From NSIDC: Daily Arctic sea ice extents for May 2016 tracked two to four weeks ahead of levels seen in 2012, which had the lowest September extent in the satellite record. Current sea ice extent numbers are tentative due to the preliminary nature of the DMSP F-18 satellite data, but are supported by other data sources. An unusually early retreat of sea ice in the Beaufort Sea and pulses of warm air entering the Arctic from eastern Siberia and northernmost Europe are in part driving below-average ice conditions. Snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere was the lowest in fifty years for April and the fourth lowest for May. Antarctic sea ice extent grew slowly during the austral autumn and was below average for most of May.
May 2016 set a new record low for the month for the period of satellite observations, at 12.0 million square kilometers (4.63 million square miles), following on previous record lows this year in January, February, and April. May’s average ice extent is 580,000 square kilometers (224,000 square miles) below the previous record low for the month set in 2004, and 1.39 million square kilometers (537,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average.
During the month, daily sea ice extents tracked about 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) below any previous year in the 38-year satellite record. Daily extents in May were also two to four weeks ahead of levels seen in 2012, which had the lowest September extent in the satellite record. The monthly average extent for May 2016 is more than one million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) below that observed in May 2012.
Sea ice extent remains below average in the Kara and Barents seas, continuing the pattern seen throughout winter 2015 and 2016. Sea ice also remains below average in the Bering Sea and the East Greenland Sea. In the Beaufort Sea, large open water areas have formed near the coast and ice to the north is strongly fragmented due to wind-driven divergence. The opening began in February, continued through March, and greatly expanded in April.
The average ice loss during May 2016 was 61,000 square kilometers (23,600 square miles) per day. This was faster than the 1981 to 2010 long-term average rate of decline of 46,600 square kilometers (18,000 square miles) per day. May air temperatures at the 925 hPa level were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981 to 2010 average across most of the Arctic Ocean, with localized higher temperatures in the Chukchi Sea (4 to 5 degrees Celsius or 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) and in the Barents Sea (4 degrees Celsius or 7 degrees Fahrenheit). Air pressure patterns were not particularly unusual, but two areas of southerly winds in northern Europe and Alaska pushed higher than average temperatures into the Arctic Ocean, producing hot spots noted above and generally above-average temperatures across the Arctic. Only over central Siberia were temperatures lower than the 1981 to 2010 average.
Full report here: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/06/low-ice-low-snow-both-poles/
While certainly interesting, a record low for a single month may not be an accurate predictor for a record low extent at the end of the melt season, typically around the Fall equinox in September. Arctic Sea ice is highly subject to the vagaries of wind and weather, so its very hard to predict a final outcome. More charts and graphs at the WUWT Sea Ice Page
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Thanks for publishing a graph more recent than May. It is basically flat-lining. The extent graph is now above 2012. So, if you want to play games with statistics, you can say June is setting a record for the least amount of ice to evah, evah melt in the first two weeks of June.
It was interesting to watch the winds of April roar off the coasts of Alaska and Canada, crunching ice towards the Pole and towards Siberia. Temperatures were still cold, so no ice melted, but large polynyas appeared along the coasts, reducing the extent even as the volume was roughly the same. These polynyas didn’t freeze over, or barely skimmed over, because not only was the sun already up for the summer, but off-shore winds create up-wellings of slightly warmer water along the coasts.
As a lurker on Alarmist sites I was rather amazed at the excitement and rejoicing. They saw the reduced extent and slightly milder waters as a sure sign that at long, long last we were going to see the ice-free-Pole.
Personally I don’t think we will see much change from last year, especially with the El Nino fading away. It will be interesting to watch ice melt, which might seem like a dull spectator sport, but involves a crazy audience. There is all the roaring and screaming of a World Cup final. Then, by September, everyone is sulking, because not enough has melted to please Alarmists but too much has melted to please Skeptics.
In conclusion, the audience is often more fun to watch than the ice.
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2016/06/12/arctic-sea-ice-spreading-ice/
……spot on
In the UK at least, the weather is usually beginning to suck harder by the end of September. I suspect the alarmists would like to bring the worse-than-we-thought news forward to the warmer months.
Caleb, I just outright like you.
the asib alarmists have very short memories caleb, as you know. all those early winter storms running into the arctic from the north east atlantic layered, stacked and compacted massive amounts of ice on the atlantic side as could be seen at the time. this will come into play later in the melt season.
it would appear the roaring and screaming has become muted in the last week , i am sure it will pick up for short periods in the months to come.
The abrupt silence is deafening. I ought to do a bit of lurking to see the developing excuses, but I’m busy with other stuff. Next week, maybe. .
Well it is the hottest May on record ever, so why wouldn’t it melt the most ice too ??
G
As I see it, May is still bit early to melt much ice. Maybe a small amount due to upwelling water by the coasts, but that water is not all that warm. Air temperatures are still below the freezing point of salt water in May. The sun is up but still low in the sky. So the ice didn’t6 melt as much as get pushed aside and piled up.
It is sort ofr like plowing snow to the side of a driveway. It’s the same amount of snow, but it cfovers less space so the “extent” is left.
It doe4sn’t matter if temperatures are “above normal” if they are still too cold to melt ice.
Now it is normal for temperatures to be above freezing at the Pole, and it will be normal for the ice to melt until late August.
Or, direct to the DMI image:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Another up-wiggle, this Tuesday morning.
We really got to go for beers sometime. First round is on me! 🙂
Nice one Caleb.
Thanks
Vancouver has had a very cool Spring; June is sometimes down to 8°C at night. The Pacific Cool Pool!
Election year?
Long John
It feels like we – in the SE UK – have had one of the coolest early Junes in – like – three or four years . . . .
Plainly a trend, which means white-out, I guess in about ten-to seventeen-hundred years.
See my climate Model
It is good.
It deserves respect.
It mandates effective remedial action.
