Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to NASA, the increased rate of thickening of sea ice in the Arctic is due to Global Warming.
Wintertime Arctic Sea Ice Growth Slows Long-term Decline: NASA
Dec. 7, 2018
New NASA research has found that increases in the rate at which Arctic sea ice grows in the winter may have partially slowed down the decline of the Arctic sea ice cover.
As temperatures in the Arctic have warmed at double the pace of the rest of the planet, the expanse of frozen seawater that blankets the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas has shrunk and thinned over the past three decades. The end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent has almost halved since the early 1980s. A recent NASA study found that since 1958, the Arctic sea ice cover has lost on average around two-thirds of its thickness and now 70 percent of the sea ice cap is made of seasonal ice, or ice that forms and melts within a single year.
But at the same time that sea ice is vanishing quicker than it has ever been observed in the satellite record, it is also thickening at a faster rate during winter. This increase in growth rate might last for decades, a new study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters found.
This does not mean that the ice cover is recovering, though. Just delaying its demise.
“This increase in the amount of sea ice growing in winter doesn’t overcome the large increase in melting we’ve observed in recent decades,” said Alek Petty, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study. “Overall, thickness is decreasing. Arctic sea ice is still very much in decline across all seasons and is projected to continue its decline over the coming decades. ”
…
It seems counterintuitive: how does a weakening ice cover manage to grow at a faster rate during the winter than it did when the Arctic was colder and the ice was thicker and stronger?
“Our findings highlight some resilience of the Arctic sea ice cover,” Petty said. “If we didn’t have this negative feedback, the ice would be declining even faster than it currently is. Unfortunately, the positive feedback loop of summer ice melt and increased solar absorption associated with summer ice melting still appears to be dominant and continue to drive overall sea ice declines.”
…
The abstract of the study;
Warm Arctic, Increased Winter Sea Ice Growth?
Alek A. Petty Marika M. Holland David A. Bailey Nathan T. Kurtz
First published: 04 October 2018We explore current variability and future projections of winter Arctic sea ice thickness and growth using data from climate models and satellite observations. Winter ice thickness in the Community Earth System Model’s Large Ensemble compares well against thickness estimates from the Pan‐Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System and CryoSat‐2, despite some significant regional differences—for example, a high thickness bias in Community Earth System Model’s Large Ensemble in the western Arctic. Differences across the available CryoSat‐2 thickness products hinder more robust validation efforts. We assess the importance of the negative conductive feedback of sea ice growth (thinner ice grows faster) by regressing October atmosphere/ice/ocean conditions against winter ice growth. Our regressions demonstrate the importance of a strong negative conductive feedback process in our current climate, which increases winter growth for thinner initial ice, but indicate that later in the 21st century this negative feedback is overwhelmed by variations in the fall atmosphere/ocean state.
Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL079223
I guess we should count ourselves lucky the world isn’t currently in a cooling phase, otherwise we might lose the Arctic icepack altogether.
Why is the arctic sea ice diminishing “unfortunate”? With it gone or diminished, it opens up the entire Arctic to fishing, oil exploration, and possible mining. I swear these people would have been running in circles screaming and crying if they had witnessed the diminished glaciers about 10,000 years ago – and that was not unfortunate at all.
How come every change is bad?
Because it’s propaganda with agenda behind it.
Climate change global warming
causes more snowfall and more ice.
Climate change global cooling
causes less snowfall and less ice.
This is basic climate science.
They teach this in elementary school now.***
Climate change also causes hurricanes,
wildfires, floods, hordes of locusts,
and exploding silicone bre-ast implants.
So when the leftists tell you to jump,
in response to “climate change”,
just ask “How high?”,
unless you don’t care
about saving the world
for the children.
I don’t have any children,
so I favor a lot more CO2 in the air to
accelerate C3 plant growth, to help the people
on our planet who don’t get enough food to eat.
I’ve lived in the same home for 31 years,
and not far from here for 10 years before that.
In my opinion, the climate here is still too cold,
and I’m really angry that Michigan has been
bypassed by all the $#@&% global warming
I’ve been waiting for since 1977.
*** Just ask one of those young whippersnappers
in elementary school (preferably pubic school)
if you can’t figure out this comment !
mmm “Climate change global warming
causes more snowfall and more ice.
So where is all the ice and snow from the purported current warming phase then?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
It was warm(er) in Michigan in ’81 and ’82.
Which was preceded by the mean seasons of 77 and 78. As a student in Northern Illinois we had a more than a month of below zero temperatures. I don’t remember seeing the ground underneath that snow until April. By march the snow was covered black with crud kicked up from the highways and byways. Black snow and windchills to freeze your long johns to you private parts. Feels a lot like we are heading back into another cycle.
“Because it’s propaganda with agenda behind it.”
Yep. And in this case the ‘Climate Scientist’ propaganda is designed to provide cover for the fact that the cycle of arctic sea ice coverage appears to have reached its minimum and is starting to swing the other way again. This if course is likely tied to similar cycles of that giant nuclear fusion reactor in the sky that ‘Climate Scientists’ tell us has little to do with the Earth’s climate.
Starting to swing Louis …. ?
2018’s low higher than 2007’s, with an upward trend, albeit small.
Tell you what is starting though, the global warming causes global cooling meme. How can they take the general population for such fools ….. oh, hold on a sec.
