Second-lowest September minimum since observations began
Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
The sea-ice extent in the Arctic is nearing its annual minimum at the end of the melt season in September. Only circa 3.9 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean are covered by sea ice any more, according to researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen. This is only the second time that the annual minimum has dropped below four million square kilometres since satellite measurements began in 1979.
Until mid-August, it looked as though a notable record would be reached: the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice (defined as the area with a sea-ice concentration of more than 15 percent) from late March to early August was the smallest measured by satellites since 1979. “Our satellite data show that between March and April 2019, there was an unusually large decrease in the ice extent, from which the Arctic sea ice was unable to recover,” explain Professor Christian Haas, a geophysicist and head of the Sea Ice section at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and Dr Gunnar Spreen from the University of Bremen’s Institute for Environmental Physics. Since the second half of August, however, the seasonal reduction has slowed down, overlaid by short-term fluctuations. The lowest value so far for 2019 was 3.82 million square kilometres, observed on 3 September. This means that this year, the September average could be below 4 million square kilometres for only the second time.
But in the coming weeks, the ice could retreat further: even though in early fall air temperatures in the Arctic have now fallen below freezing, the heat stored in the water can continue to melt the underside of the ice for a few more weeks. However, if it becomes extremely cold in the Arctic in the days ahead, the ice cover can already increase again. In October, the scientists will analyse the data for the whole of September, and will then be able to make a final assessment of the sea-ice minimum in 2019. It appears unlikely that this year we will see a new absolute record, below the sea-ice extent of 3.4 million square kilometres observed in 2012. “Record or not, this year confirms the continued long-term reduction of Arctic sea ice as a result of climate change, making it ever more likely that in a few decades the Arctic will be ice free in summer. This will mean drastic changes in the Arctic, with consequences for the climate and ecosystems, as well as for people, including us in Europe,” says Christian Haas.
Scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute and the Institute for Environmental Physics at the University of Bremen are together analysing the complete satellite data on the ice concentration, extent, and thickness, as well as atmospheric measurements. The website https://www.meereisportal.de/en/ , for example, publishes daily updated ice maps and provides detailed summaries of the sea-ice developments. Ice extent estimates from other institutions (e.g. NSIDC or OSI-SAF) can provide slightly different results. Currently, for 2019 they predict the third-lowest ice extent. “These slight differences are due to the higher resolution of our data and the slightly different methods used to calculate the ice concentration. They show the uncertainties that even the most modern satellite observations can have. Data from the MOSAiC expedition will help to reduce these uncertainties,” explains Dr Gunnar Spreen from the University of Bremen’s Institute for Environmental Physics.
The researchers are currently particularly interested in the northern Laptev Sea: on 20 September, the research icebreaker Polarstern will set sail from Tromsø, in Norway, for the start of the MOSAiC expedition. In the northern Laptev Sea they will search for a suitable ice floe to moor the Polarstern to, in order to drift, icebound, through the Central Arctic for an entire year. “We’re following the ice situation very closely and have developed a series of new data products to offer the best-possible, detailed insights into the current conditions,” reports Christian Haas. “In the Laptev Sea, the ice situation is similar to previous years with an Arctic-wide low ice extent. This means that it will be relatively easy for us to reach our research area, at a latitude of 85 degrees north. But being so close to the ice edge will make it difficult to find a suitable ice floe that is large enough and thick enough to set up our ice camp. Our computer models show that the ice south of 88 degrees north is less than 80 centimetres thick, which is less than the 1.2 metres we’d ideally like to have to safely set up our measuring stations. We may have to travel farther north than planned to find the right conditions,” expects Christian Haas, who will lead the second leg of the MOSAiC expedition from mid-December.
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Joint Press Release: Alfred Wegener Institute and University of Bremen
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Doesn’t less ice mean more wind and less precipitation (less water vapor) vice warming.
So he ships that got stuck in the ice and had to be rescued will be able to return now
Frankly, so what? As the maximum is staying relatively stable, all a greater minimum means is that more water will freeze over during Winter and thereby cool the planet more. You radiate twice as much energy into space to freeze 8 million square kilometres of ocean than to freeze 4.
Since the normal year on year variation of sea ice extent can easily exceed 1M km2, worrying about a variation in the order of 10,000s or even 100,000s of km2 is basically just an advanced form or wiggle watching.