It mandates effective remedial action – NOW.
Push CO2 producing power plants.
Now – please send Gubbmint Grant; also socially signalling funding, asap.
Auto – waiting the inflow of funds with ‘bated breath’
Mods. SARC. Did you guess?!?!???
Why would they be showing May 31 plot today when there seems to be a recent update less alarming?
How much different would this graph look if it started at 0 ? Have been taught to be wary of graphs that start with a number other than zero .
Latitude: Good point.
Truncated data [seasonal or annual] give mis-leading conclusions when the series follow a Sine Curve pattern.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Ric Werme on June 14, 2016 at 5:43 pm
Well, Ric Werne, what about publishing the truth, instead of posting an outdated image
produced by DMI in january?
Or, direct to the DMI image:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Wow!
There is a problem here.
I post an image reference to “ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png” and obtain an image referring to “i0.wp.com/ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png”…
This is not what has been intended…
same problem as ric, it is a wordpress image cache problem i believe. click on the image you posted and the correct chart appears. you would know this if you were a regular reader and not just a drive by critic.
No, bit chilly… You are wrong in two points:
– Werne probably did intentionally post this old graph (click on the pic to see that the link points to the same info;
– I’m not at all “a drive by critic”, I don’t like to see manipulations, that’s all.
This trend has been obvious for the past two months, but June may see the previous record 2012 jump back into “first place,” making 2016 a near record and possibly eclipse 2012 by September. Recall that it was between June and July that 2012 saw its greatest melting.
A persistent upper air Low Pressure cell to Greenland’s south has hastened the onset of Greenland’s melt season, with consequences in Quebec and the US Northeast which are experiencing temperatures nicely below normal for this time of year. The Low will strengthen the Polar Easterlies, bringing the floating Arctic ice melt rate back to a more normal state. Warm waters still enter the Arctic through the Bear Island gap between Spitsbergen and Norway, melting the floating ice from underneath.
Notice that the above are all “weather events” as opposed to much longer term climate changes.
Cargo ships may again transit the Arctic Ocean from East to West this summer, and the present near record melt rate will permit insurance companies to provide hull insurance for those voyages, pulling coverage by the second week in October.
The high melt in Greenland last year was due to sustained high pressure, not low pressure, that kept skies clear and allowed for high melt rates. Dr. Ruth Mottram from DMI emailed me that tidbit back in April. The 2012 melt season was due to anomalously warm low pressure systems washing over the ice sheet and disrupted the permanent cold inversion layer directly overhead. But melt is primarily driven by direct insolation, and high pressure with few clouds allows that more than low pressure systems do.
you wanna bet on that 🙂
A d*ni*r blog publishing the hard facts that might be rather inconvenient? I thought d*ni*rs were supposed to be bare-faced liars funded by evil big oil?
/sarc, if you didn’t realise
I know it’s sarcasm, but it’s accurate.
I stopped visiting here for a long while when most posts were filled with polemics against government or climate scientists, instead of simply focusing on the scientific evidence. I’m surprised (and pleased!) to see a post that focuses on the data and lets people make up their minds for themselves.
Stuff like this is not only posted regularly as articles but available in links posted on this page as well. What planet have you been on?
windchaser
It would also be really nice if alarmists – just once- could concede that whatever this data might or might not be telling us [have a closer look at you’ll note that the melt rate appears to be diminishing] there is right now some 10 million sq. km of ice in the Arctic basin [Canada’s land area] and that even if 2016 ice minima were to beat 2012, something like 6 million sq. km [approx. Australia’s land area] would remain by September.
No matter how you cut that number, it hardly makes for the ice free Arctic Gore and other climate catastrophe propagandists have been promising us since 2007.
Tetris, I fully agree! Well, I at least agree that it’s unlikely that we’ll see an ice-free Arctic any time soon (e.g., in the next decade).
Re: whether the melt rate is diminishing… eh, I don’t think we can draw much conclusions from this week’s vs that week’s melt data. This is weather; the long-term trend is what we should focus on.
And I don’t particularly care what Al Gore thinks, any more than I care what Leonardo DiCaprio or Ted Nugent or the Koch brothers think. They aren’t climate scientists. I might as well ask my dentist what he thinks about the new RedHat OS, or my mechanic his opinion on open-heart surgery.
Science is the issue here. Nice post.
They aren’t climate scientists…..who trick people into thinking an area the size of Egypt is ice free
windchaser
Do you think that e.g. Mann, Schmidt, Hansen or Trenberth are real climate scientists and therefore should be believed? Or instead “scientivists” who in a Faustian bargain sold their scientific souls to the funding devil for political activist reasons? In the latter case your opinion is as good as theirs or mine.
BTW take out the wind/weather generated 2012 outlier minimum [no one disputes anymore that it was caused by an Arctic cyclone] and you’ll find that the ice loss trend bottomed out and turned in 2007. Hard to argue with those data points.
Damn right Windchaser. Unfortunately there is still a lot of that going on. Even in threads where the story has been shown to be basically factually incorrect (PNAS sea level rise, Basslink cable and Hydro in Tasmania), the same people are still saying the same things that they always carry on with. And that’s just what I’ve spotted in the few weeks I’ve been back posting here.
Funny how so many people who call themselves skeptics had so much to say about information that turned out to be false, that they never tested with real skepticism before opening their mouths.
You were not missed.
Good stuff – less ice means a better time for us all (but don’t tell that to the alarmists)
But still not warm enough for hippopotami to re-inhabit the Thames and the Rhine, the northern extent of their range during the Eemian. One can only hope, for it will be great for tourism.
I can just imagine it: A hippopotamus strolling down Pall Mall.
Superb stuff!
Al Gore have to up date his prediction: “I meant 2019 not 2009 for an ice free Arctic.” :
Unless you have nightmares about Polar Bears dressed as monsters, arctic sea ice melting is totally harmless and the Polar Bears are loving it.
