Guest post by David Middleton
From the “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” files…
Leave it to a researcher who studies icy moons in the outer solar system to come up with an out-there scheme to restore vanishing sea ice in the Arctic.
Ice is a good insulator, says Steven Desch, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe. That’s why moons such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, among others, may be able to maintain liquid oceans beneath their thick icy surfaces. On Earth, sea ice is much thinner, but the physics is the same. Ice grows on the bottom surface of floating floes. As the water freezes, it releases heat that must make its way up through the ice before escaping into the air. The thicker the ice, the more heat gets trapped, which slows down ice formation. That’s bad news for the Arctic, where ice helps keep the planet cool but global warming is causing ice to melt faster than it can be replaced.
The answer to making thicker ice more quickly? Suck up near-freezing water from under the ice and pump it directly onto the ice’s surface during the long polar winter. There, the water would freeze more quickly than underneath the ice, where it usually forms.
In theory, Desch says, the pumps used for this top-down approach to ice growth could be driven by technology no more sophisticated than the windmills that have long provided water to farms and ranches on the Great Plains.
Desch and colleagues envision putting such pumps on millions of buoys throughout the Arctic. During winter, each pump would be capable of building an additional layer of sea ice up to 1 meter thick over an area of about 100,000 square meters…
[…]
Now is the time to begin detailed designs and build prototypes, Desch says. The Arctic Ocean’s end-of-summer sea ice coverage has decreased, on average, more than 13 percent per decade since 1979. “There’ll be a time, 10 to 15 years from now, when Arctic sea ice will be accelerating to oblivion, and there’ll be political will to do something about climate change,” Desch says. “We need to have this figured out by the time people are ready to do something.”
Professor Desch and his colleagues estimate that each ice-making buoy would cost $50,000 (including shipping and handling). They estimate that it would cost $500 billion to cover 10% of the Arctic Ocean with ice-making buoys…
Ice grows on the bottom surface of floating floes. As the water freezes, it releases heat that must make its way up through the ice before escaping into the air. The thicker the ice, the more heat gets trapped, which slows down ice formation. That’s bad news for the Arctic, where ice helps keep the planet cool but global warming is causing ice to melt faster than it can be replaced.
So… Thicker ice traps more heat (insulation), causing the ice to melt faster, preventing the ice from keeping the planet cool (high albedo). Makes perfect sense.
“There’ll be a time, 10 to 15 years from now, when Arctic sea ice will be accelerating to oblivion, and there’ll be political will to do something about climate change. We need to have this figured out by the time people are ready to do something.”
“Accelerating to oblivion”? Oblivion?
Since we know that the current Arctic sea ice extent is much larger than that of most of the Holocene, “oblivion” is probably not the place to which Arctic sea ice is heading. If anything, it is returning to normal. So, I don’t think these ice-making buoys would be the best place to “invest” $500 billion.
The Arctic was probably ice-free during summer for most of the Holocene up until about 1,000 years ago. McKay et al., 2008 demonstrated that the modern Arctic sea ice cover is anomalously high and the Arctic summer sea surface temperature is anomalously low relative to the rest of the Holocene.
Stranne et al., 2013 demonstrated that the modern day Arctic sea ice extent is more comparable to that of the last Pleistocene glacial stage than to that of the Holocene Climatic Optimum (9,000-5,000 years before present).
Funny thing about Science News…
From March 1975 to May 2017, Science News has gone from “the Ice Age cometh” to “Arctic sea ice… accelerating to oblivion”… Ohhhhhh Noooooooo!!!
References
Alley, R.B. 2000. The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland. Quaternary Science Reviews 19:213-226.
Desch, S. et al. Arctic ice management. Earth’s Future. Vol. 5, January 24, 2017, p. 107. doi: 10.1002/2016EF000410.
McKay, J.L., A. de Vernal, C. Hillaire-Marcel, C. Not, L. Polyak, and D. Darby. 2008. Holocene fluctuations in Arctic sea-ice cover: dinocyst-based reconstructions for the eastern Chukchi Sea. Can. J. Earth Sci. 45: 1377–1397
Stranne C, Jakobsson M, Björk G, 2014 Arctic Ocean perennial sea ice breakdown during the Early Holocene Insolation Maximum. Quaternary Science Reviews 92: 123–132.
