I called the Arctic sea-ice turn upwards a few days ago here. From NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER and the “you could also say 31st highest on record” department.
End-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent is eighth lowest on record
Arctic sea ice appeared to have reached its yearly lowest extent on Sept. 13, NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder have reported. Analysis of satellite data by NSIDC and NASA showed that at 1.79 million square miles (4.64 million square kilometers), this year’s Arctic sea ice minimum extent is the eighth lowest in the consistent long-term satellite record, which began in 1978.
Arctic sea ice, the layer of frozen seawater covering much of the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas, is often referred to as the planet’s air conditioner: its white surface bounces solar energy back to space, cooling the globe. The sea ice cap changes with the season, growing in the autumn and winter and shrinking in the spring and summer. Its minimum summertime extent, which typically occurs in September, has been decreasing, overall, at a rapid pace since the late 1970s due to warming temperatures.
This year, temperatures in the Arctic have been relatively mild for such high latitudes, even cooler than average in some regions. Still, the 2017 minimum sea ice extent is 610,000 square miles (1.58 million square kilometers) below the 1981-2010 average minimum extent.
“How much ice is left at the end of summer in any given year depends on both the state of the ice cover earlier in the year and the weather conditions affecting the ice,” said Claire Parkinson, senior climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The weather conditions have not been particularly noteworthy this summer. The fact that we still ended up with low sea ice extents is because the baseline ice conditions today are worse than the baseline 38 years ago.”
The three years with the lowest Arctic ice extents on record –2012, 2016 and 2007– experienced strong summer storms that hammered the ice cover and sped up its melt. “In all of those cases, the weather conditions contributed to the reduced ice coverage. But if the exact same weather system had occurred three decades ago, it is very unlikely that it would have caused as much damage to the sea ice cover, because back then the ice was thicker and it more completely covered the region, hence making it more able to withstand storms,” Parkinson said.
On the other side of the planet, Antarctica is heading to its maximum yearly sea ice extent, which typically occurs in September or early October. This year’s maximum extent is likely to be among the eight lowest in the satellite record — a dramatic turn of events considering that 2012, 2013 and 2014 all saw consecutive record high maximum extents, followed by a sudden large drop in 2015 and a further although smaller decrease in 2016. So far, the September Antarctic ice extents this year are comparable to those of a year ago.
“What had been most surprising about the changing sea ice coverage in the past three decades was the fact that the Antarctic sea ice was increasing instead of decreasing,” Parkinson said. “The fact of Arctic sea ice decreases was not as shocking because this was expected with a warming climate, although the overall rate of the decreases was greater than most models had forecast.”
Parkinson said that although it is still too early to talk about a long-term reversal in the behavior of Antarctic sea ice, the decreases witnessed in the past two years provide important data to test the various hypotheses that scientists have put forward to explain why Antarctic sea ice coverage had been increasing, overall, between 1979 and 2015.
Adding the Antarctic and Arctic sea ice extents month by month through the satellite record shows that globally the Earth has been losing sea ice since the late 1970s in each portion of the annual cycle of ice growth and decay.
“In fact, this year, every single month from January through August experienced a new monthly record low in global sea ice extents,” Parkinson said.
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NSIDC concurs here
Source: https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
Who was it that bet they could fly from Svalbard to the N Pole not seeing ice this year? Where are they now?
It was running at 3rd lowest and contesting 2012 for August… a cold central arctic and storms saved it from being the record it looked likely to be after a record low ice extent through the winter.
The volume is low… though the extent held up – remember that 15% or more ice covered counts as extent – the state of half the ice cap was little better than broken slush.
The thickness is about the worst it has been in recent years… only a thin band of 2m plus ice hung on crammed against the land.
This was a bullet dodged… not a recovery. The weather causes variation in the downward trend and this year was at the cold extreme/poor melting extreme limit of that variation.
Now we see what kind of freeze we get… so far only the central slush has frozen and the limits of the ice pack aren’t growing. If we get another low extent winter and next year an average melt season, we’ll see continued decline.
and we are going to see a new record and open water from coast to pole… don’t fool yourselves any other possibility is on the cards. We have low volume, thin ice…
Griff
You were wrong all year long (as I told you all year long) and you are wrong now as usual, take the bet or go away.
and we are going to see a new record and open water from coast to pole… open Arctic water is a cooling earth. So now you admit the earth will cool?
Priceless, Griffie! During the decline, no mention of weather on Arctic sea ice extent. Having flattened out over the past 11 years, now it’s weather impacting increasing ice extents.
Yawn, Griff…….
you are wrong ALL the time.
It’s freezing rapidly at the moment.
Give it up. You lost. There is no excuse.