True. The area each polar bear have alone to walk on still makes it hard to find a partner for youngster moving away from polar bear parents. CO2 as well as ice melting is by no means a problem Clean water is. Too many waters in Northern hemisphere is poisoned by humans. Chemically or biologically. THATS the big problem.
Like the “warmest (month/year/second/hour) EVAH, they are picking fly sh*t out of the black pepper. Looks pretty median to me, with Hudson Bay still covered.
Worse! SOUTHERN Hudson Bay is frozen while the northwest part melted!
Much of Hudson Bay still frozen and it keeps sending cold weather down to us here in upstate NY. My heat was on last night and this morning.
Yes, the media has been jumping on this topic lately as if the world is coming to an end. Of course, 2015 being a major El Nino year, had nothing to do with this trend in lower Arctic sea ice.
Look at the long term chart above. Arctic ice levels have been declining since 1978, even if this year is showing a greater decline than usual.
So it’s been declining. So what?
Yes, the chart starts from 1978. What would happen if they went back even further by another 40 years. Now that would be most revealing.
Arctic ice and temperatures have an impact on global weather, including the jet stream and ocean circulation patterns. https://www.wunderground.com/climate/SeaIce.asp
Yes, God created the earth in 1978.
Nothing happened before that.
You can always tell a True Believer.
But you can’t tell them much!
The graph showing the decline starts in 1978, just after the cooling period of the 60s and 70s led to the “New Ice Age” scare stories.
One of my prized possessions is a Readers Digest World Atlas, first Australian Edition,published in 1961. It includes maps showing the average winter and summer limits of Arctic ice based, of course, on pre-1961 data. Doesn’t seem much different from now.
“Yes, God created the earth in 1978.
Nothing happened before that.”
So let me see if I understand. A time period of less than 20 years is of sufficient length to say that global warming has stopped, but a period of nearly 40 years is not sufficient to say that the decline in Arctic ice is a big deal.
No, the overall trend in total ice bottomed out around 2011-12 and has been increasing since then. The trend correlates far better to the AMO than it does to anything humans have done. Looking at any month is silly. What you often see is the effect of wind. That is in fact the case this year which is why the ice extent has seemed to stop melting the past two weeks when in reality all we had was a change in the wind.
Oh yes, 40 years is sufficient enough. It’s more than enough to tell us the melting ice is not a big deal and nothing to worry about. There you go Chris.
This is really a shame. The alarmists are going to have a field day with this. The good news is that next year we can talk about record recovery.
Riiiight, just like the big recovery that happened in 2013, correct?
Chris, calm down. There’s nothing to worry about. Embrace the warmth and get your speedos on.
David, any science to support your statement?
It doesn’t take science to tell me that I will never look good in a pair of speedos.
Have you got the feeling I’m not worried about ice melt Chris?
David, Haha, fair enough. I’m strictly a board shorts guy as well.
Yes, we had a big recovery the past 5 years and nothing has stopped it. Chris is going to be so disappointed when no record is set this year.
Even in board shorts I don’t cut much of a figure. I like to think of myself as “svelte”, but my wife tells me I just look emaciated. Ho hum..
Just tell them “less ice is nice”
It really winds them up when you tell them the truth.
BTW I must qualify that less ice in your GnT is definitely NOT nice
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic is cooling. From the bottom up it seems, so the alarmists can’t blame the cooling on melting ice:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-dropping-rapidly/
In other words, it’s just natural cycles. The alarmists hate nature as it keeps interfering with their models.
In other other news, the global version of the same dataset …
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png
… shows unabated warming.
Sorry, that was the 2000m plot, here is the 700m plot:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png
Different depth, same story.
That represents an increase of about 0.15C since ~1960.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/World3monthTemperatureSince1955Depth0-700m.gif
As the average temperature of the world oceans about 2C, it will be some time at this rate before the oceans begin to boil away, à la James Hansen.
And how many degrees of warming is that Brandon?
Oh yeah, b*gger all.
You need to stop weeing your pants over trivial changes.
Chris?
Any word on this cooling? You must be happy, no?
Warmists hate cooling. Interferes with their ideology.
With AGW, not every single place on the planet is going to warm. Not every place is going to have extreme drought or extreme rainfall. Some places will be less affected than others. Some places will benefit, like northern Canada and much of Russia. But more places will experience adverse consequences than positive ones.
Chris, And it is all unprecedented, isn’t it? Or not.
Google Northeast Passage and look for 1878. Think antiquated ship, engine design, lack of modern navigation.
lee, what matters is 1)what is happening 2) whether that is an overall good or bad thing for the planet and 3) whether our CO2 emissions are substantially contributing to it. that’s it. Does the fact that flooding naturally occurred in the past mean that we should not be concerned about chopping down a mountainside and therefore causing increased flooding today? Of course not.
Who says? Just a bunch of scientivists and their rather hopeless models.
“Who says? Just a bunch of scientivists and their rather hopeless models.”
No, we are already seeing increased drought in Australia – how exactly is that a good thing? Same for the melting of glaciers in Asia and almost everywhere else.
“Increased drought in Australia”
Quick build a desalination plant! That brought the rains back last time, ask Tim Flannery
not related to melt water off the Greenland ice cap at all?
Nope.
It’s cooling from the bottom up.
It’s all rather inconvenient, isn’t it?
David Smith,
How nice of you to post a reference expressing a cherry-picked OHC rise in joules, then move the goalposts to discussing temperature the weakness of your argument was exposed. Very well, multiply the global ocean vertical mean temperature anomaly down to 700m by 3.94 and you will get a good fit to HADCRUT4.
At one point last spring I bet a friend that Fairbanks was probably warmer than Laramie. He looked up the current weather, and sure enough, Fairbanks was 30F warmer than Laramie–that surprised even me. Persistent upper air lows and highs account for much strange weather. After the winter and spring we had, I am not at all surprised at the loss of ice in the Bering Strait and Bering Sea.
