The overly excitable director of that National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is at it again. Previously, we’ve heard him declare “death spiral” and “the Arctic is screaming” to convey his alarmed viewpoint on Arctic Sea Ice. Now, he’s got a new one, courtesy of Seth Borenstein at The Associated Press:
“It’s just crazy, crazy stuff,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who has been studying the Arctic since 1982. “These heat waves, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Well of course you haven’t seen anything like it before. We only have a short duration record of Arctic Sea Ice/Arctic weather, and Mr. Serreze probably isn’t a fan of historical anecdotes, like what happened well before he was born, such as this report from 1922:
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Hmmm, well “crazy stuff” or not, according to the NSIDC Sea Ice Report on March 6th, the same day as “crazy stuff” was uttered, we see that the Arctic sea ice is still there. The headline was apparently written by one of the calmer employees at NSIDC:
A warm approach to the equinox
As temperatures at the North Pole approached the melting point at the end of February, Arctic sea ice extent tracked at record low levels for this time of year. Extent was low on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the Arctic, with open water areas expanding rapidly in the Bering Sea during the latter half of the month. On the other side of the globe, Antarctic sea ice has reached its minimum extent for the year, the second lowest in the satellite record.
Winter continues to be mild over the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice extent remained at record low daily levels for the month. Arctic sea ice extent for February 2018 averaged 13.95 million square kilometers (5.39 million square miles). This is the lowest monthly average recorded for February, 1.35 million square kilometers (521,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average and 160,000 square kilometers (62,000) below the previous record low monthly average in 2017.
Extent was especially low in the Bering Sea where sea ice declined during the first three weeks of the month. The eastern part of the Bering Sea was largely ice-free for most of the month; extent was low on the western side, with the ice edge further north than normal. In the Chukchi Sea, extent also retreated during part of February, with open water developing north of the Bering Strait on both the Siberian and Alaskan coasts. As seen all winter, ice extent continued to be below average in the Barents Sea, and at the end of February, a wedge of open water formed north of Svalbard that extended well into the Arctic Ocean.
Low pressure centered just east of the Kamchatka Peninsula and high pressure centered over Alaska and the Yukon during February set up southerly winds that brought warm air and warm ocean waters into the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean, impeding southward ice growth. This helps to explain the rapid loss of ice extent in the Bering Sea and the ice-free regions within the Chukchi Sea during the month. The warm air intrusion is evident in the 925 mb air temperatures, with monthly temperatures 10 to 12 degrees Celsius (18 to 22 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in the Chukchi and Bering Sea.
On the Atlantic side, low pressure off the southeast coast of Greenland and high pressure over northern Eurasia helped to funnel warm winds into the region and may have also enhanced the northward transport of oceanic heat. At the end of the month, this atmospheric circulation pattern was particularly strong, associated with a remarkable inflow of warm air from the south, raising the temperatures near the North Pole to above freezing, around 20 to 30 degrees Celsius (36 to 54 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. Air temperatures at Cape Morris Jesup in northern Greenland (83°37’N, 33°22’W) exceeded 0 degrees Celsius for several hours and open water formed to the north of Greenland at the end of the month. This is the third winter in a row in which extreme heat waves have been recorded over the Arctic Ocean. A study published last year by Robert Graham from the Norwegian Polar Institute showed that recent warm winters represent a trend towards increased duration and intensity of winter warming events within the central Arctic. While the Arctic has been relatively warm for this time of year, northern Europe was hit by extreme cold conditions at the end of February.
Full report with additional graphs here: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2018/03/a-warm-approach-to-the-equinox/
I guess I just can’t get too worked up about Serreze and his “crazy stuff” opinion, especially when the official NSIDC report is much more sedate.
As I’ve said before, given his own irresponsible pronouncements to the press, Mr. Serreze probably isn’t the best spokesman for NSIDC.
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When the sun goes away for 6 months yer gonna get ice.
Well, yes. That old T⁴ factor will make ice every winter. Especially with the black body temperature of the sky @ur momisugly 4⁰K.
Yes the Arctic has been unusually warm – DMI showed that a week ago or so, but it never got close (on average) to the freezing point, and now it has plummeted over the last 4 days to near normal (-25 C) or about -14 F. Not much melting going on – Air temp is irrelevant to ice forming or melting anyway, at least on the edges – that is driven by water temps.
