Grat Artic Cyclone responsible for record low in 2012?
https://sunshinehours.net/2016/04/21/record-sea-ice-low-predicted-short-memories/
… Great Arctic …
Extra short memories in some cases. Remember all of the wild claims following the 2012 low point? The end of sea ice was nigh, and so on. I think that the current oceanic changes will squash this forecast made by these AWI scientists. Watch for this years step change which generally occurs around mid summer. It may arrive in June this time.
This years contest to guess the sea ice minimum should be interesting. Let’s see how well their forecast holds up come September.
Once again it is assuming a lower winter maximum will translate into a lower minimum in summer. History has shown this is not necessarily the case… But fear mongering now is good publicity.
Latest anomaly forecast. Given last 2 year, not much faith in it
http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
I wonder if it’s like their forecast of an extended El Nino; to be amended shortly…
“… During the past winter, the growth of the arctic sea ice was significantly slower than the scientists had expected.” !!!!!
Why do they have to add so much BS to their forecast? Whenever did these scientists expect the Arctic sea ice to be increasing at all! It’s time for Diogenes and his lantern to reincarnate and go on the prowl looking for an honest climate researcher among all these vaunted institutes.
I have predicted a bounce to higher Antarctic extent on other threads. The graph of extent shows the growth in a series of 5 year bounces and it has just hit the end of another cycle with this years minimum:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
This is a graph showing Antarctic sea ice ending in mid-2015, shortly before the anomaly dropped by well over 1 million sq. km.
It is at 0.380 today.
Richard,
You are wrong! This is from WUWT sea ice page and is current as of ~April 07, 2016.
richard little note: for gary’s comment to make sense yoiu have to click on the image. to see what he means and then the full graph is visible. this years minimum of the 5 year bounces was reached and now it’s slowly going up to above average as the el nino weakens.
i hope i understood it right as the image does not show the updated version which is a bit confusing. the reason why it doesn’t is a mystery as clicking on it gives the “source image” which is complete not sure why it does that as normally the linked image should update automatically. while here it doesn’t
the growth of the arctic sea ice was significantly slower than the scientists had expected
===============
considering the number of scientists that predicted that the sea ice would be gone by now, it seems more accurate to say that even the slightest growth in sea ice is substantially greater than scientists had expected.
“… During the past winter, the growth of the arctic sea ice was significantly slower than the scientists had expected.” !!!!!
Whenever did these scientists expect the Arctic sea ice to be increasing at all!”
Probably because it increases every winter.
It wasn’t but a few years ago that the death spiral was to have cleared the ice out of the arctic. A decade before that, snow was even going to be a thing of the past in the UK (Dr. Viner). Hansen expected the highway along the Hudson to be underwater by 2000. That was even an improvement over Ehrlich and Holders billions dying of starvation by that year. What is your prediction for sea ice by the way?
If the scientists mis-forecasted the arctic ice growth, then their models were wrong. 8<}
We’ll likely approach the 2007 summer Arctic Ice Extent low this year, but I don’t expect it to break the 2012 record minimum, which was caused by a 1-in-50 year summer Arctic cyclone; not CO2…
A La Nina cycle should be in effect from the end of this year, and the North Pacific “The Blob” has long gone to blob heaven… Accordingly, this winter’s Arctic Ice Extent recovery should be quite spectacular; similar to what happened in the winter of 2012/13.
We’ll see soon enough…
I’ll be watching to see if the high pressure dome sets up in the North Atlantic, too.
Without a real verifiable measurement, the prognostications are circumspect as fraud. And fraud they will be.
Yep – coz it’s “turtles all the way down” isn’t it?
Always works. Anything you don’t like in this world is a fraud.
But especially when anything pertains to AGW
And we’ll stick our heads back in the sand and worship the dollar and our “freedoms”.
aaah, the real political agenda has raised its head. It’s nothing to do with temps, it’s all about the hard left.
Ever notice how much the left hates other people’s freedoms.
They will come up with any lie to separate other people from their money and their freedom.
Fraud is as fraud does.
Obama’s favorit SunEdison is now in lovely bankruptcy as our dearly departed Obama.
http://www.reuters.com/article/sunedison-inc-bankruptcy-idUSL2N17O0QE
My simple ( I think) question is this, what is anybody going to do about it? Stop everything that produces power?
…” the Arctic Ocean this summer may shrink to the record low of 2012 ” ..
Wait, does that mean they are admitting that the ice has been GROWING since 2012 ?
some death spiral eh?
Not quite. The longer term, over say the last 25 years is still down, though the decrease is sometimes slower, sometimes faster. You can look at it month by month, year by year, or decade by decade and vary your observations. But there is no getting away from the fact that the Arctic ice cap in our times is steadily shrinking.
“the Arctic ice cap in our times is steadily shrinking”
Actually, no, not steadily at all. Some years up, some years down, and for the last 37 years or so it has been cumulatively down. On the other hand, the Antarctic has been overall up. But nothing unusual as far as I can tell. Certainly nothing catastrophic (except for the predictions, which seem to be particularly unreliable.) There have been times in the recent past where the caps have gone up. And down. And up again. They have never been steadily anything.