But note the 39 year-long cooling trend in Fairbanks, AK (hope the link works – if not you folks know how to create the chart).
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/50/USW00026411/tavg/ytd/12/1895-2016?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000&trend=true&trend_base=10&firsttrendyear=1977&lasttrendyear=2016
All that Arctic see ice on a graph that has been processed to show the desired result of doom, laughable…
Really? Where is your evidence?
Yes “Really” are you stupid or something?
So you didn’t have any evidence but decided to proceed with ad hom.
But…
http://realclimatescience.com/2016/06/actually-we-see-the-same-bs-from-mark-serreze-every-year/
what about concentration?
Shouldn’t the Fahrenheit temps be +32?
Almost the entirety of the last 5 years has been below average and 2016 appears to be more than 3 std.dev. below average. Good, bad or otherwise, something statistically significant is going on up there.
Since when? one obvious criticism is the time period of the anomaly, and another is the designed processing algorithms.
But ice volume has been rising over that period (piomass).. While the Nth Pacific has been releasing more energy to space via the arctic than a cooling sun has put in (Nino/Blob), the Nth Atlantic deep cold water is welling uo cold (climate4you charts). Not predicting, just watching.
I have that problem as well, Latitude. Quite embarrassing at times.
What a difference 2 weeks will make. The DMI is now showing that 2016 15% ice extent has crossed higher than 2012. Stay tuned!
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
On the diagram, click in it to get the current plot.
……..wind
I have that problem as well, Latitude. Quite embarrassing at times.
(Previous version ended up in the wrong place, but I frequently do as well. A result of either old age or Global Warming.)
refreezing of leads and wet snow latitude.
Less sea ice = more Arctic Ocean cooling most (7/12) of the year.
If that is the case, then why doesn’t more cooling lead to more sea ice?
Maurice Ewing regarded the periodic loss of Arctic sea ice as part of a cooling mechanism.
Looks like we may have already turned the corner!
Chris, it will lead to more sea ice (in fact it already has over the last 5 years). The overall AMO cycle is 60+ years. We hit the peak in 2010-11 and will now have 30+ years of general cooling. It’s a slow process just like the melting was slow.
the cooling surface waters sink chris, displacing warmer water below. as we run out of warm water to displace it will be cool water pushed out. residence time of the top 1500m is around 30 years ,amo cooling mechanism ?
How does this relate?
http://nsidc.org/the-drift/data-update/sea-ice-index-processing-suspended/
http://nsidc.org/the-drift/data-update/nsidc-halts-production-of-the-near-real-time-dmsp-ssmis-daily-polar-gridded-sea-ice-concentrations-f17-data/
I note that the record low ice area occurred immediately following the sensor failure. Occam’s razor and all…
There were strong offshore winds driving all the ice up into a pile, driving the ‘beaufort gyre’, so a large area of ocean opened up with no actual melt, there were some impressive time-lapse satellite videos showing what was happening, I’m sure someone can find a link.
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ArcticSeaIce-April-May-1.gif
How does the sensor failure explain the record low sea ice that occurred in 2012?
it doesn’t , the great arctic cyclone does.
The arctic had a warm winter so we’re starting out with less ice. At about day 100 the temperature hit normal and has been pretty normal since then. temperature graph
On most of the ice area graphs, the anomaly is trending closer to the average of the last few years. I think there’s a pretty good chance we won’t get a record low this season (all other things being equal).
the temperature is too steady for a record low. compared to 2012 with it’s high spikes but wind and currents can create a “low” Grimnasty’s video shows very well how a record low can be reached.
Not everyone is predicting low ice at the end of the melt season.
http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif
Maybe these three figures are interesting, they are updated almost daily:
http://www.dh7fb.de/noaice/min13akt.gif
http://www.dh7fb.de/noaice/areaakt16.gif
For the Area-Data the “Shadow data” are used from the arctic sea ice forum (“Wipneus”)
http://www.dh7fb.de/noaice/scholli13akt.gif
The 3rd figure shows the relation Extent/Area. As greater it is as more is the sea ice fragmented. For June and July this value seems to have some predictive skill as one can see for the cases 2007 and (more) 2012.
Striking: the very low melt rate during June in the area-figure. After a strong negative deviation vs. 2012 in May and the beginning June you can see the make up during the last days. Let’s wait’n see!
ahhhh ! now i know why neven “forgot” about capie .
It’s quite convenient that the sea ice satellite interpretation (which I’m only a little skeptical of) started in 1979 when Arctic Sea Ice was relatively high. We learned back in 2012 that the pattern we are currently observing is very similar to 1900-1930s.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/02/cache-of-historical-arctic-sea-ice-maps-discovered/
More brain-dead clickbait courtesy of NSIDC. How long have we been keeping accurate records? And today’ alarmist meme is what? The most insidious and most common side-effect of extensive post-secondary education is what you may call ‘overconfidence’ if you are being generous. Not all users suffer from it, of course. That is the nature of a side-effect. But the worst cases are usually the ones getting all the press.
The low Arctic Ice extent can easily be attributed to the strong 2015/16 El Niño event and “The Blob” of warm water that parked itself in the Northern Pacific for a year..
Although remnants of “The Blob” still remain, the strong El Niño officially ended last month and is quickly transitioning to what may be very cold La Niña cycle.
The 30-yr PDO cool cycle started in 2008 (obscured by 2 El Niño events) and the 30-yr AMO cool cycle likely starts in about 4~5 years. When both the PDO & AMO are in their cool cycles, Arctic ice extents should quickly return to 1990’s levels…
It’ll also be very interesting to see what felt weak solar cycles have on Arctic ice extents in the decades ahead.
Watch all the Twits try to sail through the Northwest Passage again.
