From the UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER and the “one month does not a trend make” department, notice that there is still plenty of ice in the Arctic as shown in the image provided with the press release. It’s weather folks, but do remember this moment the next time we get a record high Arctic sea ice extent, the same people that are caterwauling on Twitter right now about this will tell you that it doesn’t matter. At least NSIDC director Mark Serreze didn’t repeat his “The Arctic is screaming” and “death spiral” rhetoric.
Also note that before we had real-time satellite data to fret over and the Internet, the world would go on without a care.
Sea ice hit record lows in November
Unusually high air temperatures and a warm ocean have led to a record low Arctic sea ice extent for November, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. In the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic sea ice extent also hit a record low for the month, caused by moderately warm temperatures and a rapid shift in circumpolar winds.
“It looks like a triple whammy–a warm ocean, a warm atmosphere, and a wind pattern all working against the ice in the Arctic,” said NSIDC director Mark Serreze.
Arctic sea ice extent averaged 9.08 million square kilometers (3.51 million square miles) for November, 1.95 million square kilometers (753,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average for the month. Although the rate of Arctic ice growth was slightly faster than average, total extent actually decreased for a brief period in the middle of the month. The decrease in extent measured 50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles) and was observed mostly in the Barents Sea, an area of the Arctic Ocean north of Norway, Finland, and Eastern Russia.
NSIDC scientists said the decrease in extent is almost unprecedented for November in the satellite record; a less pronounced and brief retreat of 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 square miles) happened in 2013. November 2016 is now the seventh month this year to have hit a record low extent in the 38-year satellite monitoring period. The November extent was 3.2 standard deviations below the long-term average, a larger departure than observed in September 2012 when the Arctic summer minimum extent hit a record low.
Arctic sea ice is still in the early stages of winter freeze-up and is expected to continue expanding until it hits its maximum extent around March next year.
NSIDC scientists said unusually high temperatures over the Arctic Ocean, persistent winds from the south, and a warm ocean worked together to drive the record low Arctic extent. Extending from northeast of Greenland towards Svalbard and Severnaya Zemlya, air temperatures at the 925 hPa level (about 2,500 feet above sea level) were up to 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981 to 2010 long-term average for the month. Sea surface temperatures in the Barents and Kara Seas remained unusually high, up to 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above average around Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard, preventing ice formation. These high temperatures reflected a pattern of winds from the south, which also helped to push the ice northward and reduce the ice extent.
NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve was in Svalbard during November and noted the lack of sea ice. “Typically sea ice begins to form in the fjords at the beginning of November, but this year there was no ice to be found,” she said.
In the Southern Hemisphere, sea ice surrounding the continent of Antarctica declined very quickly early in the month and set a record low. The average extent for November was 14.54 million square kilometers (5.61 million square miles), 1.81 million square kilometers (699,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average. This was more than twice the previous record departure from average set in November 1986 and was 5.7 standard deviations below the long-term average.
NSIDC scientists said that higher-than-average temperatures and a rapid shift in Antarctic circumpolar winds appear to have caused the rapid decline in Antarctic sea ice.
Air temperatures 2 to 4 degrees Celsius, or 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average and an earlier pattern of strong westerly winds worked to create a more dispersed sea ice pack in the Antarctic. A rapid shift to a more varied wind structure, with three major areas of winds from the north, rapidly compressed low-concentration sea ice around Wilkes Land, Dronning Maud Land, Enderby Land, and the Antarctic Peninsula. Moreover, several very large polynyas (areas of open water within the pack) have opened in the eastern Weddell and along the Amundsen Sea and Ross Sea coast.
“Antarctic sea ice really went down the rabbit hole this time,” said NSIDC lead scientist Ted Scambos. “There are a few things we can say about what happened, but we need to look deeper.”
NASA scientist and NSIDC affiliate scientist Walt Meier said, “The Arctic has typically been where the most interest lies, but this month, the Antarctic has flipped the script and it is southern sea ice that is surprising us.”
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Nice DMI page to show many years of temps above 80 degrees North. Lust click on the year you want on the left. It is very easy to see the years that have outlier warm or cold periods.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Enjoy!
The sensors are bu99ered at both poles. They know diddlysqat about what is going on with polar ice, and they don’t want to know.
Some independent metric of polar ice mass is needed such as length of day (LOD) simce the day shortens as ice locked at the poles moves mass nearer the rotation axis. But don’t spread the word about this or else the ilwarminati inquisition will knock on the door of the LOD custodians.