(You are just ranting, not addressing the specific topic at hand, will disrupt the thread, can’t approve this) MOD
(edited and posted. Mod2)
One could call it propagenda
For all intensive reasons, that might have at one point happened really rather quicky, before the younger dryas…of course that would be have been a good thing.
A sub species of hysterical human would have gone the way of the mega-mammals. In one big wave…
An ice free planet would be a very good thing…more space for trees, more oil and sea food like you say…maybe put a large resort at the north pole, twice the sun bathing in summer time, deep sea fishing, polar bear hunts. Get yourself a nice polar bear rug for in front of your fireplace.
I hear they are as thick as fleas on rez dog up their….cheers Texas
Maybe the Arctic camels that inhabited Ellesmere Island 3.5 million years ago could be convinced to come back.
https://www.history.com/news/giant-ancient-camel-roamed-the-arctic
Dromedaries, I see.
Don’t forget the beavers and other fossils.
Analysis of the beetle fauna from the peaty matrix indicates that the site was 10°C warmer than present in summer and 15°C warmer in winter, and isotopic studies of fossil larch support this view
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ellesmere-island-pliocene-fossils
additional references found at end of this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strathcona_Fiord
Kinda nice to take the sealskin parka off after 100,000 years!
Greetings, Mr. Burns. Glad to see you on this site.
Because these people are never happy
The quote is: “…Unfortunately, the positive feedback loop of summer ice melt and increased solar absorption associated with summer ice melting still appears to be dominant and continue to drive overall sea ice declines.” What is unfortunate is not sea ice diminishing, but the summer melting continues to dominate and drive sea ice decline. I’m not defending the article, just trying to be clear about the quote.
hmm, Summer ice melt. Looking at DMI temp data the last few years summers have been colder than 1958.
Robert of Texas says:
these people would have been running in circles screaming and crying if they had witnessed the diminished glaciers about 10,000 years ago
They wouldn’t just have been doing that, they’d be sacrificing virgins and/or burning witches/wizards.
Lower sea ice cover reduces albedo, this leads to more absorption of solar energy by seawater, and increases the planet’s temperature. It should be evident that we really ought to worry if temperature rises so much it leads to exaggerated sea level rise.
If anybody has access to the full paper I would like to know if the authors used RCP8.5 to make their forward predictions.
Is it April 1st already ? They can’t be serious….
Sounds a lot like eco fearology Principles # 2&3
https://tambonthongchai.com/2010/05/16/171/
Global warming will eventually be blamed for causing the next ice age.
They should be thanking CO2 for saving us from devastation.
“Based on previous cycles the Earth is probably due to go into an ice age about now. In fact, conditions were starting to line up for a new ice age at least 6,000 years ago.”
“If you look at what was happening prior to the industrial revolution, summers were actually getting colder in the northern hemisphere. They’ve been getting colder for at least the last 6,000 years, so we were definitely on that trend,”
“Besides the fact it would be an awful lot colder, huge regions where hundreds of millions of people live would become completely uninhabitable. They’d be covered in thick ice sheets and subject to an inhospitable climate.”
“Assuming it was similar to the last one, then north America would be covered in ice, the whole of northern Europe, the whole of northern Asia would be covered in ice,”
What are you quoting?
. . complete insanity.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-06-15/what-is-an-ice-age-explainer/7185002
I thought those ice age beliefs were widely accepted.
From the link:
“An ice age is a time where a significant amount of the Earth’s water is locked up on land in continental glaciers.”
Like now, when there is about 65 meters of sea-level locked up in continental glaciers. And so it has been for at least 14 million years.
from the link
“The Earth has been alternating between long ice ages and shorter interglacial periods for around 2.6 million years.
For the last million years or so these have been happening roughly every 100,000 years – around 90,000 years of ice age followed by a roughly 10,000 year interglacial warm period.”
“Compared to conditions on Earth 20,000 to 30,000 years ago we are clearly not in an ice age now
But in terms of the long history of the Earth we are actually still in an overarching ice age period – known as the Quaternary glaciation – which has been going for the last 2.6 million years. At the moment, the Earth is just in a slightly warmer period, an interglacial.”
They are Jeff. But there’s a lot of hammering here these days, and very few nails are ever cleanly hit. Wrong end of the hammer, wrong wall, non recognition of nails, mistaking of nails for nuts, and nuts for nails, standing on the ceiling instead of the floor, but mainly being unsighted by coming at everything from very wide on the right, crashing in through the out door with too many hammers and not enough hands, plus inexplicable mis-hits, and of course friendly fire. But there’s still the odd carpenter here who knows which end of the hammer is what and knows how to drive a nail home and produce a tidy finish. Their constructions are often a joy to view.
“Steven J. Phipps
I am an ice sheet modeller, climate system modeller and palaeoclimatologist, based within the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. My research is funded by the Antarctic Gateway Partnership.
I studied physics at the University of Oxford, before completing a PhD in climate system modelling at the University of Tasmania in 2006. ”
https://www.stevenphipps.com/
Now there is surely a great “human interest” story buried somewhere in the above personal testimony.
Will they play more or less hockey in Canada?
Jeff,
If you go by the tilt cycle, we’re not due for reglaciation for about another 3000 years. If the eccentricity cycle rules, then not for another 30,000 years or longer.