That a very funny video…many laughs, with an appropriate ending. Thanks.
what data are they using to make up for the loss of the satellite info starting back in April?
See here:
Dear colleague,
The Sea Ice Index has resumed processing utilizing DMSP F18 data from the Near-Real-Time DMSP SSMIS Daily Polar Gridded Sea Ice Concentrations (NSIDC-0081) data set as input. The DMSP F18 data is included beginning 01 April 2016. This data set still contains F17 data through 31 March 2016.
For more information on the calibration between F17 and F18 derived sea ice extents, please see: http://nsidc.org/the-drift/data-update/sea-ice-index-processing-resumed-with-dmsp-f18-satellite-data/
Access to the data and documentation is provided on the Sea Ice Index web site at: https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
If you have questions, please contact NSIDC’s User Services Office at nsidc@nsidc.org
Seven months of the year (Sept-Oct-Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb-Mar) LESS arctic sea ice means more cooling – The planet (exposed Arctic Ocean waters) LOSES more heat the less ice there is in the Arctic during these months.
Only five months of the year does the Arctic Ocean gain heat from the sun (April-May-June-July-Aug). And, by mid-August at 78 degrees north, J. Curry reports that the overnight heat losses exceeded heat gain from the sun into open water and the ice began freezing. So, you can really claim that the arctic sea ice absorbs solar energy only 4 months of the year total.
Further, in NO YEAR since satellite records began has a large spring low anomaly been followed by the so-called “arctic amplification” and caused a subsequent low fall ice area. In fact, MOST low springs are followed by a higher-than-spring fall ice anomaly.
And, just to further confound things, a small spring anomaly (more ice during the spring) is typically followed by a very low sea ice extents in September.
And, by mid-August at 78 degrees north, J. Curry reports that the overnight heat losses exceeded heat gain from the sun into open water and the ice began freezing.
Really? Seems unlikely since the sun doesn’t set there until 24th August.
Sorry – But I am reading HER reports from the SHEBA Arctic Ice Camp for the period from 1 April through mid-October …. and that is SHE reported. On August 12, the surface water (surface Arctic sea ice pools) were freezing over each night.
angle of incidence more important than sunshine hours in the arctic.
It is only a matter of time before MSM takes the information on sea ice melt to announce the dire need for action on global warming. Why is the sea ice melt so concerning? It will lead to rising sea levels. If one looks at sea levels they don’t seem to be doing anything. In the end the fact that this may or may not be a record sea ice melt is irrelevant if it can’t be extrapolated to sea level rises.
Never underestimate the Warmist’s ability to take a total red herring and turn it into filet mignon.
Sea ice is floating, so doesn’t contribute to sea level rise when it melts
OT hey Island great Story EM
The problem is that almost every expert cryologist that has come to the fore has prognosticated essentially ice-free Arctic summers within our lifetimes, some in just a decade or two.
They have done that because they are good extrapolators. However cyclical phenomena cannot be extrapolated unless you have more than one complete period and that is not the case with Arctic ice, where the cycle appears to follow the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
So this is probably a good depiction of the problem:
http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a475/Knownuthing/SeaIceProjections_zps38qjgzc6.png
Public media cryologists are represented by the red dashed line, while a more prudent IPCC stands behind its scenarios. The reality will probably be closer to the orange dashed line of he AMO model, and Arctic sea ice isn’t going anywhere within our lifetime.
That Arctic sea ice follows AMO can be clearly seen by the significant correlation between both.
http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a475/Knownuthing/amo2_zpsju5oxkfp.png
Yet alarmists stick to their long term trends to continue with their baseless extrapolations and are unable to see the signs that a change of trend appears to be on the making. A triangle figure appears to be forming indicating to those with some knowledge of technical analysis in stocks that two opposing forces are acting, one in purple to keep the current decreasing trend and one in blue to form a new increasing trend. Arctic sea ice is getting constrained in its variation, waiting for a definitive break of one of the lines.
http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a475/Knownuthing/osisaf_trend_zpsxohjvcbu.png
We will know in just a few years. In the meantime it is more probable that we do not have a record low in summer Arctic sea ice this year. Once again the alarmists have gone to the newspapers too soon. That is counteractive. When summer comes and the record is not broken, more people stop believing their bullshit. They are just crying wolf all the time and the wolf is not coming.
do a gompertz regression.
You can fit any model to any data. The question is whether the values of the parameters will be useful or meaningful.
What is clear to any independent observer is that dire predictions about Arctic sea ice have so far failed spectacularly and therefore very likely to continue doing so. Cryologists like Mark Serreze should stop making a fool of themselves.
Javier — Regarding AMO, upto 1990 the data was collected from the ships moving in that zone but since 1990 the data was collected from buoys. The linear increase shown in the figure may be associated with this data collection system???
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Arctic sea ice prediction is fraught with danger.
One minute great inroads the next great disaster, for both sides.
I know what I wish would happen but saying it makes it go the other way or so it seems.
Caleb June 14, 2016 at 10:00 am nailed it above
“As a lurker on Alarmist sites I was rather amazed at the excitement and rejoicing.”
If AGW falls in a hole it will be when conditions moderate for several years and it will be obvious for all to see; for long enough for the general public to act on.
Hold on.
Don’t say anything yet.
good advice, because the sea ice conditions this year are in wholly new territory.
Seasoned ice experts are frankly baffled.
Excellent science based comment here:
http://neven1.typepad.com/
Neven.
Ho ho!
let me know when he posts the capie charts. i suspect we may have to wait a while, at least until proper melt ponding gets underway. the numbers at the moment would not fit the asif meme.
bit chilly June 15, 2016 at 4:39 pm
let me know when he posts the capie charts. i suspect we may have to wait a while, at least until proper melt ponding gets underway. the numbers at the moment would not fit the asif meme.
