According to The Guardian, there is a “global heat wave” going on right now.
In Siberia, the heat is supposedly “completely unprecedented” and will surely (we are told) impact Arctic sea ice — the habitat of the iconic polar bear. Yet a comparison of previous years shows little to no impact on sea ice: there is more ice present than there was in 2007.
Said The Guardian (July 9, 2018):
“But though we cannot say definitively that the current heatwave is caused by carbon emissions, it fits the pattern of long-term changes that we call climate. It is part of a global phenomenon, even if not the most important part.
The really significant change is happening in eastern Siberia at the moment, where a completely unprecedented heatwave is warming that Arctic coastline, with consequences that are unpredictable in detail but surely bad on a large scale.” [my bold]
The heat — which some folks admit they not only expect during this season called summer but anticipate with joy — has been around since late June, with several locales outside Siberia affected, including southern Ontario, Quebec, Los Angeles CA, Britan, many locations in the eastern USA, Europe.
With so many locations across the Northern Hemisphere experiencing very hot weather over the last few weeks (maybe record-breaking, maybe not), let’s take a look at what all that heat is doing to Arctic sea ice compared to previous years.
Look at 2007 first, for the date of July 8 (courtesy NSIDC’s new sea ice comparison tool).
Recall that 2007 had the 2nd lowest summer sea ice minimum since 1979.
It turns out that 2007 also had late June heat waves in western North America and Asia (here and here) but I guess not as hot as this year or this year’s heat waves surely would not be newsworthy.
Below is what sea ice extent looked like for 8 July 2007, with a big patch of open water off Siberia in the East Siberian Sea, the Southern Beaufort, Chukchi, and Kara Seas and virtually no ice left in Hudson Bay:
And below is what sea ice extent looked like for 8 July 2018 (Sunday), with a big patch of open water off Siberia (but not much larger than 2007), a small patch in the Southern Beaufort but lots of ice still in the Western Beaufort, the Chukchi Sea around Wrangel Island, in the eastern Laptev Sea and the western Kara Sea.
Although there is less ice in the Barents Sea than in 2007, the Central Canadian Archipelago is still clogged with ice and southern-most Hudson Bay is still half-filled with ice:
Bottom line: NSIDC shows slightly more ice this year than in 2007 at 8 July (here), despite weeks of record-breaking, late June/early July ‘global’ heat waves in 2018.
Note that the patch of open water off Siberia in the western Laptev Sea that is garnering attention was present in mid-June (shown below), well before the recent heat wave:
Did early summer heat waves cause sea ice to decline rapidly in 2007? If so, then the heat waves of the last few weeks cannot be as extraordinary as they are being made out to be.
OTHER YEARS BELOW, FOR COMPARISON:
Find more years or more recent data at NSIDC’s new sea ice comparison tool (these maps were generated by setting both maps to the same date).
Conclusion: I don’t see any startling differences to ice extent in 2018 that could be blamed on the last couple of weeks of ‘global heat’ (aka “summer”) during late June and early July.
So far, it looks more or less like the same kind of Arctic ice retreat we’ve been seeing for the last 9 years, except slower.
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Yes. Summer is absolute proof of global warming. Okay, so, actually, it’s only proof of half global warming, because the other half is experiencing global cooling. But let’s not allow facts to get in the way of a good propaganda scare.
Ahhhhh…. those cuddly, Coke-a-Cola drinking polar bears!
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-father-killed-by-polar-bear-while-protecting-his-children-in-nunavut/
And if you zoom in on the Charctic graph, you can see that the July melting has been slower than average.
To zoom in, hold the mouse button down and drag a rectangle on the chart.
I think that this is a great indicator of current Arctic conditions. Today’s Greenland smb. Consider that the melt season is likely to end in around 35 to 40 days from now. What will that mean for sea ice? The cruise ships better start sending out cancellation notices for the Northwest Passage this year.
Can you please explain what those graphs mean. Genuine question from someone who has see similar graphs before but unsure what to make of them.
Gigatonnes of ice gained or lost over Greenland’s surface due to precipitation and melting. One is the daily chart, and the other is the cumulative chart.
It is not the final accounting on Greenland’s ice because there is also a great amount of ice that is lost from glaciers into the sea every year. So nearly every year Greenland loses ice.
@ur momisugly Blackcap …note the continuing trend on Greenland, now 6 days later.
The upper graph is daily snow accumulation on the Greenland ice cap. The lower is cumulative since Sept 1 last year.
The takeaway message is with nearly half the normal melting season now gone the melt has barely started.
The takeaway message is with nearly half the normal melting season now gone the melt has barely started.
No the takeaway message is that precipitation has exceeded melt, the melt started in May and is continuing. Since May melt has mostly been above the median, currently melt extent is ~26% (median ~17%).
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
DMI data is slightly different, shows 17/07 data as 42% melt (mean ~31%).
http://www.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/e/n/i/b/m/Melt_combine.png
Something no one seems to have picked up on here from this article,
“But though we cannot say definitively that the current heatwave is caused by carbon emissions…”
Remember this is published in The Guardian, the paper that secretly thinks Marx was in it for the money, so coming from them this like is the equivalent of them openly stating that the threat of man made Global Warming is a scam.