I don’t know what the problem is. If it gets too warm we can just have everyone open their refrigerator and freezer doors for several hours a day, and open the doors to the outside to cool things down. Problem solved! Where’s my grant money?
The usual, common unix command goes
‘unix requiry, command’ 2>/dev/tty/null
Yields
– unix require -> results
– superfluous output -> /dev/tty/null, cloud 9, OBLIVION
__________________________________________
some operations yield 10-100 times oblivion / result
Has this genius figured out yet that:
1) sea ice is made up fresh water with very little entrained saline water?
2) water pumped from beneath the ice will be saline, in fact, it will be concentrated saline compared to normal sea water?
3) saline water pumped onto the sea ice surface is likely to accelerate ice melting at much lower temperatures then currently?
4) ignoring the actual physics (as compared to climate science physics), does he realize that biological organisms actually live on the fresh water ice and might be adversely impacted by salty ice?
Well, the good professor Desch knows how to make a chondrule. Not kidding.
And seals’ holes in the ice would be filled in and polar bears would have nothing to eat. Plus as astute commenters point out, you’d be stupidly pumping salt enriched sea water on top of freshwater ice! I can’t but be disgusted that a PhD astronomer (what goes for a physicist these days! ) was graduated that thinks like this! He even has the smarmy hubris to offer HIS ‘engineering’ calculations of costs: 50,000 for each buoy all-in including delivery and installation to hold up a windmill in that environment and against the crushing and ridging of ice. A couple of million wouldn’t do it! Where TF are the engineers in his university? This should be a huge embarrassment to the university. This guy’s planetary work should be reviewed if he is this stupid.
This reminds me of those low-budget early color sci-fi movies where they couldn’t tell the difference between a galaxy and a solar system, or a planet and a star.
Duh – out of time – every /dev/tty/null
replace by
/dev/null/tty
___________________________________________
all other contents OK
Seriously? Spending $500 Billion on this may be premature if it turns out less polar sea ice is not the problem they say it will be. Or if ocean currents turn south and it gets cooler water at the north pole, the ice is just going to freeze up again and probably faster than it melted. Like all in one winter if it stays colder than melting the following 2-3 seasons and then we have multi year ice already.
If we had $500 Billion to spend on climate mitigation measures, I would spend it on asteroid/comet identification measures and deflection mitigation. That will be our greatest contribution humankind can offer, since one large bolide collision with earth will really make our day. (colder)
https://www.google.at/search?q=search+%2Fdev%2Fnull%2Ftty&oq=search++++++++%2Fdev%2Fnull%2Ftty&aqs=chrome.
Couldn’t this actually make the problem worse if implemented? The sea ice has a lower salinity than the surrounding water, and the water close to the bottom of the ice (if the hypothesis of how ice freezes stated above is correct) should be slightly more saline than the rest of the ocean. Pump this salty water on top of the sea ice and the greater salinity introduced could actually cause the ice to melt faster, because it will start melting at lower temperatures and then the run off would cause the natural ice to melt faster as well.
Also probably the quickest way to add ice would be to use ski slope snow makers.
“Suck up near-freezing water from under the ice and pump it directly onto the ice’s surface during the long polar winter.”
Actually this has been done for several decades. Ice Islands have been constructed in the Beaufort Sea for winter drilling. They simply pump seawater onto the ice until the ice finally rest on the bottom. Then they move a rig out and drill during the winter and move the rig off the ice before breakup.
Those pumps aren’t powered by windmills on unmanned buoys… Nor are they trying to build a permanent ice shelf in the Beaufort Sea. The ice islands serve a purpose.
And I thought this movie was just a comedy, not a prophecy:
https://youtu.be/Xm8vVNKrg9c
Wouldn’t it be better to grab the 34 degree water from just below the ice and bring it up to an exposed heat exchanger and then return back at 32 degrees so it could freeze faster? Does he even know that icebergs and sea ice have no salt in them?
For those who are interested in the daily totals of direct solar radiation energy (theoretically) deposited on the southern edge of the Arctic sea ice over the course of a year, this table is provided.