Interglacials vary greatly in length. The last one, the Eemian, was warmer than the present Holocene and lasted about 5000 years longer than it has so far. Before that were two shorter ones and another long one. Averaging them to determine how long they should last doesn’t work.
See Fallen Angels by Pournelle (and Niven?)
I read that! The Greens wreck the world economy to save it from CAGW, and then when the Earth starts into it’s next regularly scheduled Ice Age they blame Astronauts for ‘stealing’ too much of the Atmosphere and wrecking the Greenhouse Effect.
The saddest part was, I could easily picture all that happening.
~¿~
“using data from climate models… ”
I stopped reading after that.
GIGO
Climate models do not produce data, nor do any other type of models. They might produce insight, or they might produce garbage, but they don’t produce data.
You seem to have a lame-brained definition of “data.”
Michael,
If you think that the output from a computer simulation, a simulation run on a set of dynamical non-linear equations out to many decades, is “data” then you know nothing about actual science.
Concur.
Even in ‘well understood’ science we start with computer models then we build tangible scaled models for various experiments to test out the validity of the computer models. Then we build full scale items and flight test them to further validate the computer code.
…and this is done for each and every vehicle.
The big difference we have decades of validation for our computer models, yet we still do not fully trust them. They simply let us winnow through a much larger ‘trade space’ and hone designs before we begin to cut metal.
When ‘climate models’ can even repeat their own predictions or with any probability to reality I’ll start to pay attention.
Michael,
Data are observations of nature, not the output of GIGO models based on faulty assumptions divorced from objective reality.
Excellent point, they ignore actual data and claimed failed models are data, not exactly science in any book.
As Summer extent has increased significantly since 2012 they fail to acknowledge it and resort to models, calling results data.
Interesting, reduced ice is bad climate change, also increased ice is climate change too.
Does NOT sound like sound science to me.
Remember all their summer ice free Arctic predictions have failed miserably.
Do you know the first thing about the model used? I seem to recall Spencer using a model.
Roy Spencer’s AMSU input/temperature profile model output is verified/validated with radiosonde data.
Climate modellers purposefully avoid validation to measurement. The call their “intercomparisons” with outer models as their validation. Richard Feynman coined a name for that, it is called Cargo Cult Science.
Did you keep reading once you realized he was using a model?
Using models is OK, using computer output as it were empirical data it is not.
Oxymoron.
Climate models do not produce data, and never have.
This is PRICELESS!
Even better than “the GBR is recovering, er, because it has adapted” or “there is more NH snow, er, because of global warming”.
Who needs comedians?
In my reseach (social sciences), I could never get away with contraditary statements like this–no matter how I spun it!
Nice list!
In my reseach (social sciences), I could never get away with contraditary statements like this–no matter how I spun it!
And it is said *somewhere* that non-STEM studies are worthless . . .
I’ve said it because I didn’t know what I wanted to do so I went into political “science” at Penn State. I excelled at verbal and written communication in all my tests, promoting me to go the path of lawyer then politician. Within 2 years of graduating I had talked to enough lawyers and witnessed enough politician corruption that I now regret those choices.
Social sciences are a complete waste of time, especially at Penn State. I once had an arrogant game theory professor angrily call me out in front of the whole class for daring to suggest his voting system exercise was useless because the only outcome was designed to set us up to fail. His methodology was over simplistic and the whole point was basically to tell us we’re dumb and not able to make useful predictions with value or oversimplified data sets. He actually screamed at me in class “what the hell are you doing in college?!”
I said “I thought I was here to challenge myself and become smarter, but instead you’d rather I just obey your authority and become stupid.” You could hear a pin drop in that class
!!! How I would have liked to be in that class! Especially to see and hear the professor’s, and also the other students’, reactions after the pin dropped. Although this is off-topic, would you mind telling us what happened after such an insulting remark?
.-
I got very anxious, I was only 21 or something, and he ignored my statement after a gruff scoff, but glared at me pretty good. I went to the dean about it because I was furious, and of course, no apology, no reprimand. I knew at that moment I should have chose engineering. Pardon for the off topic but someone mentioned social “sciences”, and it reminded me of what a waste of money, my degree.
Pardon for the off topic but someone mentioned social “sciences”, and it reminded me of what a waste of money, my degree.
I mentioned it from hearing those of whom are wedded to STEM degrees laud them over other non-STEM disciplines (whatever they may be), while at the same time decrying (and rightly so) the “waste of money” those STEM degrees prove to be to those doing a climate “science” that presupposes CAGW as a first premise.
It’s funny when one’s pretentious perspicacity causes one to contradict oneself.
Oh! I hate to say this. But, Political Science has its value. I had one of those debates with a friend of mine while in college. We would meet at the snack bar between the ramshackle School of Social Science and the new defense contractor funded five story brick veneered School of Engineering. It was embarrassing to sit there with my paper back books by Marx, Markuse, Locke etc. sitting on the table next to his thick books on Analytical Geometry, Physics, and Electrical Engineering. LOL
Once, he laughed and asked what the F&#@ I was going to do with a degree in Political Science. I admitted, I had no clue. But, I also responded that it would be a guy like me who pulled the plug on guy like him. He blustered in non-comprehension. And, I did not feel like explaining the ebb and flow of defense spending, budgets, politics and policy cycles.