The 2007, 2012 and 2016 lows were all because of weather, too. Arctic sea ice since 1979 has never gone five years without a new low. Now it has, and that run is liable to be extended indefinitely, perhaps for decades.
The fact is that Arctic sea ice extent has stopped dropping for the past eleven years and has grown for the past five. A rational person would conclude that the bottom is in, as wiser heads told you was the case.
Arctic sea ice, like most climatic phenomena, is cyclical. We’ve entered the up cycle. CO2 has nothing to do with it.
PS: A number of other years also tracked 2012 in August. It doesn’t mean anything, as you were told before hand. If there are storms in August or September, then extent will be lower. If not, then not.
A big gale has blown up on the Siberian side of the Pole (Sept 21) but it is too late to shrink extent much and may increase as the winds are below freezing, and as low as -7C. It is the gales in late July and August that can give the lowest extents, though by chilling and churning the water they also may increase the following year’s extents.
There is a Nimbus satellite picture of sea ice from September 1969 which shows a very large lagoon of open water in the sea-ice well north of Alaska. Alarmists conveniently forget the Nimbus pictures, though WUWT politely pointed them out in 2014.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/04/1960s-satellite-imagery-of-polar-ice-discovers-enormous-holes-in-the-sea-ice/
What bullet did we dodge there, Griff? Too nice out? Happy polar bears lolling around in the sun? Longer growing season? More active Arctic food chain?
You are not living in reality, man!
Griff,
How many more years without a new lower low record will it take to convince you that Arctic sea ice extent is growing, and has been doing so since 2012?
Another five years? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? Never, ever, no matter what?
And yet the Antartic set a record lowest maximum, or so I am told elsewhere. Could someone say if the total sea ice (north and south) has set a record for the lowest high?
Listen folks, you cannot have records every year. But we got 2 this year.
Now 2 out of 3 is bad.
The Antarctic sets no low in 2017. It is a little bit higher as 1986 according to Univ. Bremen ( AMSRE2):
Less ice is 99% GOOD! But sadly, it is nearly meaningless as it is just a function of short term variability.
This underlines how irrelevant ice extent in winter is.
A few years back when winter Arctic ice extent was higher than usual, the warmists said “winter extent does not matter since it’s bounded by land, etc.”
This year when winter Arctic ice extent was lower than usual, the warmists changed their tune and said “OMG it’s worse than we thought we must act now!”
They were right the first time.
And its winter high was just barely lower, due to an event in March.
Antarctic ice however was much lower in summer than usual at the end of the melt season there, significantly lower, which did affect its winter high.
Exactly, the hypocrites are a disgrace to science.
Poor old warmists – they had such high hopes for this summer in the Arctic after the mild (El Nino) Arctic winter and consequent low maximum ice extent. Probably the reason that they are investing so much hyperbole into the current hurricane season.
Greg, 9:48 am your vase analogy is completely wrong.
The analogy should be of a block of ice in a bucket. Upon bringing it to a warm environment the temperature will rise at a rate dependant on delta T . As the warming continues the surface rate of rise temperature will slow down due to the ratedlte T decreasing due to the subsurface warming and later on due to the latent heat of ice. When the ice melts there will be very little rise in surface temperature until the ice melts when the temperature rise rate will increase again. Ice has this effect of putting a lull in the increas in temperature.
I.e. it is not expected to be linear,
Negative feedback in action where winter sea ice melting keeps the summer temperature cool. While winter ice is always there, the summer temperature will never change much, unless significant change occurs in the AMOC.
Been saying it all summer long, bet Tony Mcleod and now he’s gone, told Griff and all the others, low winter high doesn’t mean low summer low. They kept saying all summer long the ice is extremely thin and broken up, i kept telling them they are crazy. The more sophisticated our equipment gets the more dumb the comments get. Just like the hurricanes, “unprecedented, largest ever, most hurricanes at one time” No just better equipment detecting hurricanes we would never have noticed in the past. Same with the ice, there is nothing unprecedented about the melt this year and nothing different about the quality of the ice, we just have better satellites looking at it so everyone can be an expert.
++++1000.
Not every fish storm was covered in 1850, nor was its “sustained wind” ever measured, and yet the AGW providers produce a sea-ice graphic from 1850, initially with whale catcher watching data from the Bering Sea. This, of course, explains a lot.
Reminds me of the joke about a 1960’s automobile competition sponsored by the Soviets, featuring only US and Soviet cars. The American cars won, but the Soviet headlines read: “In an International car competition, the Soviets came in 2nd and the Americans 2nd to last.”
This year the arctic car came in the 8th to last. Who knows, maybe in 2018, NASA and the NSIDC will be counted differently?
Low Arctic sea ice during 2012 and 2016 may have been triggered initially by submarine volcanic eruptions.