It seems that Guardian has missed that Siberia has an extremely continental climate with very cold winters and hot summers. The July temperature in Yakutsk (capital of Yakutia) for example is higher than in Paris. But on the other hand in January it is 15 degrees (C) colder than Barrow, Alaska.
It reached -68 C one Tuesday in January. Yakutia is one heck of a cold place. I was in Ulaanbaatar that day and it was -42 C at 9 AM. And windy.
Well I was in travelling in the Rockies in Canada 10 days ago and I woke up in my truck camper to a temp of -3 C at an altitude of 4500 feet and snow on the ground, the snow was then repeated 2 days later on AB40 Forest Trunk Road about 100 miles south west of Calgary. Most people inc locals were shocked at the cold weather. Of course that week or so of cold weather over a vast area that included Idaho, Montana Alberta and BC did not make the media.
Why should a wave like that make news?
Because it’s been “unusually” cold from BC to Newfoundland… breaking all kinds of low NIGHT time temp records that they; the msm conveniently ignores.
How many times can the media say records are broken because the energy content of the Rossby waves has gone up. People’s eyes glaze over.
Obviously not enough when it comes to the cold records is all I’m pointing out.
Regardless of the Rossby waves -(we’re back in the 70s again) – but where’s the heat if c02 is the heat generator?
https://canoe.com/news/national/more-than-half-of-n-s-blueberry-crop-wiped-out-by-killer-frost-producers
Have family/friends from Alberta to Nova Scotia – we’re in ON. The night time temp dips have been very noticeable and does affect crop growth negatively.
Similar pattern set in last year for the summer as well.
Current heat wave – most heat we’ve had in a while. It’s mid summer here +30C is like having -30C in Jan. That’s really NOT that abnormal as compared to ALL the single digits nights we’ve been getting since May-June of last couple of years. June 28 in Ottawa – coldest am on record, +7.2 C.; +5C in areas around.
We don’t know.
CO2 slightly warms the planet (insufficient outflow), so the planetary waves gain the energy. They become elongated longitudinally, so there’s fewer of them. They’re wider which allows for persisting conditions which results in droughts, flooding, cold records and heat waves. It’s a complicated picture.
Is it the sun causing it instead?, magnetic changes? It’s very slight. We don’t know. But by the second part of this century it will be obvious to everyone.
It’s not C02, it’s barely 4% of the total atmosphere – to believe that it can change the global temps is just foolish. Truly foolish.
PS there is no heat increases as opposed to the increase in your magical C02.
Small correction: 0.04% of the total atmosphere.
A recent media report here in the UK said that “it is the hottest June since 1940!”. i.e. The June temperature has never been surpassed so it’s getting cooler. Maybe made-made global warming has failed.
Similarly June had very little rain – in fact it has been the driest June since 1925, so it was dryer in 1925. I suppose one could conclude that it’s getting wetter…
I wasn’t aware sea ice was so easily melted. A couple of weeks of hot and poof! It’s gone?
AGW warnings are about conditions for our great grandchildren.
Oh ok – so in 2 generations you think that the north pole will be all melted and won’t be in darkness with – 50C temps for months on end? lolz.
Careful. Don’t claim -50 daily air temperatures across the arctic sea ice as ANY routine occurance. Far more accurate to use DMI’s -31 to -33 degree C daily average. That value is supported by all modern long-term records.
Average daily air temperatures across the sea ice around the north pole seldom get below -32 degrees C (Soviet and Russian Ice Drift Station NP-1 through NP-33). But their coldest (extreme) drift station mean daily temperature did get down to “only” -48.9 C by NP-32.
However, note that the average daily temperatures from the Fram (ship) expedition through their months frozen in across the Arctic in 1895 DID (twice) get below -40 deg C twice. See Figure 2.25, Section 2.5 (Changes in meteorological conditions in the Arctic Basin, The Arctic Basin – Results from the Russian Drifting Stations by Ivan E. Frolov.)
Thank you for that clarification. I shall happily stand corrected.
ldd – the poles cool because of the long night.
Yes, so cool that it freezes and not much life as we like it thrives.
Yeppers. Starts mid-April. Every year. Begins freezing up again mid-August. Every year.
Said The Guardian (July 9, 2018):
“But though we cannot say definitively that the current heatwave is caused by carbon emissions, it fits the pattern of long-term changes that we call climate. It is part of a global phenomenon, even if not the most important part.”
_____________________________________________________
The radical green left is invincible – due to sheer dumb stubborn arrogance.
La-La-Land – fingers stucked into the ears “I can’t here you! “
Extra ice stands to reason.
If there are big blocking highs as we have over the UK, which is stopping all the Atlantic low pressure systems, then less energy is being transported by the atmosphere to the poles. In a normal year the Atlantic would be throwing a low pressure system (and all its warm air) every week, up into the polar regions.
I have not looked to see if the Pacific is doing the same sort of thing.