Date DofY TOA Arctic Daily Total DREAD Index Rad Latitude Sea Ice Radiation (Daily Radiation at Edge Albedo on a Flat Energy Absorbed of Sea Surface Difference) W/m^2 Ice Watt-Hrs Watt-Hrs 2-Jan 2 1408 72.1 0.830 0 0 12-Jan 12 1407 71.8 0.830 0 0 22-Jan 22 1405 71.5 0.830 0 0 2-Feb 33 1401 71.2 0.830 0 0 12-Feb 43 1396 71.0 0.830 15 3 22-Feb 53 1390 70.9 0.830 113 43 2-Mar 61 1385 70.9 0.830 292 144 12-Mar 71 1378 70.9 0.830 651 378 22-Mar 81 1371 70.9 0.830 1146 728 2-Apr 92 1362 71.1 0.830 1813 1223 12-Apr 102 1355 71.3 0.830 2493 1741 22-Apr 112 1347 71.6 0.823 3207 2272 2-May 122 1340 71.9 0.824 3919 2825 12-May 132 1334 72.3 0.818 4595 3310 22-May 142 1328 72.7 0.796 5201 3637 2-Jun 153 1323 73.2 0.749 5740 3742 12-Jun 163 1320 73.8 0.689 6053 3580 22-Jun 173 1317 74.4 0.620 6151 3212 2-Jul 183 1316 75.2 0.553 6012 2725 12-Jul 193 1317 76.2 0.498 5630 2218 22-Jul 203 1318 76.9 0.466 5028 1783 2-Aug 214 1321 77.7 0.464 4159 1415 12-Aug 224 1325 78.3 0.499 3261 1171 22-Aug 234 1330 78.7 0.566 2368 957 2-Sep 245 1337 78.9 0.666 1497 698 12-Sep 255 1344 78.9 0.761 864 441 22-Sep 265 1351 78.5 0.830 414 208 2-Oct 275 1359 78.0 0.830 146 57 12-Oct 285 1366 77.3 0.830 28 6 22-Oct 295 1374 76.5 0.830 1 0 2-Nov 306 1382 75.6 0.830 0 0 12-Nov 316 1389 74.8 0.830 0 0 22-Nov 326 1395 74.1 0.830 0 0 2-Dec 336 1400 73.4 0.830 0 0 12-Dec 346 1404 73.0 0.830 0 0 22-Dec 356 1406 72.6 0.830 0 0 70797 38517Several columns are self-obvious.
TOA radiation levels are from Svalgaard;s latest SORCE data.
Arctic sea ice albedo is from Perovich and Judith Curry’s SHEBA ice station reports.
Latitude is calculated for the southern edge of the sea ice 3 times a month, using the 1979-1990 average sea ice area from Cryosphere, Univ of Illinois.
Direct radiation levels are calculated using a 0.75 atmosphere attentuation factor, based on the attenuation through the Kasten-Young Air Mass calculated for sun’s Solar Elevation Angle at each hour of the day, then totaled for the 24 hours.
The last column is the Daily Total of DIFFERENCE between the solar energy absorbed in water at each hour, minus the solar energy absorbed by the sea ice at that same hour of the day and day of year. (Sea ice albedo gets substantially darker through the year, so more energy is absorbed as the summer gets longer.)
[Corrected formatting. .mod]
Q:(from scruffy sceptic) Why do we need to do this ?
A: (from distinguished professor); To provide stable ice platforms so that Polar bears can catch seals after emerging from hibernation.
Q : How do they catch seals?
A: They wait for seals to come out on the ice and then ambush them
Q: How likely is it that a seal will approach an ice floe throbbing with wind turbines and sucking up gallons/sec of water and spraying it all around ?
A: We believe that they will just love it and of course the noise will mask the sound of the bear’s stealthy approach . Win all round really , well except for the seal , and the US taxpayer and the US Navy men and women who go out to do the maintenance on 50 million devices in the middle of winter in a howling gale.
Arctic sea ice will “recover” all by itself. It has gone through many cycles much warmer than now.
This year’s unusually slow melt continues. Starting from a lower maximum, thanks to the El Nino, sea ice extent is now higher than at this time in 2015 and 2016.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Having slightly more open water this winter meant that more heat was lost from the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas than normal. The cooler water is retarding the thaw.
Shhhhhh! Don’t confuse the climate consensus with thoughtful fact based analysis. All that matters is that the eeeevil conservatives are to blame for the apocalypse their profits have declared.
You’ve got to hand it to them – they never pass up an opportunity for exploitation, in order to further their agenda.