For 2012, see climatic impacts of the El Hierro eruption in the north Atlantic Ocean (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257936017_Climatic_impacts_of_the_October_2011_to_March_2012_El_Hierro_submarine_volcanic_eruption).
For 2016, see explanation on the North Pacific Blob and the strong 2015-2016 El Nino using geothermal heat released into the Pacific Ocean (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311066468_Explanation_for_the_northern_Pacific_Blob and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316630184_Geothermal_heat_an_episodic_heat_source_in_oceans).
What are the odds that if Arctic sea ice recovers over the next decade, Antarctic sea ice takes its place? Therefore leading to a reversal of fortunes.
Yet another “Negative feedback” could be demonstrated.
Arctic ice influences the NH more than Antarctic ice influences the SH because it is surrounded by land. Still if it was to vanish in future, it would only be for a very short time near end of summer and would soon refreeze again after. I doubt anybody in the NH would notice any difference living away from there.
IMO Antarctic sea ice will recover, too. Its growth this year has been normal, but it started from a low point, due to the combination of rare weather events last year.
“Arctic sea ice,…, is often referred to as the planet’s air conditioner…”
I think of it more tile the planets toque (aka wool cap as you southerners call it). The ice is a great insulator and prevents massive energy loss. Just think how much energy would be lost to space as the days get shorter (then end) if there was more open water. This is why we usually get record breaking freeze-up immediately after a record breaking low extent.
Minimum ice extent is caused by slightly warmer ocean water. The open water causes the higher, marine temperature environment in the Arctic that we have seen lately which is a very significant aspect of the higher global temperatures that are sure to doom us all, dontcha know? This is all a fabricated and deliberately misstated and temporary feature of the longer Arctic ice cycle.
The planet is probably actually warming very slightly and slowly from the LIA but it is a good thing and has nothing to do with CO2. That warming is probably due to deep ocean currents which affect climate on longer time scales of hundreds or even thousands of years. The fantastic contortions of logic that the AGW mainstream uses to avoid investigating these phenomena speak to the utter falsity of what they call their “science”. It is a joke!
Um, you’re quite underestimating the alarmists’ creativity. It ain’t over til it’s over, and OSISAF shows the way with their Arctic Sea Ice Extent graphic at http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php (click the graphic to get the latest). Their “Operational Product” which shows this year’s mundane Arctic minimum is progressively being replaced by their official “Climate Data Record” which lags 6 weeks behind and displays a considerably lower sea ice extent. I see little connection between the two — the operational product is being wholly superseded and will never be heard from again, once replaced by the “climate data record”, but OSISAF can claim they used the observations. So the “official” minimum will be pronounced in 6 weeks’ time, and it will conform to whatever they want it to be. Wait for it, and take screen shots in the meantime.
I guess they must err on the side of caution with the operational product, which I assume is for use by mariners plying to/from Danish Greenland. They would want to avoid a situation where a sea captain could accuse them after he has found dense ice in a sea-lane which they had declared to practically ice free.
Even so, I can’t understand how this sea-ice measurement is so different to the others.
It seems to me that the Arctic sea-ice benefitted greatly from a number of “the right sort” of storms during the Arctic winter. While the alarmists were all alarming about and getting their shorts in a twist about some anomalously high temperatures (but still well below freezing), they don’t seem to have noticed that these were caused by storms. I remarked to someone at the time that these storms would probably be beneficial because they would a) compress and compact the ice so that it became thicker and stronger; b) facilitate the creation of new ice by cyclically opening up leads and then freezing them over again.
While summer storms tend to destroy the sea-ice (as in 2007 and 2012); winter storms create and strengthen it.
What an embarrassingly desperate attempt by the warmists to hype up the natural September minimum.
Is it ok to question “the record” ? The mean, as I understand it, begins just after the horror stories of the pending ice age of the 1970s which ended a nearly continuous temperature decline from the 1930s. I understand the satellite record just happened to start in 1979, but why are we continuing to ignore the starting point for “the record” aligns with laser precision at the end of a cooling period in 1981? What’s up with that? And then the end date for the extent period is what – 2002? What the hell’s up with that? Did I miss the memo that this period 1980 – 2002 is sacred and untouchable? This should be a Monty Python skit.
they are liars, two storms compacted ice in the beaufort sea late 2016 early 2017, it was clear as day on sat images breaking up and compacting the ice, NASA are pathological liars
Arctic sea ice is rapidly growing. Next year is liable to elicit yet more lame excuse-making from alarmists, when summer minimum again makes no new record low.
As often happens in late September and early August, Antarctic sea ice has been growing for three straight days. It probably won’t keep going to make a higher high than in mid-September, but this gain augurs well for next year. It was low ice due to freak spring weather events which set up this year’s lower than normal Southern ocean sea ice. More pain and suffering in sight for Warmunistas in 2018.