Sadly, he went through at least two to three layoff cycles in the defense industry. I in turn had a pretty steady rising career for thirty years in municipal government doing redevelopment and economic development and ultimately city management. Until it was a cabal of folks like me in Sacramento higher up the food chain who pulled the plug on me and redevelopment in California to give money to the teacher’s and fire fighters unions. LOL!
The moral of the story? I don’t think we treat our STEM professionals that well. But, that is life.
Shelly – Just because something appears to be contradictory doesn’t mean that it is. This is the explanation: “If the sea ice layer floating over the ocean thins, the upper ocean is less insulated from the very cold Arctic winter atmosphere. That lowers ocean temperatures and builds more ice from below.”
Source: final paragraph, Oldbrew’s article on the same study, Tallbloke’s blog, with link to Jonathan Griffin’s piece on it. I haven’t linked it because I’m not sure it would pass the mod. Hopefully it would, but anyway, it’s easy to find. Just go to Tallbloke’s blog and you’ll see it there.
It’s as if these jerks never heard of the AMO. Actually, they may never have heard of things that happen outside of their models come to think on it. Amazing.
As fast as they come up with excuses to explain whatever has happened i.e. fast ice growth in November, ice formation almost stops in December! It’s like God is baiting the fools.
And today we had 2 reports (1) E.Antarctica is now melting 28M sea level rise coming, and, (2) Warming causing more snow to pile up in Antarctica causing slowing of sea level rise.
Which is it. Get the story straight. This is settled science don’t ya know. Or maybe it is just one ginormous crock of ****.
Finally, they’ve found the missing heat. it was not hiding in the oceans, but in the ice.
Yeah, that “hot ice” is really sneaky!
Not that I agree with any of the tripe being peddled in the papers, but the ‘latent heat of fusion’ (80 cal/g ice) will suck up a lot of heat before any ice even melts.
By definition enthalpy/latent heat of fusion can only suck up heat _as_ the ice melts. You may have meant “suck up heat before the temperature goes up.”
Are there any climate variances NOT associated with AGW? These people are going to need shovels with longer handles.
Waders too.
And so the clowns of climate change continue to be the heroes of headlines and tweets, both fleeting events.
To paraphrase L C
“For, you see, so many out of the ordinary things had happened lately, that ‘climate scientists’ have begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.”
And the earlier 20th century was very warm in the Arctic and Greenland was warmer as well, see Vinther et al study. Oh and Greenland was cooler after that earlier warm period up to the 1990s. Some warming since, because of the warm phase AMO.
And in the MUCH warmer Climate optimum boreal forests grew up to the Arctic coastline and sea levels were up to 2 metres higher just 4,000 Yrs BP. See MacDonald et al study.
This was cleared up by the NY Times in 1969. Arctic sea ice will either thin or thicken, and will disappear- or not. :
Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea; Catastrophic Shifts in Climate Feared if Change Occurs Other Specialists See No Thinning of Polar Ice Cap
“Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two.
Although he bases his thesis on predictions in recent years by several experts in polar weather and ice behavior, interviews with a number of other specialists have shown a widespread belief that the progressive shrinkage of the Arctic pack ice over the last century has reversed itself, at least temporarily….”
https://www.nytimes.com/1969/02/20/archives/expert-says-arctic-ocean-will-soon-be-an-open-sea-catastrophic.html
It’s a long article, and too much to re-type. It should be quite clear at this point, however, that scientists have long been predicting that Arctic ice will shrink- unless it grows, and that the global cooling trend will continue- unless it warms, and that no matter what happens, the Arctic, along with humanity, is certainly screwed.
Best summary yet.
Article image available https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/nyt_arctic_77442757.pdf
Just another example of circular argument, the usual from these warmest types. Whatever the phenomena, warming is behind it. Nothing disproves their theories; contrary facts make them hide their heads in the sand.
I’ve noticed that the bald spot on my head is starting to fill in (well maybe). AGW? Could be; may be.
It’s high school physics. You can do this at home.
“It’s high school physics. You can do this at home.”
Really? Well young troll, give us a demonstration.
Put up or shut up.
It was sarcasm. Just like Al Gore says carbon dioxide will heat the planet can be proved with high school physics – yet it has not been done.
“News” like this is to be expected from NRDC, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, or any number of private, leftwing groups but to have NASA tying itself in knots with taxpayer funds is bullsh*t.
Negative feedback? Why, that sounds like an an argument for an emergent phenomenon. Such anti-scientific blather. Of course we know that all feedbacks are positive, right IPCC? We are balanced on a knife’s edge, just waiting to plunge over the tipping point into the abyss.
yeah /sarc
ah no.
in ar5 the alarmest predictions for rapid sea ice loss were rejected because of thin ice negative feedbacks.
“…in ar5 the alarmest predictions for rapid sea ice loss were rejected because of thin ice negative feedbacks…”
Didn’t see any quote on that.
More recently https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2018EF000820 with my caps for emphasis:
“…Over the past few decades, roughly one half the surface area, and three fourths of the volume of ice in the Arctic, has now been lost, and what remains and is regrown each winter is now primarily young, and often first year, ice. SUCH A THIN LAYER OF ICE TRANSMITS RATHER THAN REFLECTS SOLAR RADIATION…”
Did you hear the one about the homeopath who forgot to take his medication? He died of an overdose.
