Despite a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by Dr. Peter Wadhams, there’s still no joy in mudville for Arctic sea ice doomsters.From NSIDC: Arctic sea ice nears its minimum extent for the year
Throughout August, Arctic sea ice extent continued to track two or more standard deviations below the long-term average. The month saw two very strong storms enter the central Arctic Ocean from along the Siberian coast. In the Antarctic, ice extent remained near average.
Average sea ice extent for August 2016 was 5.60 million square kilometers (2.16 million square miles), the fourth lowest August extent in the satellite record. This is 1.03 million square kilometers below the 1981 to 2010 average for the month and 890,000 square kilometers (344,000 square miles) above the record low for August set in 2012. As of September 5, sea ice extent remains below average everywhere except for a small area within the Laptev Sea. Ice extent is especially low in the Beaufort Sea and in the East Siberian Sea. With about two weeks of seasonal melt yet to go, it is unlikely that a new record low will be reached. However, since August 26, total sea ice extent is already lower than at the same time in 2007 and is currently tracking as the second lowest daily extent on record. In addition, during the first five days of September the ice cover has retreated an additional 288,000 square kilometers (111,000 square miles) as the tongue of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea has started to disintegrate.
The average ice loss rate through August was 75,000 square kilometers per day (29,000 square miles), compared to the long-term 1981 to 2010 average of 57,300 square kilometers per day (22,100 square miles per day), and a rate of 89,500 square kilometers per day for 2012 (34,500 square miles per day). Total ice extent loss in August was 2.34 million square kilometers (904,000 square miles).
Air temperatures at the 925 hPa level were 1 to 3 degrees Celsius (2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) below average for a large area stretching from the northern Kara Sea, through the Laptev Sea, and into north-central Eurasia. Temperatures elsewhere over the Arctic Ocean were near average. Reflecting the generally stormy pattern through the month, sea level pressures were well below average (as much as 10 hPa) over the central and eastern Arctic Ocean. Two very strong cyclones entered the central Arctic Ocean in August from along the Siberian coast, bringing strong winds. On August 16, the central pressure of the first cyclone dropped to 968 hPa, nearly rivaling the storm in early August 2012 that attained a minimum central pressure of 966 hPa. On 22 August, the second storm started moving to the central Arctic Ocean along a similar track, and on August 23, attained a central pressure of 970 hPa.
Past studies have shown that stormy summers tend to end up with more sea ice at the end of the melt season than summers with high pressure over the central Arctic Ocean, primarily because stormy summers are both fairly cool and the wind pattern tends to spread the ice out. However, the impact of strong individual storms may be different—the 2012 event appears to have temporarily boosted ice loss by breaking up the ice cover, with the wave action tending to mix warmer waters from below to hasten melt. It may also be that, as the ice cover thins, its response to storms is changing.
It indeed appears that the August 2016 storms helped to break up the ice and spread it out, contributing to the development of several large embayments and polynyas. Some of this ice divergence likely led to fragmented ice being transported into warmer ocean waters, hastening melt. Whether warmer waters from below were mixed upwards to hasten melt remains to be determined, but as discussed below, these storms were associated with very high wave heights.
Full report here
The “loss” of sea-ice is particularly ephemeral. Wait a few more months, and it’s BAAAACK.
Worrying about it is a waste of time.
Warmunists just love yakking about sea ice because it’s a convenient distraction from the fact that temperatures aren’t doing what their Warmist ideology tells them they should. Their “sea ice is disappearing” mantra is meant to alarm the low-information, high-emotion sheeple who are only too happy to Believe.
Which looks better, this:
http://www.blindloop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/arctic-desert.jpg
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0018/47043/varieties/popup.jpg
Or this:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vng4IMuOq0w/VSK3XgtHQLI/AAAAAAAAEsM/TpUsY6T0f9Y/s1600/tropical-island-paradise-best-wallpaper-hugo-hd.jpg
http://www.arts-wallpapers.com/travel_wallpapers/Tropical%20Paradise%20Wallpapers/images/kaneohe_fish_pond_oahu_hawaii.jpg
I know which one I am rooting for and gravitating towards.
brilliant menicholas . the perfect comparison to highlight the level of fruitloopery involved in arctic alarmism.