R
Your point is something unusual is going on now with cold core lows?
The only “global” aspect to the issue is the mass hysteria so far this summer.
The poor seal!!! Looks like it’s about to be eaten. Where are the “Save the Seals ” people?
Here is something of interest. Space.com has a post on an eclipse which will take place this Thursday which will affect the SH. The greatest impact will be in Antarctica. It will be interesting to watch and see if there will be noticeable temp changes due to the eclipse. …https://www.space.com/41115-solar-eclipse-above-antarctica.html
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica/concordia-station/historic
Using earthnullschool. …https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=168.56,-92.34,672/loc=-179.090,-89.601
Hmmmn. From the Ominous News Department about sea ice at latitude 60 north.
July 11, 2018. (From the NSIDC’s Regional Sea Ice database)
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/sea-ice-tools/
The NSIDC now confirms that yesterday’s Bering Sea Ice area of 2850 sq kilometers is now at its third-highest value ever recorded for 10 July! Only 1982 (3130.784 sq kilometers) and 1983 (3111.902 sq kilometers) were higher on July 10.
Nearby, also at latitude 60 north, the Sea of Okhotsk did set an all-time record for July 10 sea ice area at 4666.0 sq kilometers. (Average this date for the Sea of Okhotsk is 0.0 sq kilometers, so having any sea ice at all at this time of year is record-setting, but this 10 July Okhotsk sea ice record area is admittedly a low bar to cross as sea ice expands in future years.)
Further east, the 10 July 2018 Gulf of St Lawrence sea ice remains in a solid third place for all-time July 10 sea ice record highs with 1391.0 sq kilometers, behind 2016’s 2244.0 sq kilometers and 2017’s 1797.0 sq kilometers. As with the Sea of Okhotsk, no previous sea ice was ever recorded in the Gulf of St Lawrence on 10 July, so having any sea ice at all this far south is noteworthy by itself.
(The Bering Sea usually retains a little sea ice through July, melting out completely by 5 August in all years prior to 2016 and 2017. However, at 2850 sq kilometers, yesterday’s 10 July 2018 Bering Sea ice area is 2.5 times the average for this late in the summer melt season.)
As pointed out above you’re stretching the limits of the technology being used.
Bering Sea ~5 pixels
Sea of Okhotzk ~7 pixels
Gulf of St Lawrence ~3 pixels
The higher resolution satellites don’t show ice there and it’s not visible in the MODIS images.
If you don’t like it, go complain to the NSIDC. I am repeating their actual actual numbers, NOT straining at pixels.
By the way, when the Bering Sea this February was at a -200,000 sq kilometer regional sea ice anomaly (after your claimed Bering Sea “boundary adjustment” to the masking algorithm, but had almost no sunlight striking its surface, there was no heat energy to be absorbed was there? Less sea ice late November to early March = Increased heat loss from the “additional” Bering Sea sea ice loss. Today, when Bering, Okhotsk, Hudson Bay and St Lawrence Gulf are recording positive (very small, nonetheless positive anomalies) some 166 times the size of those much-publicized “icebergs the size of Manhattan”, the energy reflected from the sea ice IS true heat reflected back into the infinite cold blackness of space.
Yes, I am using their own words, their own fears and exaggerations about “the Arctic death spiral” to show the simplistic linear-extrapolated failures of that claim.
Yes, I am (deliberately) stretching the limits of the surveys, because doing so illustrates the absurdity of the simplistic “death spiral” assumptions about Arctic Sea Ice loss due to increased atmospheric CO2.
Sereze’s claims are correct – For sea ice floating offshore of Miami or Key West.
The NSIDC’s own diagram illustrating the Arctic Death Spiral theory is correct – for sea ice floating in the Potomac River on June 22.
For a few days each year, his theory even holds true for excess sea ice at latitude 60 north. Like 2016, 2017, and 2018.
If you don’t like it, go complain to the NSIDC. I am repeating their actual actual numbers, NOT straining at pixels.
Actually that’s exactly what you are doing, straining at the limiting resolution of the measurement. By the way if you’re going to claim I posted something by putting it in quotation marks please have the decency to make sure it’s actually something I posted.
the energy reflected from the sea ice IS true heat reflected back into the infinite cold blackness of space.
If those pixels are really ice not resolution errors they are still minuscule compared with the clouds that are present so again you are straining at a gnat!
Here’s an illustration showing the ‘fake’ ice in the Bering sea on the 17th July.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=2223.0;attach=104868;image
Funny thing is – after all these ‘even worse than we thought’ scenarios, no matter what area they focus on – at least for those of us who have been watching for upwards of thirty years – NOTHING is worse than they said it would be. OR as BAD as they said it would be. And arguably better than it was then.
Then only thing that has really gotten any worse are the headlines and the attitudes.
Once again, the areas you see (where you live) are warm (summer), but the big story is where you can’t see (the arctic), with its UNPRECEDENTED!!! Conditions. Sad for them, we can see the sat maps, which blows their whole story. It has always seemed a little too convenient that the areas claimed “most sensitive” to AGW are also most difficult for the average person to visit.