Are they ever going to figure out that most of the ice is under water….the Atlantic flows directly into the Arctic…and the AMO has plateaued slowing the Atlantic current?
Since the early 80’s….right after the ice age scare…right at the bottom of the AMO that had no where to go but up
Talk about cherry picking….when you start at the bottom
How do people let them constantly get away with this?
Latitude
Hahahahahahaha!
Just more linear regression line chasing. No attempt to really understand the physics of what is happening. Sad clutching at straws, methinks.
… A recent NASA study found that since 1958, the Arctic sea ice cover has lost on average around two-thirds of its thickness and now 70 percent of the sea ice cap is made of seasonal ice, or ice that forms and melts within a single year …
… This increase in growth rate might last for decades …
================================================
They are simply extrapolating a trend from what looks like the North Atlantic Ocean temperature cycle:
..that is exactly what they are doing
Wasn’t NASA once supposed to fly and launch things around ?
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Then somehow became the only airline exclusively devoted to justifying state climate policies at all costs, cheating inclusive.
With the apotheosis of us humans, being exterminated by alien civilizations if we fail to pay climate taxes.
Saying (https://www.foxnews.com/science/aliens-could-attack-earth-to-end-global-warming-nasa-scientist-frets):
“We might be a threat to the galaxy just as we are a threat to our home planet,” it warns.”
Makes me wonder, how do these guys manage to pass their medicals let alone operate aircraft, their inadequacy to reality being so blatantly evident even to non-trained eyes…
That change of mission and the reasons behind are more worrisome than the political content it purveys.
With it’s actual meager contribution to flight, NASA can be as well disbanded with minor regrets.
They did get a new Sat running Ice sat 2.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6484709/NASA-releases-unprecedented-new-maps-Antarctica-satellite-data.html
Mac
A massive contribution to the safety and comfort of the half a million or so PAX and their crews currently airborne over US.
Guess many would display smiles of relief when the dispatcher texts that “NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2)” just provided politically valuable data.
Such an aeronautical breakthrough from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration sure calls for a party. How did we manage to live and work so far without ? Beats me.
*palmface*
Probably preaching to the choir, but catastrophic anthrpogenic carbon warmists are such optimists. I think that the reverse is a far starker scenario:
– a cooling world with less energy and carbon for plant life
– less life giving moisture in the air for rain
– humans unable to unable to significantly influence the climate
NASA are truly unhinged. This once venerable organisation has devolved into a political puppet, a moronic marionette with not even a hint of its original values anywhere to be found. There is no saving this absolute DISGRACE of a pseudo-scientific organisation. Nothing they say any longer should be given credence, no matter how “seemingly” credible, because it has an agenda which is not in the interests of the wellbeing of humanity. The lie is not necessarily in the words but it is ALWAYS found in the motive.
When I hear these people speak about arctic sea ice loss there are things I never hear. No one ever says that the sea ice acts as insulation in the winter to keep heat loss from happening. They fixate only on the positive feedback of decreased ice coverage in the summer and never on the negative feedback in the fall. Even if the arctic became ice free in the summer it would still freeze over every winter. At least in this article they admit to the decreased ice coverage in fall and early winter being a negative feedback.
I am not sure who “these people” are that you are complaining about but they are clearly not the
authors of this paper. They state explicitly that “thinner ice grows faster than thicker ice due to its decreased insulation” not to mention the fact that the entire article is about understanding the
negative feedback that you claim is never mentioned.
“No one ever says that the sea ice acts as insulation in the winter to keep heat loss from happening.”
If there were less sea ICE in the winter, and more heat loss to space, that would be another negative feedback. Nature seems to have a few such feedbacks up its sleeve. Warmists should take a hint and start looking for such second-order effects.
Roger Knight, quoting Lowell
Well, I’ve been reading about Arctic Sea Ice since 2004, and did find two articles (papers) that did mention the “insulation” effect of Arctic sea ice. Out of some 320 paper that I’ve kept copies of the full article.
SO, technically, in the hundreds of thousands of words and on-line sources discussing “arctic amplification” and “sea ice feedback” and “arctic death spirals” you can find two items that use that phrase.
Yes, the Arctic sea ice anomaly DOES remain near-constant over the entire year: It is not significantly higher winter, spring maximum, summer melt season, September minimum nor fall freeze-up. Over the course of the entire year, more heat is lost from the newly exposed Arctic Ocean than is gained in the short April-August sunshine into the Arctic Ocean.
“Over the course of the entire year, more heat is lost from the newly exposed Arctic Ocean than is gained in the short April-August sunshine into the Arctic Ocean.”
Not true:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/2006JD008230.pdf
(See Fig 10).
During winter the Arctic loses 58 W/m^2 of heat.
During Summer it gains 105 W/m^2
Net +48 Wm/^2 absorbed over the year.
And as a consequence the less summer sea-ice the greater the net +ve heat flux.
(decreased albedo and insulation)
Obviously this increase in sea ice due to global warming is the same physics that explains why the USA and Canada and most of the Northern hemisphere are experiencing massive snow fall and very cold temperatures this year, on top of the extreme cold and snow fall of last winter. It is all due to that global warming effect. Makes you wonder what we would experience if the world was cooling down….?