However, think about all the heat in the arctic atmosphere that was measured in February and early March – it came from lower latitudes (because no heat is generated up there – no sun), and then when the temperature dropped, it meant that the lower latitude heat disappeared – did it go back south? No, it radiated back into space, and was lost to the planet. The more heat that moves to the arctic, the cooler the planet becomes. It’s like opening the damper on your fireplace chimney in the dead of winter – all the heat goes up the chimney. I expect a cool spring, and likely late ice breakup again – the ocean must be really getting cold as the heat is lost to open water.
It will also be interesting to see how late the max extent is this year. We are already seeing continued growth in Arctic Sea Ice volume, no sign of that abating yet.
Note that Antarctica had one of the earliest minimums a few weeks ago, and ice down there appears to be reforming more rapidly than usual.
“The more heat that moves to the arctic, the cooler the planet becomes.”
…
That is not true. The more heat that moves to the arctic shows that the rest of the planet is getting warmer, and the Arctic cannot shed the heat fast enough.
do you think that the warm air that moves to the arctic stays there c.paul pieret ? the heat in the air leaves faster than anywhere else on the planet during arctic winter as the height of the tropopause above the arctic is approximately half that of the equator.
warm arctic winters are indeed planetary cooling events.
‘C’, do you have any evidence to back up your wishful thinking?
First off, the planet isn’t warming. The only warming in the last 20 years was the recent El Nino, and it’s impact is rapidly fading. Seconly, it’s well known that the end pulse of an El Nino is to send warm water up to the Arctic.
When it’s unusually warm in the arctic, you can be sure it’s unusually cold in areas nearby the arctic. This is weather and conmected to specific weather patterns, it has nothing to do with the planet getting warmer or cooler.
C. Paul Pierett
March 9, 2018 at 4:06 pm: The proof, C. Paul, lies in the falling tropical heat content. Elsewhere too, if you really want to look…. Brett
C. Paul Pierett,
Taylor is spot on. You need to think about where all the heat, that you admit is being shed, is coming from.
First, much (if not most) of the “warming” being seen in the world average comes from adding in the arctic warmth. If you subtract that warmth from the average, the rest of the world is close to normal. Is it not a trick an accountant might be arrested for, to say heat that does not exist in non-arctic areas is heating the arctic?
Second, arctic air is very dry. Most of the humidity in it has gone through the phase changes from gas-to-liquid and from liquid-to-solid, and snowed out. What you are left with is air that is is easy to warm, as no water is involved. A degree of temperature-rise in dry, arctic air involves far less energy than the same temperature-rise in hot, humid tropical air. To weight the temperature-changes the same is silly.To have tropical air a half-degree colder should have the weight of a ten degree rise in the arctic.
Third, energy does not merely exist in a form measured by heat and humidity, but also in the form we call “wind”. What does less wind (energy) in the tropics do? It results in warmer temperatures. How? If the trade winds are less there is less up-welling of cold water. Result? Less wind results in weaker La Ninas and stronger El Ninos. Conclusion? Though it is counter-intuitive, less energy as wind results in more energy as warm humid air. In this manner less energy, from the “Quiet Sun”, can result in more energy escaping the oceans. That is where the heat is coming from, that you notice heading up to the Pole.
We have had significant amounts of energy moving from lower latitudes to the artic through the recent influx of relatively warm air for the artic.
Given that the artic especially around winter months has a significant net heat loss to space this suggests that this recent occurrence will in fact accelerate the cooling of the planet.
Yes the artic warmed above its average (although still predominately below freezing) but it will have radiated most of this energy to space. During this same period the lower latitudes saw a dramatic cooling as witnessed.
In light of the above, does anyone have any figures on how readily the poles sink/radiate heat on a monthly basis? There is data here from Nasa indicating that at the equinox months of march and sept there is a net radiation effect of -200W/sqm across the poles on average. The arctic is still largely in darkness as it has only just moved into march and will have a higher average radiation level. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page3.php
It would be good to determine if during colder periods the disruption of the polar vortex happens more readily resulting in more heat being transported to the poles and a larger net heat loss to space. This is a positive cooling feedback scenario.
However, perhaps the system acts as a negative feedback system and only when the planet warms the vortex is disrupted potentially causing net heat loss and cooling.
The length of time ice ages last could lend to the former or the fact that the global climate seems to have some strong feedback mechanisms lends itself to the latter.