The top two show idyllic and utopian pre-industrial climate.
The bottom two show an apocalypse of CO2 climate devastation.
I’ll take the “apocalypse of CO2 climate devastation”… thanks.
I like penguins. They taste like fish.
Except that the nice sandy beach in your picture will be covered in water, which makes it a less appealing place to photograph and hang out. Oh, and you are ignoring the impact on temperatures in places that are already hot (but will get hotter) as well as the impact on droughts and rainfall intensity in other places.
Chris
“Nul pwann!”
Beach will just reform wherever the shoreline is.
Hot places will get no hotter from CO2. Warm climate will just extend further poleward.
In the mesozoic when dinosaurs lived, global temerature was ~ 10C hotter than now, but the tropics were no warmer than at present. But there were forests almost up to the poles.
In fact it is cold glacial maximum climate that is dry and arid – as the ice cores show, at every glacial maximum the air is full of dust from aridity. (CO2 starvation and plant die-offs might actually contribute to this!)
In fact CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere is already greening marginal deserts so today’s hot dry regions may well get wetter, cooler and more habitable with increased CO2.
This is the future apocalypse that the world’s politicians are fighting against.
Check the tide gauges Chris. Actual sea level rise has been steady for at least the past 150 years, with no indication or hint of any acceleration.
Sea ice does not effect sea level one way or the other, but in Antarctica, more water is expected to be added to the ice sheet as humidity levels increase.
Sea level has been rising at less than a foot per century.
Do you think your Prius is going to change that?
Menicholas, I think the global warmers are projecting something a bit more like this:
http://15858-presscdn-0-65.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Lead.jpg
As usual, warmista makes fact-free comment laced with intonations of doom and gloom, implying any changes that may occur will necessarily be bad, adaptations will not be possible, while stating that it is realists who are ignoring stuff.
I wish this ilk would stop trying to get the whole world onboard with their Chicken Little hand wringing and tooth gnashing.
Or at the very least, quit scaring our children with prophesies of doom.
You should all be very deeply ashamed of the way you conduct yourselves.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
The ice extent look close to minimum already. Especially on Nansen
Both extent and area seem to have turned upward on the Nansen charts. It will be fun to watch, especially if the corner has already been turned.
Yep, 10 hours before ptolemy2 I wrote “JAXA data at https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent show two days of increases by 7000 sq.km. from the 7th to 9th of September. It is possible that minimum, at 4.017M sq.km, has been achieved on the 7th, slightly earlier than average (which I’ve seen quoted as being the 11th).”
And today, JAXA records a 45000 sq. km increase for the 10th, which will take some reversing. I’m calling it.
Richard.
When the stats don’t favour the global warming hysteria media response …. silence .
I don’t deny global warming I cheer it on .
Menicholas your pictures are why over 99% of the population chose a warmer world .
More plants , trees , room for fish … what’ s not to like ? Even less fossil fuel use if that’s your cup of tea .
Despite the fact climate science is a moving target of moving variables at least it’s warming for now .
What caused the last ice age ? A lack of CO2 ? Those pesky natural variables were a non issue ?
Newspapers are going extinct because the people running them forget why they existed . It wasn’t to be pump and dump salesmen for massive frauds . The internet isn’t afraid to ask all the W questions .
I have to book my next global warming destination vacation . Thanks Menicholas for the reminder .
Sad the Arctic isn’t ice free as predicted by the unaccountable global warming fear mongers .
We can hope .
What caused the last ice ages ? A lack of CO2 ?
We live in an Ice Age, but are now experiencing an inter-glacial period in the Ice Age. The funny thing is, is that every time CO2 goes to its highest level in an inter-glacial, we get glaciers. How warming is that? The answer may be Milankovitch Cycles and/or something else, we don’t really know.