I suddenly feel another researchy ‘CAGW literature referenced’ guest post gestating. Something along the lines of five or ten biggest AGW researchy yin/yang ‘contradictions’. This thread is one. Another easy cheap shot is AGW means UK children won’t know snow, then when there were record snows, AGW causes more snow. And so on. Perhaps a nice glass of bourbon will illuminate the other three or hopefully eight from a vast sea of already evident possibilities, ten being a nice round number of decimal digits both mathematically and handedly.
Will confer soon with CtM, as is a permutation on his overarching Texas sharpshooter theme.
Please do it, Rud
Interesting but pointless in that melting or freezing sea ice has no affect on sea levels.
Interesting theory. Surely it could be tested.
Does this mean the summer melting is due to Global Cooling?
“But at the same time that sea ice is vanishing quicker than it has ever been observed in the satellite record, it is also thickening at a faster rate during winter. ”
As the tailors of old might have said “mind the quality and feel the width”.
Is there any artic ice ?
I read, Artic will be ice free 2013.
The polar bear went extinct also. Any polar bear pictures you might see to the contrary of that have been photoshopped by Big Oil-paid interests.
Ah that big oil money…
Sales of ski-doo ad other snow-machines have collapsed.
Electric bikes are most appropriate to discover the breathtaking beauty Alaskan cactus varieties and their smokable by-products.
No,No,No it was ice free in 2008!
The official projection is after 2040
Obviously they are nuts . . but, it would seem to me that their opening premise is backwards, as it seems that it’s that the loss of summer sea ice extent has slowed down (last 12 yrs to ‘no trend’ at all) more so than it’s growth in the winter has increased.
Very droll, your last sentence in the article
Gee, negative feedback; how is that even possible?
Sorry to spoil the party, but what they say is pretty obvious. I already researched this issue here at WUWT over a year ago, before these guys sat down to write their article:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/05/arctic-ice-natural-variability/
The point is that the lower the Arctic sea-ice extent in September the more the ice will grow over the winter. Essentially the more it melts the more it refreezes:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/100517_1140_arcticicena2.png
Melting is unpredictable, but refreezing is reactive and predictable, because it depends on the exposed surface.
This is just normal behavior in a planet dominated by negative feedbacks. Sea ice is the way the planet has to limit the heat loss of the polar oceans during icehouse periods like the present one. As sea ice recedes the planet will cool down more efficiently the extra heat it has gained and will reduce the rate of warming.
We are just seeing the planet adjusting to its changing conditions, auto-regulating according to physical principles mainly based on water molecule changes of state. So yes, global warming is causing less summer ice and faster and more extensive winter re-freezing. There are no tipping points.
I think that as there are so many climate scientists these days, the average climate scientist is dumber than it should. It is just too easy to become a climate scientist. Things that are this basic that even a scientist from a completely unrelated field like me can see so clearly should not be surprising to climate scientists, should not be the main point of a new article, and should not produce a press release. It casts a bad image on the field (if that is still possible at this point).
Yep pretty straight forward
Though unlike the article statement arctic sea ice has not changed at all in the last 10 years
They are saying that the increasing WARMING allows increasing FREEZING even as the increasing warming also allows increasing MELTING. But still, increasing COOLING will also allow increasing FREEZING, so that means that sea ice can thicken either way, which is just 100% malarkey…
In case I didn’t make myself clear (happens too often), sea ice acts as an insulator limiting the heat loss by the polar oceans during the 6-month long polar night. The less sea ice, the more energy the planet loses and the less it warms. When I say this to believers, they refuse to believe it even after providing bibliography. Arctic sea ice is there to protect us for as long as we are in an ice age. If we lose it, it is because we no longer need it.
Javier, Eric Worrall
7 months. Less Arctic sea ice means greater cooling 7 months of the year (from mid-August through mid-April). It is only those few weeks between mid-April and mid-August that enough sun penetrates the atmosphere at high enough solar elevation angles long enough each day that the newly-exposed Arctic Ocean absorbs more heat energy than it loses through increased convection, evaporation, conduction, and LW radiation losses. Further, increased heat losses from the “warm” open ocean water at 2-4 degrees C continue every day, every hour, every month around the clock.
Mid-summer, as you imply, the thermal losses from the open Arctic waters to the Arctic air are low, and the heat gains are much greater. But increased losses from open water are a year-round effect. Solar energy gains are very limited in time: By mid-September the difference in energy absorbed in open water and new sea ice are only a few watts/m^2. Total, over the entire day, only a few dozen watts. Mid-summer (May, June, July)? Several thousands watt-hours/m^2 .
But that heat gain only happens mid-summer. By 12 August at latitude 78 north, Dr Curry reported that overnight heat losses from melt ponds were enough to freeze overnight. So, total heat losses over 24 hours exceeded the solar energy gained in the 24 hours of daylight at 78 north latitude on 12 August. Plus the extra heat energy required to freeze at least 1 mm of water over that square meter!
You’re not spoiling the party Javier, and thank you for the link. I’m aware ice is a good insulator. What I’m mocking is that NASA are still making it up as they go, yet they regularly reassure us that what they are doing is “settled science”.