In past years warmists always said that ice extent in winter was irrelevant, it only matters in summer. What changed?
It’s not what changed, it’s what didn’t change – summer temperatures.
Ptolemy2, your friend Archimedes made an interesting observation. about objects that float.
Sea ice will not change mass distribution at all, hence it won’t change the length of day, because it’s FLOATING. Get it?
Uninformed assertions don’t do much for the sceptics’ case, other than making us look as dumb as warmists.
Your point about summer/winter ice is well taken though. Perhaps you didn’t know about Archimedes’ Principle, in which case, you should inform yourself.
One satellite is.
Others are NOT.
This one isn’t:
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/amsr2/index.html
https://iceagenow.info/greenland-ice-sheet-growing-like-crazy/
I wonder if the climate models predicted this. I think not.
That’s why the sensors are not being repaired.
What sensors are not being repaired?
Salvatore del Prete on December 7, 2016 at 2:32 pm
Your link gives an empty page. The following doesn’t:
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
i also pointed to that fact….. greenland has seen this year 3 consecutive below all time recorded melt rates and it’s melting really was very low. Now it is accumilating at a very high rate.
Now one of such blocking events is not a disaster, but i would start to worry if this happens more the coming years as then we will see a global cooling setting in.
the LIA also started with normal to hot summers but with cold winters…. which started in russia.
Although trends in Sept minimum sea ice extent has been presented as evidence of AGW (“the arctic is screaming”), there is no empirical evidence in the post satellite period 1979-2016 to support that view.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2869646
The weather is going to get very interesting going into next week. Because a ice age weather pattern is going to pay us alittle.visit. When this pattern is in place during the first half of next week. Just watch how close it matches the climate cooling of the last ice age. One to watch for insight into climate change.
Except that’s where you are -in the arctic, e.g. Svalbard, anomalously high temps continue.
The ice is actually melting back a little in the Chuckchi Sea (is that how it is spelt?)
Griff
Am now convinced that during the last ice age. The Pacific side of the Arctic circle was largely ice free. As this was the main area where l think warm moist Pacific air was been driven up into the Arctic. The mistake l feel people are making is that because it got much colder over N America and euroasia. Then the Arctic must have been colder. This l believe is wrong. What l now believe happened was that large amounts of warm air was been pushed up into the Arctic and then spilling cold air down across mostly the N America and Euroasia areas of the NH. Next week the weather pattern set up will be showing how this could have happened.
“What l now believe happened was that large amounts of warm air was been pushed up into the Arctic and then spilling cold air down across mostly the N America and Euroasia areas of the NH.”
That’s not a bad idea due to there must have been a snow machine source to help switch the planet into an ice age mode.
Although I don’t believe this was so much an warm air source, but more like warm ocean source that made the atmosphere above it mostly warmer. The warm ocean source caused by a dramatic increase in energy via an significant change in the AMOC for example.
The ideal conditions in theory for making the planet a snow machine for the northern hemisphere is regular much warmer air in the Arctic causing major instability and forcing the cold and snow elsewhere. When cold air meets potentially warmed up Arctic ocean produces lots of snow around it.
Alarmists claiming the planet will warm even more with an Arctic free sea ice in especially summer couldn’t be more wrong and will instead likely change it into a snow machine.
Watch this: an eye witness account from 1922. It could have been written today!
changing-artic_monthly_wx_review.png
(link doesn’t work – could you please re-post? Thanks!)
Well in 1922 the expedition to Wrangel was trapped on the island because their supply vessel couldn’t reach the island because it was surrounded by ice, they eventually made it in 1923 and rescued the one survivor. The Russians sent a group in 1926 when the ice opened up, the following years they had continuous heavy ice and an ice breaker was despatched to rescue them in 1929, which it did with extreme difficulty. That doesn’t happen these days.
Didn’t happen in the 1930s or ’40s, either, when the Soviet wartime Northern Sea Route ran past the island, taking advantage of low ice conditions.
After rescuing the survivor, the Canadians left a new group on the island in 1923. They were removed by the Soviet expedition in 1926.
Chimp December 8, 2016 at 1:02 pm
Didn’t happen in the 1930s or ’40s, either, when the Soviet wartime Northern Sea Route ran past the island, taking advantage of low ice conditions.