Amber
Continental drift changes ocean circulation patterns and this is by far the strongest and most important driver of climate change to warmer or colder. See the paper below. Things that cause cold and ice ages are tearing apart (rifting) of continents or pushing up of large continent plateaus to higher elevation.
http://www.brynmawr.edu/geology/documents/Eyles2008Palaeo.pdf
Also, tectonic turnover exposes magma to form new rock and when this happens a lot of CO2 is eaten up by rocks (silicate weathering). This is traditionally considered to cause cooling but in fact probably instead causes the aridity that accompanies deep glaciation by limiting plant growth by CO2 starvation.
Due to very long term silicate weathering, it is CO2 starvation that will ultimately make all life on earth go extinct. Not solar expansion-heating:
http://www.biogeosciences.net/3/85/2006/bg-3-85-2006.pdf
Complex multicellular life existed before the Cambrian, as the Ediacaran Biota. Whether it contributed significantly to the biogeologic processes the 2006 paper discusses, I can’t say. The big stories from the Cambrian are a general increase in size (although the strange, frond-like Ediacaran forms reached two meters in length), evolution of advanced sensors and the spread of biomineralization. The development of hard body parts owed both to changes in ocean chemistry and to predation, thanks to such sensory improvements as vision.
Based upon molecular “clocks”, multicellular animals and fungi arose from 750 Ma to 1.0 Ga. Based upon “rocks”, the oldest evidence now available are tiny fossil sponges from over 600 Ma. Plants of course didn’t arise until the early Phanerozoic (Cambrian to Silurian Periods). Before then, cyanobacteria remained the primary producers.
But the authors are probably right that we’re about half way through the history of multicellularity on earth, unless future terrestrials find a way to engineer the solar system to enhance their survival. Or leave it for other star systems.
My reply hasn’t showed up yet, but in hopes that it will, I’ll add that before green plants, there were also photosynthesizing protists, ie unicellular eukaryotes, as well as cyanobacteria, which of course are prokaryotes. As chloroplasts, cyanobacteria became endosymbionts within some eukaryotes, just as other bacteria are the origin of our mitochondria.
OK, looks as if my reply is lost in the ether of cyberspace. It pointed out that multicellular organisms didn’t suddenly appear in the Cambrian, as per the 2006 paper.
Amber, one thing you must understand ahead of everything else is that CO2 is not the temperature knob of the atmosphere.
This is the big lie that is being pushed and the number one thing that must be understood in order to being to understand the big picture.
Once you free your mind of that idea, you are open to learning about the various factors that do cause the weather and the climate we have, past and present.
Amber,
Lower CO2 is an effect of ice ages, not a cause.
When it’s colder, oceans hold more CO2, so it comes out of the air and goes into seawater.
Ice ages in the past have occurred under atmospheric CO2 levels more than ten times higher than now. The fairly brief but intense Ordovician Ice Age happened with CO2 between 4000 and 5000 ppm, v our present 400 ppm.
Antarctic glaciation began about 34 million years ago, when deep oceanic channels opened between that continent and South America and Australia. CO2 then fluctuated around 900 to 1700 ppm.
The climatic effect of CO2 is minimal beyond the absolute minimum required for most plant life, around 150 ppm. During ice ages, it almost gets this dangerously low.
Dear Professor Wadhams.
Another of your annual predictions fails. Miserably.
What was it you said- 1 million km2?
Well it looks like it has bottomed out at 4 million km2. You are only out
by a factor of 4.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/NH_seaice_extent_nrt_v2.csv
I’m still on for a £1,000 bet next year on sea-ice not going below 1 million
km2. Hey, what the heck- let’s make it £2000.
In other words “put up or shut up”.
Regards and best,
Dr D Keiller.
The arctic was ice-free for thousands of years straight during the Holocene Optimum.
And we had nothing to do with it. Natural variation.
So this is no big whoop.
Next?
(Ice free in summer, of course).
Sure looks like to day it has reached minimum.
In any case, I’m betting on inflection being reached prior to the Equinox. I predict inflection to occur on 14-SEP.