“You’re not spoiling the party Javier”
No, just the opposite, Javier is adding value to the discussion. And it is appreciated.
Well, you write, “So yes, global warming is causing less summer ice and faster and more extensive winter re-freezing.” Shouldn’t that read, ” So yes, arctic warming is causing less summer ice and faster and more extensive winter re-freezing.”
And yes, I agree,”There are no tipping points.”
Shelly, quoting Javier
Well, no.
Arctic sea ice anomalies are generally constant over the entire year. Spring melt difference, summer difference, fall and winter have remained near-constant over each year since measurements began. The anomaly has increased: Arctic sea ice was highest in 82-83-84, then lowered until its 2006-07-08-09-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18 “minimum” … And, in fact, 2018 has generally been higher than many (not all!) of the recent twelve years, so Arctic sea ice may be starting its recovery from the minimum. (When nearly 1/3 of the recorded sea ice extents are the same, you really cannot claim “Arctic ice is declining!” can you? )
Hahahahahahaha!
As noted in Salby’s recent lecture in Hamburg:
“More snow… Less snow!”,
followed by a great clip from Richard Feynman:
“If the process of computing a consequence is indefinite,
then with a little skill any experimental result
can be made to look like an expected consequence.”
The best science taxpayer dollars can buy.
This division of NASA apparently isn’t involved with sending rockets to pre-determined targets in space. Their M.O. seems to be “Ready, shoot, aim.”
Only if they remember to “aim” using the same coordinate system as the rest of the satellite/rocket/orbital team.
“According to NASA, the increased rate of thickening of sea ice in the Arctic is due to Global Warming.”
Hahahahahahahahaha…………
Jones,
😀 🤣
It’s obvious really, I just watch the ice in my drink getting thicker and thicker as it melts! 😕 🤣
Cheers NASA, I enjoy your larks now please get back to space exploration and reality.
Ahaaa……. Is that why, when I run a really hot bath, it’s a block of ice when I go to get in?……
It’s all so clear to me now…
Ta…. 🙂
Well, maybe. A hot bath does lose heat faster to the room and walls and tub surroundings much faster than a cool bath, and a room temperature bath loses no heat at all to the rest of the room except evaporation losses. /and you thought you were being sarcastic!
Hmm….. rubs chin in a professorial manner…..
This reminds me: Is drinking coffee good for us or bad for us now? I can’t always remember where we are in the cycle.
Whatever the study says, it will be reversed in 4 years.
Breaking Alert!!
NASA falls off the deep end!!
This just in! NASA researchers coerce gullible models to allow absurd results!
NASA researchers should be investigated and stripped of grants, titles and advanced degrees. Any funds for misconducted or misreported research should be recovered.
Way back like the 1950 tes NASA was a highly respected US agency. Back then it was concerned with the exploration of Space.
So what is it doing commention on planet Earth, rather than all of the other plaanets, we do have many other agencies to do that.
How is it that Pres. TRUMP does not put a stop to this nondence ?
As for the .5 of one Celsius we are told to fear, when I wish to travel from the City of Hobart in Tasmanias far South, to the City of Cairns which is close to the Equater, should I ask the IPCC for permission to subject my body to such a massive change in the temperature which I will be subject too.
MJE
Actually you should be very careful about going up Mount Wellington, since the difference between Hobart and the top is almost a whole degree C.
Imagine the catastrophic effects if it became as hot there as e. g. in Fern Tree or Ridgway
“the difference between Hobart and the top is almost a whole degree C”
??? Currently, it is 11.4°C on the mountain; 18.3 in Hobart, by the sea. Mt Wellington top is 1271 m ASL.
Sorry, I fubbed a decimal point it should be about nine degrees C. One degree C only equals about 140 meters in altitude. Michael had better stay close to Hobart city center to avoid climate catastrophe since it is a hilly place.
Funny, I accidentally put an ice cube tray full of water in the oven on the ‘warm’ setting. An hour or so later when I realized my mistake I ran to the kitchen, opened the oven, and to my surprise if found that the water had frozen and I had a fresh batch of ice cubes.
Its just amazing what warming can do to water these days……
as a former research scientist I am sitting at my PC thinking, how the hell could anyone, let alone a scientist, write such lies.
I am astounded
Don’t we have Arctic sea ice extent for 1935?
No. It is possible to get a fairly good idea about ice conditions in the Atlantic sector and there are at least some data for Siberia, but Northern Canada is a blank.
There are probably some data in RCMP and Hudson Bay Company archives, but nobody has looked for it. For example, how many people are aware that Hudson Bay Company vessels actually traversed the complete Northwest passage in 1937?
“Don’t we have Arctic sea ice extent for 1935?”
There are many newspaper accounts of the state of the artic in the 1930’s. Serious melting was reported at the time.
It’s not true that we don’t have data before the 1950’s. We have plenty of datat available in newspaper accounts and records and they cover the entire world, more or less. We should search out this data more often and get some real perspective on the past with regard to the state of the climate at those times. Much more accurate than tree rings, I would say..
Here is the Hansen 1999 US surface temperature chart. I think the lows and highs of artic sea ice correspond with the lows and highs of this temperature chart.