Would anyone have any thoughts or data?
Do we see evidence of more polar vortex disruption during the little ice ages? I see most new data shows a worldwide cooling during these events so that would suggest the cooling feedback cycle dominates if the polar vortex is more actively disrupted in these periods…
Sensible discussion always welcome.
All my best regards
Whenever arctic air plummets south, it is replaced by new air that comes from an area south to well south of the arctic.
It’s hardly surprising that when the jet stream is aligned to make it easy for polar air to move south, that the poles will warm.
It also isn’t surprising when the clueless, the deceitful or both, try to take advantage of this to make an unsupportable claim about warming in the arctic.
Where’s Griff these days, has he/she/it gone back into rehab ?
Is that the reason we have the replacement idiot troll Brad Keyes ?
Brad Keyes, infamous for such things as likening Michael Mann to Jesus.
His skills in rhetorical douchebaggery are pretty unique. Take, for example…
“Part of being a science communicator is hoping a natural disaster kills as many members of the audience as possible, as soon as possible, with as much media exposure as possible. As a communicator myself, I’d like nothing better than if thousands of middle-class white people died in an extreme weather event—preferably one with global warming’s fingerprints on it. Live on cable news. Tomorrow.”
Best of all, he’s really not even concerned about facts and science, really.
“Deniers are continually pressing for a scientific debate. Why? Because they can’t refute the political reality (that climate change necessitates a new world order). So they attack the weakest link—the science—instead.”
I think there are quite a lot of readers here who think Brad is serious. Humor using irony and sarcasm often doesn’t work very well on the internet.
What an awful ideology, it’s outright scary that some people can wish for the tragedy of people they don’t know.
We have to fight for our freedom to speak openly about science and politics without having to turn to threats and possible violence. In the past people were actually punished for thinking the earth was round. For a very long time it was impossible to challenge the flat-earth dogma. This resembles what we’re seeing know, the science is settled and it doesn’t matter if observations contradicts the proposed hypotheses of CO2. The only thing missing is the implementation of a law that will control what you’re allowed to claim officially in public as a scientist. Any public attempts by scientists to describe reality differently than what has been agreed on would then be a subject to legal prosecution. This is appears to be the ultimate goal of many of the policy makers of the IPCC.
People are blinded by fancy computer generated graphs and maps that are being generated by state-of-the-art models. It is so advanced and pretty looking that it simply has to be a valid representation of reality. And when observations doesn’t fit the models, it is perfectly valid to make some adjustments to the raw data as long as you can cook up some reasonable explanations. Most people will buy it even if such adjustments can’t be physically validated in reality.
The ever proselyte CBC quoted the Borenstein article, suppressing comments as usual so crowd education could be stifled… http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/warmest-arctic-winter-1.4565495
The IPCC and every warmist talks about doubling the CO2 We havent doubled it yet from pre industrial level of 280ppm . So now we are at 408 ppm. It has taken us 68 years to increase it by 128 ppm or to put it in financial terms the growth rate has been .0055 or just a little bit higher than 1/2 % . The warmists will argue that the trend line is a quadratic or some such similar curve. However if you look at the increases since 2000 there has not been an acceleration. Therefore if we project from the present to the next doubling at a growth rate of 0.0055 it will be 126 years before we get a doubling in the atmosphere, And there is still argument of how much temperature increase there will be with a doubling . Well if you look at past doublings for any range you want to pick the sensitivity has been very low; much lower than any IPCC future projections. The problem for the warmists is we have had 68 years of CO2 readings and 68 years of temperature readings and not only have we not seen CAGW; we havent even seen AGW to any large degree. The increases in temperature have been so small as to be laughable. I will take an increase of even 1C every century. The plants will love it. We arent even on track for that. I have noticed that the global warming hoax has now scared not only every climate scientist to shut their mouth about their true feelings about this massive hoax but it has permeated to every faculty in the world at every university. Everyone is so scared about their careers that they dont dare speak the truth. Very few non retired scientists have come out against this hoax. Pat Frank, Judith Curry,….Willy Soon ……….etc have risked their careers to speak the truth. As more and more scientists retire we will see vast increases of scientists who are against this hoax.