Windmills in the Arctic. Boy, I ‘d love to be the guy chopping the ice of those things in mid-February.
https://www.google.at/search?q=mick+jagger+keith+richards+you+can%E2%80%99t+always+get+what+you+want&oq=mick+jagger+keith+richards+you+can%E2%80%99t+always+get+what+you+want&aqs=chrome.
As I said last time this insanity was dragged up, I have no problem at all with this.
As long as they try this with their own money, not mine.
And their own planet, not mine.
Hey!
Here’s an idea. Why not ship all the sawdust from make making those wood pellets being shipped to the UK (?) and mix it in with the salt water being pumped to make Pycrete!
It takes longer to melt than regular ice.
Great idea. Just don’t do it with drama this time…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete
“Another tale is that at the Quebec Conference of 1943 Mountbatten brought a block of pykrete along to demonstrate its potential to the entourage of admirals and generals who had come along with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next, he fired at the pykrete to give an idea of the resistance of that kind of ice to projectiles. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of Admiral Ernest King and ending up in the wall. According to Perutz’s own account, however, the incident of a ricochetting bullet hitting an Admiral actually happened much earlier in London and the gun was fired by someone on the project—not Mountbatten.[8]”
They seriously considered building an aircraft carrier (or landing field) out of it in 1943!
Maybe they’re trying to figure out what to do with all of the industrial wind turbines in Ontario after they’re dismantled.
There will be numerous ice islands being propelled around the Arctic powered by their airborne propellers.
This is beyond stupid. It is 180 degrees opposite what the warmists claim to want!
@Eugene
“Quite obviously you need an auxillary heating system to heat the water enough so that does not happen. ”
Actually that is what the utility thought. Saved them millions, used it as a bullet point on my resume. Showed them how to solve the problem for free. Somethings are easy on dry land and insane in the arctic.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-sea-ice-scraping-bottom-of-barrel-21418
Has a diagram showing how little multi year ice is left….
“Ice older than five years in age now only comprises 5 percent of the Arctic’s ice pack. It accounted for 30 percent of all Arctic sea ice in 1984, …..
Young ice has sprung up in its place and now accounts for nearly 70 percent of all Arctic ice, up from just 35 percent just three decades ago.”
In fact that article has the 2016 diagram… situation in 2017 much worse: see comparison in
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Stranne et al., 2013 demonstrated that the modern day Arctic sea ice extent is more comparable to that of the last Pleistocene glacial stage than to that of the Holocene Climatic Optimum (9,000-5,000 years before present).
This model referred to in the OP shows a mean ice thickness for the present about 3m whereas measurements give somewhere between 1-1.5 m, comparable with the Holocene Climate Optimum values they show. Their calculations were based on the preindustrial conditions not present-day.
How often does the temperature get above freezing in the Arctic ?? I thought they melted from below…
Butch
It’s a good question, and the answers in the actual papers describing the two circumstances are themselves somewhat confusing. Best general rule is: Arctic sea ice melts from the top down (stagnant, shallow melt water ponds on the top of the floating sea ice, with air temperatures just above freezing at 3-4 degrees C during the short summer weeks. Below, the sea water is “not freezing” (not accumulating) rather than “actively and rapidly melting” with water temperatures between 2 and 4 deg C. Antarctic sea ice is above much water waters (4-5 deg C) and those waters are more active (circulating and flowing faster underneath each year’s sea ice). Around the Antarctic, almost all of the sea ice refreezes each year (very little is second and third year “fast ice” near the shores) and 100% of the sea ice far from the shores is first year ice.
The Antarctic sea ice melts from below, there are almost no stagnant melt water ponds on top of the sea ice, and so fresh snow accumulates on top very often through the whole year. As a result, the Antarctic sea ice has a higher albedo (cleaner, fresh snow instead of dirty polluted snow and dust and melt ponds) over the entire year. 0.83 on average, only going down slightly to 0.75 in December – January – Feb.
..Thanks…I think …
Bottom melting from warm ocean water is also a factor (increasingly so)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016EGUGA..18..268M
RACookPE1978 May 4, 2017 at 7:15 am
The Antarctic sea ice melts from below, there are almost no stagnant melt water ponds on top of the sea ice, and so fresh snow accumulates on top very often through the whole year.
Also according to NSIDC:
“Antarctic sea ice tends to be covered by thicker snow, which may accumulate to the point that the weight of snow pushes the ice below sea level, causing the snow to become flooded by salty ocean waters.”