Arctic ice grows depending on the pattern of the winter polar stratospheric vortex.
http://masie_web.apps.nsidc.org/pub/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/latest/4km/masie_all_zoom_4km.png
When the polar vortex falls over the Hudson Bay, circulation over the North Atlantic causes the growth of water vapor over the Norwegian Sea.
Water vapor.
It has a cooling and warming effect depending on season.
Usually it is very dry above 80 deg N except during summer.
Oden was up there during Summer 2018 and noticed this with a remark: -At last we can observe a sunset-when returning to Svalbard.
Normal temperatures(green curve: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.php
The stratospheric polar vortex works in the troposphere in the winter only.
The proof of how important the polar vortex pattern is is the current temperature in the east of the US.
This was utterly foreseeable. Arctic (not Antarctic) sea-ice decreased from 1979 to 2007, but has been essentially flat for the last 11 years, and has started to increase slightly the last few years.
The same for the Greenland ice-cap, but glaciers react slowly so the flattening there didn’t happen until about 2012, but there too, the glaciers have now started readvancing:
http://www.polarportal.dk/en/news/2018-season-report/
It is getting impossible to conceal this much longer, so it is time for Plan B: “Warming causes cooling”. Forget all about arctic amplification, canaries in coal mines etc.
Meh, they just decided to throw doomsday several decades into the future, and scream about it louder than ever.
NOAA has not the same view:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181211121107.htm
“This year’s report shows that the Arctic region experienced the second-warmest air temperatures ever recorded; the second-lowest overall sea-ice coverage..”
NOAA lives in another universe. The lowest sea-ice minimum was in 2012, the second lowest in 2007. I would guess “overall” means some kind of statistical shenanigan where 2018 somehow manages to come out low though neither maximum or minimum were exceptional.
And when it comes to Greenland I trust DMI a lot more than NOAA.
In honour of the impending “Winterval” Festival, we should celebrate with some music
What’s that Magic Molecule doing now? Thickening ice?…. Is there no end to the devious deeds that CO2 can do?
And up is down, left is right, white is black… Whatever happened to real science?
The most simple Logic continues to be missing from NASA
This increase in the amount of sea ice growing in winter doesn’t overcome the large increase in melting we’ve observed in recent decades,”
“Arctic sea ice is still very much in decline across all seasons and is projected to continue its decline over the coming decades. ”
There is a logical explanation for this. “If the sea ice layer floating over the ocean thins, the upper ocean is less insulated from the very cold Arctic winter atmosphere. That lowers ocean temperatures and builds more ice from below.”
Last paragraph, Oldbrew’s article on the same study, Tallbloke’s blog, with link to Jonathan Griffin’s piece on it.
Indeed. And as the ice gets thicker the insulation gets better and less ice builds below. This is the reason the Arctic ocean doesn’t freeze right to the bottom.
So if the ice becomes thicker it can be because:
1. The Arctic winter atmosphere has become colder and/or less cloudy
2. The Arctic Ocean beneath the ice has become colder
3. The insulation has become less effective (=less snow on the ice)
1. Is almost certainly not true, so it will presumably be 2. or 3., or a combination.
This is not true. In winter the temperature in the Arctic depends strongly on the condition and pattern of stratospheric polar vortex.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zu_nh.gif
Stratospheric Intrusions are when stratospheric air dynamically decends into the troposphere and may reach the surface, bringing with it high concentrations of ozone which may be harmful to some people. Stratospheric Intrusions are identified by very low tropopause heights, low heights of the 2 potential vorticity unit (PVU) surface, very low relative and specific humidity concentrations, and high concentrations of ozone.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/
I rather fail to see the connection to the posts above.
Ren: “This is not true.” What’s not true?
The distribution of ice thickness in the Arctic is highly uneven.
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/sea/CICE_map_thick_LA_EN_20181211.png
Indeed. The multi-year ice is much thicker. However I recommend using the only site that gives actual measured thickness, not modeled:
http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/seaice.html
Below you can see how in winter the temperature in the stratosphere affects the temperature in the troposphere.
More likely 2 and 3 as you say, tty, plus, significantly, for the long term, probably less melting during the summer “melt” phase, when the air and/or ocean are cooler, which fosters increasing depth over time. . .
“If we didn’t have this negative feedback, the ice would be declining even faster than it currently is. Unfortunately, the positive feedback loop of summer ice melt and increased solar absorption associated with summer ice melting still appears to be dominant and continue to drive overall sea ice declines.”
Yet the years since 2007 with less sea ice extent in September have a stronger rebound by the following March.
All of this just proves that man has no clue about what is going on. The planet has balancing that man cannot comprehend and does not understand. The true science is so far beyond our imagination……
It is truly astounding to see buffoonery raised to an art form, and yet, here we are.
Warmistas reach new heights of stupidity with every word and utterance.
It is a wonder to behold.
As temperatures in the Arctic have warmed at double the pace of the rest of the planet,…
And how did that happen since fossil fuel use there is not high and fossil fuel causes this warming beyond question to the extent that the name denier otherwise only used in association with Nazi extremism is justified according to the BBC. Since the region is bounded very clearly it cannot be heat flow from the fossil fuel using Europe and America.
Are the UN leaders really dense as they even put up the map of temperature anomalies in the Mail article on the subject as proof we need to be taxed into abject fuel poverty or are they knowingly defrauding us?
The title of every NASA news release should be: “This may sound counterintuitive”