The point was that the previous poster was making a claim about 1922 based on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, as pointed out above at that time it was quite different on the Pacific side. Also the Northern Sea route relied heavily on icebreakers.
After rescuing the survivor, the Canadians left a new group on the island in 1923. They were removed by the Soviet expedition in 1926.
It was an american and 12 Inuit, there were difficulties repatriating the Inuit because the US didn’t consider them citizens but ‘wards’ of the US.
And yet Arctic Sea ice coverage is greater for December 1 now than it has been in 18 years, according to NSIDC. I would provide the current, updated image if it I could link it. Almost like NSIDC does not want people to share that current image. Wonder why that is?
2hotel9 – Just copy the URL and paste it into your comment. WordPress will do the rest.
This NSIDC page shows arctic sea ice extent WORST for the 37 year satellite record…
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
so does this:
other years here:
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/amsr2/index.html
this shows the ice volume to end November to be lLOWEST in the satellite era:
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
“November 2016 sea ice volume was 7,800 km3 , about 2500 km3 below the 2015 value and the lowest for any November on record exceeding the prior record set in 2012 by about 400 km3 . This record is in part the result of anomalously high temperatures throughout the Arctic for November discussed here. 2016 November volume was 61% below the maximum November ice volume in 1979, 48% below the 1979-2015 mean, and about 1.1 standard deviations below the long term trend line.”
nothing compared to the holocene highstand, the lack of arctic ice and the greenland beaches between 8000-4000 BC….
read and learn griff
arctic during the holocene optimum
and very odd i hear no word from you about Greenland.
and finally griffyboy: every archeologic study showed that earht was thriving with life in warm episodes, but that extictions happened when it turned cold. Even our own civilization did follow this trend.
Anjoy it…; while it lasts.
the only truth of our future is: we will go into a glacial episode again in the coming 10000 years
Walt Meier is becoming the David Phillips of sea ice.
In Canada, introducing David Phillips from Environment Canada, senior climatologist… He is a favorite of CBC http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/weather-winter-holiday-outlook-1.3885241
GLOBAL warming aka Climate Change brings cold winters thanks to… the travelling Polar Vortex!!!!
Yes the hero is baaaaack!
Northern Canada, a euphemism for Arctic Canada… but since the Arctic is warming…
It is logical, the dense 1055 hPa Arctic air, 1,500m thick is hooked by the 6,000 m high 300 hPa jet stream… Ah the boundary between cold air and warm air… at what altitude? Not in the lower troposphere where clear satellite evidence shows that cold air masses originating from the poles do descend down to the tropical circulation… Reminds me someone…
Anyone checking http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html will notice that in the jet stream is complex, pronounced and strong in the winter hemisphere and basically weak, poorly defined in the summer hemisphere. There is not one jet stream but many branches separated, coalescing etc… So our senior climatologist is claiming that GLOBAL warming is making the jet stream more like a winter hemisphere one when in fact, it should, even during winter become more like a summer hemisphere one, i.e. weaker in both hemispheres. The contradiction is blatant. But there is more:
You remember, this is the same air barely 1.5 km thick that was hooking to the the 300 hPa moving air of the jet stream 5 km higher… LOL
It is well known: when a depression weakens, it sends high pressure air around… With wizards like this David Phillips, Canada can safely spend $430 millions of dollars (CAD, that is monkey money) into new computers http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supercomputer-enivronment-canada-430-million-1.3878726
to alleviate the meteorological vacuity of their senior media darling climatologist!
Buyers beware!
” So our senior climatologist is claiming that GLOBAL warming is making the jet stream more like a winter hemisphere one when in fact, it should, even during winter become more like a summer hemisphere one, i.e. weaker in both hemispheres. The contradiction is blatant.”
He was talking about the Boreal winter PJS my friend.
Right there in your first quote…..
“Doesn’t global warming mean that we’re going to get warmer, shorter WINTERS? Well, in some areas, yes, but it actually could mean we could see colder episodes,” Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips told CBC News”
(My bold)
“It is well known: when a depression weakens, it sends high pressure air around… With wizards like this David Phillips, Canada can safely spend $430 millions of dollars (CAD, that is monkey money) into new computers ”
No it doesn’t – the driver of (warm core) Highs is the jet stream, causing anticylonically rotating converging winds aloft (hence subsiding air). They are in no way formed just because “a depression weakens”.
“to alleviate the meteorological vacuity of their senior media darling climatologist!