25 years? That would be right about the time the PDO shifted from it’s last cold cycle to the current warm cycle.
Gareth,
And there is no getting away from the fact that the cherry picked 1979 starting point was a high point in Arctic ice extents with the satellite era ice measurement record actually beginning in 1973 at which time the arctic ice extent was considerably less than that of 1979. If you don;t believe me, you can consult the 1990 IPCC report. But we wouldn’t want anybody to get the heretical idea that Arctic ice coverage might be naturally cyclical, would we.
..” On 04/05/2016 a change in the solar panel position to shade the nitrogen tank on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite was made.”..
………So, it’s that easy to “adjust” the raw satellite data ?
Since we are still just passing the peak of the PDO, and are at the peak of the AMO, is anyone surprised? So the more important question, is what will happen in ten years time, when we are on the downside of both the PDO and AMO.
Seriously, what are the implications of this for Arctic sea ice??
R
A cycle that may begin sooner then many think.
Could have implication for some interesting weather in Europe this summer. Just don’t pour with rain on Glastonbury!
I love Arctic stories , i get to link to my favourite map-
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/AugustIceVs1971NationalGeographic.gif
Do you have any idea how incorrect and misleading this Goddard animation is?
If got a reaction from you it’s worth its weight in gold!
A BLANK STATEMENT WITH NO SPECIFICS
NevenA. The two maps are clearly very different and a simple overlay is probably not a valid comparison. Can you explain what each map is actually showing?
Seaice1, I will at one point explain in detail exactly why that comparison is wrong and misleading on my blog or somewhere else, but here’s a summary:
The National Geographic map has very little information (except for geographical locations). It doesn’t say whether the ice it’s showing is a monthly average (which month?), or a yearly average, or a daily image, or whatever. No info whatsoever, but Goddard still compares it to August 2015 as if they are apple-to-apple.
I’ve managed to find it somewhere where you can really zoom in. It says along the edge of the ice pack: Limit of multi-year ice. The image that Goddard compares it to, is of sea ice concentration in August 2015. That shows first-year ice too, not just multi-year ice.
If you would compare the edge of multi-year ice in 2015 with the purported edge of multi-year ice in 1971 you’d get a completely different picture. A picture Goddard would never, ever show, because it would show that MYI in 2015 is much, much smaller than on the NatGeo map. This in itself is enough evidence that the image is wrong and misleading. But one could go further.
You see, I highly doubt that the makers of that NatGeo map knew where the edge of the ice pack was at that time. They had no Internet back then, and the satellite images they had of the Arctic weren’t produced on a daily basis, accessible to anyone at any time. So I think it’s an artist’s impression, as the map isn’t about Arctic sea ice at all, but rather about geographical locations in the Arctic with historical info.
But let’s just say it’s not an artist’s impression. Let’s assume it’s real and it’s not the ‘limit of multi-year ice’, but the limit of the entire ice pack. This can easily be disproven by comparing it to what the ice pack most probably looked like in September 1971 (see here). There’s clearly more ice visible than on the NatGeo map, at the time of year when the ice pack is smallest. If the NatGeo map had more ice, you could say: Oh, that was April 1971, a NatGeo map for September 1971 would show less ice, probably as much as the historical record.
But the NatGeo map shows less ice than there was at any time of the year in 1971, with the Northern Sea Route wide open, and the Northwest Passage almost open. We know this wasn’t the case back then.
So, there you go. That’s it in a nutshell.
Yes the NG-71 map is certainly a ‘blank statement’ when it comes to seance, there’s no information on it!
So Nevin,
What was the Arctic ice minimum extent in 1971? We know what it was in 1973 and that it was considerably less than it was in 1979, the “official” beginning of Arctic ice recording. I guess NG in 1971 had no inkling that their depiction (right or wrong) of Arctic ice would cause such consternation in 2016.
its worse than we thought. CO2 is changing the color of the ice.
That’s because it is the “wrong kind” of ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2010.png
source ?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
For polar bears, the low extent in 2007 was potentially more devastating than 2012.
Yet, the low ice had little impact on all the polar bear populations predicted to be extirpated by 2050:
http://polarbearscience.com/2015/08/09/summer-polar-bear-habitat-then-now-little-impact-from-2007-record-breaking-sea-ice-low/
As I’ve shown before [http://polarbearscience.com/2015/04/21/polar-bears-barely-survived-the-sea-ice-habitat-changes-of-the-last-ice-age-evidence-suggests/ ] polar bears barely survived the Last Ice Age – but did, and went on to survive the low summer ice conditions of the early Holocene. So did all the Arctic seals.
Resilient creatures, those Arctic mammals.