Yup. CO2 levels will not double because we simply won’t be able to burn enough fossil fuels to do so. We won’t extract enough fossil fuels, and what we do extract, we are not burning fast enough. The cAGW arguments fail at multiple points in the logical chain of events needed before the much-hoped-for disaster can occur. But the proponents of disaster don’t give up hope. It is a strange mental condition.
Mark, I’ll bet you’re bald before the Arctic is free of ice. And you’re already losing that bet.
So lots of blame goes to CO 2… Yet we know so little about how much non man-made there actually is…http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/do_current_climate_change_models_contain_an_epic_error/
It is noteworthy (and not coincidental) that the northernmost province of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Gakkel Ridge, which extends from the northern tip of Greenland to the depths off the Siberian Coast, corresponds to the largest intrusion of open water into the ice cap AND a notoriously active volcanic zone. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0625_030625_gakkelridge.html
“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer..”
White Star Line were just too quick off the mark with their ship ‘Titanic’. They should have waited a few years before sending it on its maiden voyage.
In 1874 HMS Alert, with an R & W Hawthorn compound-expansion engine, reached 82° north.
t was the eleventh ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name (or a variant of it), and was noted for her Arctic exploration work; in 1876 it reached a record latitude of 82° North. The British Arctic Expedition was commanded by Captain George Strong Nares, and comprised Alert (Captain Nares) and Discovery (Captain Henry Frederick Stephenson). The expedition aimed to reach the North Pole via Smith Sound, the sea passage between Greenland and Canada’s northernmost island, Ellesmere Island.
The geography of northern Canada and Greenland is dotted with the names of those connected with the expedition: Nares Strait, Nares Lake, Markham Ice Shelf, Ayles Ice Shelf, and Mount Ayles. The northernmost permanently inhabited place on earth, the settlement of Alert at the northern point of Ellesmere Island, was named for the ship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Alert_(1856)#cite_note-CCG-3
Now, let me point out a few more ominous observations, more threatening even than [Serreze’s] forecasts. Remember, Ice ages are said to begin when the Arctic (60-70 north latitude band) becomes more reflective with a higher total albedo. (Land area is much, more important in terms of area and albedo than sea area, and the Arctic land mass is darkening as more plants grow longer and more productively due to increased CO2 levels. So sea ice is less important than land snow and ice between 60 and 70 degrees north.)
Summer 2016 and summer 2017 were the FIRST years EVER in the satellite era that the Bering Sea ice (latitude 60-62 north) did NOT melt out completely.
Summer 2016 and summer 2017 were the FIRST years EVER in the satellite era that the Sea Ice covering the Sea of Okhotsk (latitude 58-60 north) did NOT melt out completely.
Winter 2017 (November-December, just four months ago) saw increases in the Hudson Bay sea ice (latitude 60 north) over its recent average daily areas. (The 30 year Hudson Bay sea ice daily average areas remain higher than the November-December 2017 daily areas.)
In summer 2017, the Gulf of St Lawrence did melt out (as it always has before), but the Gulf of St Lawrence River (latitude 48 north) had an extended sea ice coverage several weeks later than ANY previous year in the satellite records.
So, why do these small areas matter?
The “extra” solar energy reflected from “excess sea ice” at the lower latitudes of 48-67 north is 2-3 times that of an equal area up in the Arctic Ocean itself. Classic (conventional) arctic sea ice theory is represented by [Serrezes’] “Arctic Death Spiral”: Less sea ice => More solar energy absorbed => Warmer Arctic Ocean => More sea ice melting => More solar energy absorbed => Warmer Arctic ocean …
And, to a limited degree, this is what happens. In the 4 summer months from mid-April to mid-August.
But, for the remaining 8 moths of the year, the opposite occurs. Less sea ice = More energy lost from the newly exposed Arctic Ocean due to increased long wave radiation (the ocean radiates at +2 to +4 degrees C, the ice radiates at -25 degrees or less), more evaporation of the wind-thrashed open ocean surface (compared to an ice-covered surface with only limited ablation heat losses) , less thermal conduction (insulation losses through the 1-2 meters of solid ice compared to freely circulating ocean water to the exposed surface), and convection losses to the Arctic winds across the warmer ocean surface.
So: Less sea ice => More heat losses from the newly exposed ocean surface for a longer period of time. But, what is the difference over the course of an entire year? No one in the “conventional” Arctic sea ice community has publicly written about the differences over the course of an entire year.
There’s crazy stuff in the Arctic, all right, especially when Serreze is there.