Buyers beware!”
Just my service:
To alleviate the meteorological vacuity of D-K types on here who hubristically think they know more than the experts in the field they criticise.
Readers beware.
The Jet stream of irony went way above… EOM
I suspect that “10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit)” should be “10 Celsius degrees (18 Fahrenheit [degrees]” (and similar). There IS a difference. My reasoning: 10 degrees C is NOT the same as 18 degrees F; it is 50 degrees F.
And my customary apology if this has already been brought up; I have just returned home and opened this when there were already 153 comments.
Ian M
A difference of 10ºC is equal to a difference of 18ºF, which is what is referred to in the original post.
Did anybody notice it? The pause is still here: 13 years trend with no further decline of arctic sea ice.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/nsidc-seaice-n/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/last:156/trend
The same on the South pole: 15 years trend without growth of antartic sea ice.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/nsidc-seaice-s/plot/nsidc-seaice-s/last:180/trend
Erverythig seems to be under control, ecept the weather is changing – as it always did.
I’ve no idea on what basis those charts are constructed…
but the trend in arctic sea ice extent and volume is definitely down.
Try the trend chart here:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“Through 2016, the linear rate of decline for November is 55,400 square kilometers (21,400 square miles) per year, or 5.0 percent per decade.”
Look also where it says:
“Average Arctic sea ice extent for November set a record low, reflecting unusually high air temperatures, winds from the south, and a warm ocean. Since October, Arctic ice extent has been more than two standard deviations lower than the long-term average”
2 standard deviations is a significant amount…
2 standard deviations from what. I agree its significant graphically, but standard deviations are from an average of a specific period – if that period is not statistically long enough to produce a significantly stable long term average then it is meaningless.
In a round about way Griff this has been pointed out several times on this thread alone. The period from 1979 is not statistically significant if known cycles are 70 years long and I would say you would need three cycles of data for the information to be reasonably predictable. Standard deviations from an Arctic ice perspective of less than 40 years duration are meaningless when applied to the real rather than statistical world. Perhaps after another 50 years of data a standard deviation may start to mean something here.
mwh – it clearly shows it is the 1981 – 2010 period…
I believe a ten year period is regarded as sufficient to show climate trends.
good data exists from 1850 and it is clear this cycle is much lower than anything in the 1850 to 1979 period.
you completely missed my point
What “known cycles” that you claim are “70 years long”?
mwh
the low point in the last cycle – assuming this is a cycle – was 1942. We are 5 years beyond 70 years since then and much lower than that low…
we’ve had 37 years in the satellite record and very good data from the years before it. I think we know where we are -in a new state of continued decline irrespective of cycles.
and if we wait another 4 years at current trend? And see it then? Or is 37 out of 40 ‘good enough’
mwh December 8, 2016 at 4:14 am
2 standard deviations from what. I agree its significant graphically, but standard deviations are from an average of a specific period – if that period is not statistically long enough to produce a significantly stable long term average then it is meaningless.
For today the NSIDC mean is 12.3 with a standard deviation of 0.56 which gives a standard error of the mean over 37 events as : ~0.09
This year’s value is about 3 std deviations below the mean, or 0.1% probability, I would say that was significant.
Current extent of NH T2m anomalies……
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/#T2_anom
did you mean to link to this one, showing the continuing high temp anomaly over the N pole?
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/#T2_anom
It is the same one!
well so it is.
somehow it came out different when I used your link!
All this melted ice means I should be seeking higher ground due to catastrophic sea level rise right?!? Yet, the seashore seems the same to me as ever. I will remain – as usual – in a state of calm regarding the vagaries of climate. I’m sure orders of magnitude more people die from exposure to sunlight than the terrors of climate change.
er.. no.
Sea ice floats on the water, displacing it, so there’s no increase in sea level when sea ice melts.
The increase in sea level comes from melting ice caps (Greenland, Antarctica)
“It’s weather folks, but do remember this moment the next time we get a record high Arctic sea ice extent”
When was the last record high in the arctic out of curiosity?
According to NSIDC the record high was Mar 1st 1979 at 16.588 million square km.
For today’s date it was 1988 at 13.359 million square km compared with less than 11 million on Dec 11th.
Lots of energy being lost to space just now. It’s actually a bit worrying. The thaw before the freeze?
Damn it we are moving from the Little Ice Age to a new Climate optimum what are you arguing about?