They were last posted June 9th.
https://www.google.at/search?q=Icelandic+supporters&client=ms-android-samsung&biw=360&bih=264&prmd=ivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwii-amV0ajNAhWrCcAKHUf9CTgQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=Icelandic+family+supporters+
Dr. Susan J. Crockford has a recent post that relates to this Arctic sea ice article.
“Last Wednesday (8 June 2016), the US Coast Guard rescued walrus hunters from Shishmaref in the Bering Strait who got stuck in sea ice that is barely visible on sea ice maps”
Link – and watch the video:
https://polarbearscience.com/2016/06/11/ice-maps-vs-observations-in-the-w-arctic-polar-bear-habitat-reality-check/
Great Link. Susan is a breath of fresh air.
Biodata indicates that the Arctic was quite often “ice free” in summer for large period of the first 3/4 of the Holocene.
There is actually nothing wrong or worrying or untoward about the minor, trivial weather and cyclical related losses of Arctic Sea Ice.
This years early losses were mostly to do with the El Nino..
There will not be an El Nino next year, and I suspect we will see a very different scenario unfolding.
It is instructive to look at Ice around Iceland to put things on a more sensible footing rather than the manic panic that the alarmist would want everyone to submit to.
http://s19.postimg.org/nn6acn06r/Iceland_sea_ice.png
Bookmarked. Thank you.
And let’s not forget that NOT ONE of the “Arctic will be ice free by.. blah, blah” predictions from these so-called “experts”, has EVER COME TRUE !!!
A biologist who put together a list of polar bear attacks between 1870 and 2014 told an Anchorage reporter that the Arctic may be ice-free by 2020!
http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/wildlife/2016/06/14/sea-ice-has-been-keeping-polar-bears-and-humans-apart-until-now/
I discuss the biologists polar bear attack data in this post https://polarbearscience.com/2016/06/15/polar-bears-are-not-bloodthirsty-killers-says-biologist-just-dont-forget-your-gun/
Apparently, he thinks the only way that more polar bear attacks will occur in the future is if there is less sea ice in summer but my polar bear attack thriller suggests another scenario is just as plausible…
So much misdirected fear…
as Caleb said on another forum
“This is Alarmist’s last chance. If they can’t get a new record after a strong El Nino, with both the AMO and PDO in warm spikes, and the Indian ocean warm, then their goose is cooked, because the times, they are a-changing. The cooler La Nina is already starting and the Indian Ocean is cooling, and the ordinary cycles will do their ordinary thing, (unless the “Quiet Sun” messes things up), and ice will likely build the next few years.
I think the minimum will be the same as last year. It will be interesting watching, this summer.”
And next year.. I have a feeling the alarmist will need really big rags to wipe the egg off their faces.
Throughout the last 17 years of relative stability in mean global temperature the AGW supertanker has continued to build up steam. More and more governments and reputable media are throwing their hats into the warming ring. Given a continuation of the holding trend or even cooling it will take another 15 years to even begin to slow it down
A stock market analyst recently told me that many investors will stay in declining stocks far too long through a physiological resistance to admitting they made a poor judgment. Can you imagine politicians or idealists behaving differently?
While this a snarky controversy it is nothing compared to what will happen should temperature remain stable or begin to cool. My only regret is that I will not live long enough to see it play out. This is entertainment extraordinaire
Michael Carter
“Throughout the last 17 years of relative stability in mean global temperature…”
____________
Depends what you mean by ‘relative stability’. Relative to what? Counting back 17 years (204 months) from the latest published monthly update for each surface temperature data provider, all show statistically significant warming (all °C/decade (2σ)):-
HadCRUT4 (May 1999): 0.160 ±0.124
GISTEMP (June 1999): 0.193 ±0.128
NCDC (May 1999): 0.196 ±0.119
http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
In the case of GISTEMP, the rate of global warming over the past 17 years (June 1999 to May 2016) is 0.19 °C/decade; the rate of global warming over the 17 years prior to that in GISTEMP (June 1982 to May 1999) was very similar, at 0.18 °C/decade: http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/gistemp/from:1999.4/plot/gistemp/from:1999.4/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1982.4/to:1999.4/plot/gistemp/from:1982.4/to:1999.4/trend
So I guess you could say that the rate of warming has been ‘relatively stable’ over the past 17 years compared to prior periods of similar duration.
“So I guess you could say that the rate of warming has been ‘relatively stable’ ”
You are talking about GISS and HadCrut, so get it right.
“So I guess you could say that the rate of DATA ADJUSTMENT has been ‘relatively stable’ “
AndyG55
?w=720
“So I guess you could say that the rate of DATA ADJUSTMENT has been ‘relatively stable’ “
_______________
According to Bob Tisdale the unadjusted data also shows a strong warming trend over the past ~17 years:
The difference between the unadjusted global land/sea surface temperature trend and that of GISS since 1998 is just 0.04 (4 1/100ths) °C/decade, according to Bob.
Meanwhile the adjustments made by HadCRUT4 have amounted to a whole 0.006 (6 1/1000ths) of a °C/decade warming!
Yawn.
Apart from the El Nino, there has been NO WARMING this century.. except maybe in some selected Urban zones.
Satellite records show NO WARMING this century, even in the Arctic region, no warming this century before the El Nino.
But you just keep hanging you mythical propaganda warming on NATURAL El Nino events.
its all you have.. and you know it.
AndyG55
The unadjusted global ocean data used by Bob Tisdale in his recent post comes from ICOADS: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/14/arctic-sea-ice-sets-new-record-low-for-may/comment-page-1/#comment-2237232
According to this unadjusted data the ocean surface warmed between 1998 and 2015 at a rate of 0.07 °C/decade. It would be interesting to know how ‘urban heat’ accomplished this in places such as the mid Pacific Ocean, etc.
0.07 degs per decade?
Oh my gawd! How ever will we cope? In just 100 years time the seas will be 0.7 degs warmer. The fish will be throwing themselves on the beaches to escape the boiling oceans!