Dr. Susan Crockford, zoologist
PS. See Pat Michael’s excellent post on the survival of polar bears through previous warm periods:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-j-michaels/polar-bears-earth-day_b_9752044.html
He only got one thing wrong – polar bears are a distinct and separate species. A bit of hybridization does not negate that.
http://polarbearscience.com/2012/12/06/more-evidence-that-the-polar-bear-is-a-distinct-species/
Reports of Arctic ice demise are greatly exaggerated.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/premature-reports-of-ice-death/
I went to the Huffington Post article and saw a half dozen comments empty of any critique – essentially alll non sequiturs about the Kock Brothers. I tried to leave a comment but, like many blogs these days, you have to have a social media account to participate – my email and name aren’t sufficient. I had hoped to provoke some thinking if that is possible with that readership:
Bravo to the Huffpost for bravely putting some thought provoking science in front of readers who expect to be spoonfed the the K-12 and undergraduate diet these days. I note the complete lack of any critique of the actual arguments – instead, we get the typical designer-brained information-free comments of an intellectually lost generation. Look, it won’t hurt you folks to see stuff and hear stuff that’s different than what you are comfortable with (if you are laymen, ask yourselves how you came to believe your position in the first place). Indeed, it is a benefit to be exposed to ‘controversial’ stuff. A hundred years from now, we will believe entirely different things, much as we did a hundred years ago and before.
I’m a geologist and took paleoclimatology, an essential course of study for all geologists to be able to interpret the rocks of this planet (and even other planets). Even if we are creating a problem with today’s climate, despite indisputable long periods of much warmer previous climates and CO2 contents in the atmosphere of up to 9,000 ppmv that created huge forests that became the trillions of tons of coal on earth, this story of paleo polar bears is in fact not a threat to the global warming thesis. Moreover, it is not only possible, but it is certain that some aspects of warming and higher CO2 are beneficial. The planet is greening and you’re all aware that operators pump CO2 into into their greenhouses with unmistakable good results. Crops of basically doubled in output, in some measure from higher CO2…
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=1804
Go ahead, don’t fear to check it out and come to your own conclusions. Much of this stuff isn’t that hard. All that will happen to you is you will become more well rounded and be able to speak from new knowledge (instead of no apparent knowledge). What doesn’t make sense to you about this article? What you are doing in your comments is displaying real D*Nile by not wanting to countenance the obvious.
oops, Koch Brothers
..It was funnier the other way ! LOL
Lower longitudes are going to melt bad this summer / fall, higher longitudes, not so much. You can already see that pattern in the thicknesses.
BTW, there may be general open water at the pole as a result. But head down the Date Line from the pole and you will hit ice quick, even in Sept.
The Skate, March 17 1959, surfacing at the North Pole.
The Skate, March 17 1959, surfacing at the North Pole.
I seriously doubt that, since the sun wouldn’t have risen at the N Pole then! Also when the Skate surfaced at that time it was not only dark but was in a blizzard!
The actual photo from that date shows it in darkness(illuminated by a flare):
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2482/3550264453_155246aaac_o.jpg
Phil: March 17 that year was 4 days before Equinox, and the sun was sitting just below the horizon all ‘day’, bright twilight, quite like what it looks like over the ocean 12 to 8 minutes before sunrise.
It was not dark commemoration (your posted pic) was taken. The 3 people on the aft deck are visible silhouetted against the much brighter sky.
Steve Fraser April 24, 2016 at 6:15 am
It was not dark commemoration (your posted pic) was taken. The 3 people on the aft deck are visible silhouetted against the much brighter sky.
Yes they are, which is why it is clear that that photo was not taken on April the 17th at the N Pole. The Captain of the Skate reported that it was dark, snowing and that they were surrounded by large hummocks of ice.
“Skate was in a small lead completely surrounded by 10-foot hummocks of ice….It was almost dark, the sky was heavily overcast, and the 25-knot wind was blowing the snow so heavily that visibility was cut down to 500 yards…….
First the U.S., British and Australian flags were attached to the radar masts and periscopes…….
For illumination two sailors were holding railroad flares whose red light cast an eerie glow over the ice……”
Perhaps, latitudes? Low longitudes are the ones to the immediate east and west of England, and go all the way to the equator…
So, the NSIDC is forecasting a low 2016 Arctic sea ice minimum on the basis of El Nino and a low 2016 maximum. For the latter, someone should do a proper correlation study (perhaps I will one day), but the graphs suggest a very poor correlation. For the former, the El Nino, I shall restate something I first noted in 2008 or 2009. It is that I believe there is a lag of about two years between El Nino and Arctic minimum ice.
So I predict a low minimum in 2018. I may well be proved wrong of course, but I am not the least bit worried about Arctic ice’s effect on the world (until it grows alarmingly), so I shall consider it entertainment to watch my prediction live or die.
Rich.
I would estimate about a 50% chance of a new record this year.
‘Sea ice physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute’
Plural ?!?! Why would you need more than one?
I don’t claim any expertise, but this temperature in the Arctic is telling us something which could explain the warmer winter in the Arctic but now flat temperatures for a long time bringing the temperature back to normal.
Is this saying future melting this season will be “normal”?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php