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.
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