Get a grip DWR.
Maybe AndyG55 should compare the data adjustments performed by UAH when moving in april 2015 from V5.6 to V6.0beta with the adjustments made by GISS in the last ten years.
I know of these differences. Do you?
The fact remains – we are still at(DMI) or just below (JAXA) the lowest ice extent level (2012) in the 37 year satellite record. How is that showing the ice is in good shape or recovering? That we don’t have a continuing melting trend?
There is no way that we will see a September extent which is not in the top 5 lowest, is there?
The ice has not, in ten years, recovered to pre-2007 levels… if this is a natural cycle, why is the ice still going down?
The 2007 level (according to Judith Curry) represents the lowest point reached in 20s to 40s, which is alleged as the previous cycle… we’ve now surely had a longer melting cycle than the 20s/40s one and no sign of an end to it.
Why so much effort to talk this up as a recovery and not a problem?
The fact remains that 37 years is a piddling small time, that just happens to coincide with the upward leg of the AMO as well as the tail end of the RECOVERY from the LIA.
There is NOTHING untoward happening with Arctic sea ice… and EVERYONE KNOWS IT.
The Arctic sea ice scare is very much just part of the AGW PROPAGANDA CON.
It is lower than the 1940s and still going down in age, extent, thickness.
Is that not a new and concerning trend?
why all the caps and shouting if there’s nothing to see?
“if this is a natural cycle, why is the ice still going down?”
You haven’t paid ANY attention to the weather events of the last few months, have you.. DOH !!!
And the AMO is still pretty much at the top of its cycle.
Next year there will not be an El Nino.
Should be fun watching the Arctic sea ice worriers. 😉
If this is only down to El Nino, why is this El Nino causing more melting than previous ones? why is this El nino warmer?
it’s not a problem: geologists found wave – active beaches where nowadays – still with the historical low ice extent – the only thing you see there is ice.not open water.
that was 6000-4000 years ago at our holocene optimum. then the arctic has even been ice free.
climate changes, it always does and will continue to do so. Focussing on warming only is the problem: the earth may go into a cooling cycle as well anywhere in the future and we are not prepared for that.
now climate warms a bit but for how long? what will follow? A good scientist will say “we don’t know what will follow.”
Griff,
The fact that remains is that Arctic sea ice levels are stable since 2006. We haven’t had a continuing melting trend for the last 10 years, just some bad years followed by recovery.
http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a475/Knownuthing/osisaf_trend_zpsxohjvcbu.png
Not this year, the year after the big El Niño and record warm temperatures, however we saw it in 2013 and 2014, and we will very likely see it again in the next two years.
It is not going down, as I have showed you. I think it is only logical that if there is no cooling of the Arctic pole, there shouldn’t be any ice grow. For the same token, that the ice is not going down is a clear indication that there is no warming either. Much better indication that the inexistent thermometers of the Arctic.
False dichotomy. It is neither. Arctic sea ice has been stable for ten years. As we did not know that this was going to happen, we do not know what is going to happen in the next ten years. Why should this be a problem? Polar bears are on the recovery since the 1970’s regulations on hunting, and there are more polar bears now than in the last 70 years at least. The real question is why people is being lied about Arctic melting and polar bears. We shouldn’t give a damn about Arctic sea ice oscillations.
Poor Griff STILL hasn’t cottoned on that decreasing Arctic sea ice is a recovery from the LIA and an AMO cyclic effect..
Poor, dumb Griff.
Javier
Isn’t that a trend line in your examples?
Sloping down to the right?
Andy
clearly we didn’t see a steady trend from the end of the LIA till now.
And if we are in an AMO cycle, how come this one shows no sign of ending and is trending lower from a lower point than in 20s/40s?
I might note that extent isn’t everything – ice thickness and age of ice are much, much lower than any point since the 1950s.
Griff,
Following a straight trend in a cyclical feature is a sure way of getting predictions wrong.
A downward trend has to be characterized both by lower peaks and lower valleys. If you can’t see that the right part of the graphs is different from the left, you need to look better.
Right now neither you nor I can predict Arctic sea ice in the next 10 years, but if the situation is the same as the last 10 we are going to have about the same. Why should we get worried?
Javier
Science can predict arctic ice in the next ten years, based on the trend.
It is down…
Griff,
Sure it can do. How did the prediction from ten years ago turned out?
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Cf7PaQUWcAApPf9.jpg
If the then trend had persisted at the same rate, yes, we’d have seen an ice free 2012.
Sadly, that ice free day is coming, sooner rather than later.
The climate sets the base conditions, then the weather in the melt season provides the variation.
The ice is in worse shape than in 2012 – giving an equivalent melt season, it would go lower.
What will posters here be saying in that year, or even in a lower than 2012 year?
Griff,
Serreze was wrong then, as you yourself admit. He did not know as much as he thought he did. He doesn’t seem to have learned much since either. Jay Zwally however seems to have smarten up a little and no longer makes doomer predictions about ice.
You are equally wrong now. You are not going to see an Arctic ice-free in your entire life, so you can stop being sad. There, cheer up.
“Prediction from 10 years ago”
Actual quote: “One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in 5 years”
One speculated. Wow….
Philip Schaeffer,
Oh don’t worry. Since they all have been going to the press to claim an imminent melting of the Arctic, we have a lot of “scientific” predictions:
– 2007 Nobel prize laureate Al Gore predicts North Polar ice cap falling off a cliff seven years from now by 2014 based on scientific studies.
Al Gore Nobel lecture.
– 2007 Prof. Wieslaw Maslowski from Dept. Oceanography of the US Navy predicts an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer by 2013, and says that prediction is conservative.
Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’
– 2007 NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally predicts that the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012.
Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?
– 2010 Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2030.
Arctic ice could be gone by 2030
– 2012 Prof. Wieslaw Maslowski from Dept. Oceanography of the US Navy predicts a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer by 2016 ± 3 years.
US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016.
Scientific article: The Future of Arctic Sea Ice
– 2012 Prof. Peter Wadhams, head of the polar ocean physics group at the University of Cambridge, predicts a collapse of the Arctic ice sheet by 2015-2016.
Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years
Peter Wadhams impressive Arctic scientific CV
It is clearly demonstrated that they have no idea what they talk about, yet they are paid as “experts”. Any prediction of future Arctic ice has little value and should be labeled as speculation.
Supposedly some very devout Christians believe that planet earth is about 5000 years old.
The graph of Arctic Sea Ice presented in the article is more proof that this is not true.
Clearly, nothing existed prior to 1981.
I was going to say something about the satellite record of ice extent in the MWP, but your sarcasm is more satisfying.
Areas of low longitude near the Prime Meridian are having a bad melt this year. As I’ve been predicting now for the past couple of months. On the other hand, for areas around the Date Line … nothing unusual. Totally typical for this time of year.
OK.
Fine.
Arctic sea ice extents in September will be lower than today.
That means LESS energy is absorbed into the Arctic Ocean from the sun than is lost from the Arctic Ocean by Long Wave Radiation, convection, conduction, and evaporation in the month of September.
So, the result is a cooler earth, right?
The Arctic sea ice is not off the coast of Florida, is it? By Sept 1, the Arctic sea ice is no longer receiving significant solar energy at high enough solar elevation angles to receive enough solar energy through the say to heat up.
Not so… please see:
http://www.carbonbrief.org/five-reasons-why-the-speed-of-arctic-sea-ice-loss-matters
arctic ice loss increases warming, Greenland melt, etc
Of course if your scientific model doesn’t include warming and melt, this is of no interest to you.
Griff
Well, their “Reason 1” on that very expensive taxpayer supported website (more climate change propaganda money to support buying more climate change programs and policies!) is not even correct. And the subsequent Reasons 2, 3, 4, and 5 ALL require an absolute belief in Reason 1 being correct.
Reason 1. Loss of ice means more heat is absorbed
That statement is correct ONLY from April to mid-August.
The REST OF THE YEAR, losing Arctic sea ice coverage means MORE HEAT IS LOST from the Arctic Ocean.
Now, around the Antarctic, or off of the coast of Miami, losing sea ice does mean a hotter planet.
But there are few icebergs off of the coast of Miami.
And the Antarctic sea ice has been steadily growing since 1992. It has been setting record high sea ice area values as recently as June 2014. (Winter 2015 was right at normal Antarctic sea ice levels). And Antarctic sea ice reflects sunlight 10 months of the year. Not 5 months. Over the entire year, Antarctic sea ice is 1.7 times the effect of Arctic sea ice.
SO your statement, your link, are both wrong. 7 months of the year, the Arctic loses heat if sea ice levels are below “normal” ….
The arctic ice will continue to reform each winter (albeit for a shorter period of time). There will still be ice cover over the winter!
so its the summer that counts …
Griff
False. Again.
The Arctic Ocean LOSES more heat to the air, then into space when there is LESS ICE in the winter months from September 1 through March 31. Seven months of the year, that much-hyped Arctic Ice Extent “trend line” you have been brainwashed with ARE SHOWING A COOLING SITUATION.
When there is less Arctic sea ice in April-May-June-July, the ocean heats up. A very little bit. By mid-August, that heat gain is equaled by the increased heat loss into the ever-cooler morning, evening and afternoon skies. Mid-day, 9:00 to 3:00? It does heat a little bit.
But mid-summer Arctic temperatures at 80 north have NOT increased since the DMI began their daily forecast in 1959. Your theory is nice, is simplistic and is logical. But dead wrong in practice.
Less Arctic sea ice (over the whole year) means more cooling.
More Antarctic sea ice (over the whole year) means even MORE cooling per square million kilometers.
Maybe you stop dreaming, and have a look at what real specialists tell us:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
Move with the mouse pointer over the month bar from january to december, and you’ll see how september does look like…
While there is low Arctic sea ice there has never been an actual reason for it to cause chaos, even if it all disappeared in late summer. Only speculation has been the release of methane from the ocean depth, but last time this occurred something would have happened back then, that we would have known about by now.
The Arctic sea ice will refreeze entirely back to normal in winter and therefore be back to square one again. The larger surface ocean area exposed to much colder Arctic atmosphere only increases energy loss and in turn refreezes quicker. In a way I hope sea ice free happens one late summer, only to show it is no big deal what so ever and will not cause a positive feedback. Although I don’t see this happening even this century.
Hoping someone can answer this: For years the area around Novaya Zemblya has always lacked sea ice. Why is that and why there? Is there some undersea activity?
Currents, no Aleutian Chain and Alaskan Peninsula to stop currents, oscillations bringing packages of Gulf Stream waters into low longitude areas of the Arctic.
undersea activity does not affect arctic sea ice
I’m afraid this discussion about arctic sea ice melting how fast is a bit superfluous. In my opinion, watching the temperatures within the entire arctic region is by far more important.
And comparing at RSS the global trend over whole the satellite era with that of the arctic region tells you that the latter warms by over two times faster than the entire globe.
A reason for headless alarmism it isn’t; but it’s worth to watch.
Temperatures in the Arctic cannot be trusted as there are very few thermometers in a huge region with big areas that go from solid to liquid and where a lot of assumptions and extrapolations result in unreliable temperatures that are more the product of adjustments.
Sea ice is a good proxy for Arctic temperatures and that is why it raises so much discussion. 10 years without significant sea ice reduction mean the Arctic is not cooling. Two times zero is still zero.
And let’s not forget that while the duopoly over world surface temperatures is in the hands of US and UK with the result that it cannot be trusted, other nations like Japan and Denmark are also measuring Arctic ice, so it won’t be so easy to tamper with that.