The decade 1996-2007 shows a decrease of 3 millions square km2 Arctic ice in September and corresponds to AMO cycle positive phase, while 2007-2019 is quite stable above 4 millions square km2 (except 2012). Next , we ‘ll find negative phase of AMO cycle after 2026 and we can expect increase of ice cover.
Seeing is believing .
And of course bio-data shows that the current extent of Arctic sea ice is well above what it has been for all but about the last 500 years.
The recovery from the extreme high levels of the LIA and the similar high of the latter part of the 1970’s , seems to have levelled out, with Arctic sea ice extent still very much more what it has been for most of the Holocene.
I wonder how long these “well above normal” levels of Arctic sea ice will last.
Lower levels would be highly beneficial for all those living up there.
Unfortunately, I suspect that with the AMO slowly starting to turn downwards, we will see an increase in sea ice over the next several years.
According to
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/
it doesn’t seem that in their data set, 2019 will stay above 2012 anyway, and probably above 2007 as well.
Here are the anomalies wrt the mean of 1981-2010 for the three years, computed out of Colorado’s climatology:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tuUYTPR2UbaIOgmV-XfDewnS8UpyBaK-/view
But please keep in mind that Bremen’s is a quite different one, as explained by Jim Hunt upthread many times.
Rgds
J.-P. D.
The anomaly years are misleading, intentionally.
They start at an extreme high, similar to LIA extents.
Anyone that thinks this is where extents “should” be, or that it was in any way desirable, has rocks in their head.
Mornin’ Fred.
Oh no they don’t!
See my recent comment upthread. They (i.e. NSIDC) started their Sea Ice Index when SMMR first flew.
So I present intentionally misleading stuff, hu?
Here is the same graph but with absolute data:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n5qRk-C6w0OdmX05XK8Twhh8VK0l-bTS/view
We live in the Holocene era, the current inter glacial warm period. It’s about 10,000 years old. Temperatures during this period have been cozy warm compared to that which existed 20,000 years ago at the height of the last glacial maximum. Sea ice area is determined from satellite photos which have only been available for the last 40 years. 40 years out of 10,000 is only 0.4%. How can they claim the 2nd worst of those 40 years is cause for alarm when they have no idea what happened over the previous 99.6% of the time? What was the ice area 1000 years ago during the Medieval warm period or 2000 years ago during the Roman warm period or thousands of years before that during earlier warm periods? They don’t have a clue but want us to believe this low ice area is evidence of impending doom. And it is not even the lowest ice area during the satellite era. 2012 was worse.
But biodata gives us a very good idea.
Current levels are still very much on the high side of normal for the last 10,000 years
Well, 7 years after 2012 and without the ‘great arctic cyclone’ which contributed to 2012 ice loss, we see a second lowest extent in the sea ice… after a similar low just 3 years ago
…and the volume, thickness and average age are also worse than in previous years…
And since 30 years is widely considered to show a climate trend, it is clear that a decrease is a real climate event.
Now we have very good records going back into the late 1800s and we can clearly see the current low is worse than anything in the last 150 years, very definitely worse than the 1930s low.
Tell me: how is this not a climate change related event? you have to account for a change beyond natural variability and known natural cycles and long term underlying climate trends… you simply don’t do that. We can certainly show reasons for other known lows in the arctic ice – but none stacks up to account for current conditions and trends, except human caused climate change
But climate change isn’t human caused. Calculate the magnitude. We aren’t by far able to generate such swings.
“…worse than the 1930s low…”
For one thing, words like “worse” or “better” are value judgements.
It is utterly unscientific and shows your inherent bias.
Which is fine, almost everyone here is biased.
But you need to be able to separate your opinion of what is bad and what is good from the analysis of the numbers.
The graph from the 20th century shows a solid line representing an annual mean, and a darker line showing a 5 year running average of this.
We have seen nothing anywhere close to an annual mean like what occurred over most of the 20th century from ~1925 to ~1975.
You are comparing a annual average to a Summer low monthly value and concluding that there is less ice now!
When was the last time anyone sailed a wooden boat through the northwest passage with few if any modern accoutrements? Because that was done over 100 years ago.
If all of that ice up there melted every Summer, nothing bad would result from that.
It would be hugely beneficial, as are all warm periods and more clement climatic conditions all through history.
IOW…objectively speaking, it is almost certainly more true that less ice is better…more ice is WORSE!
If you disagree, provide some rationale.
There has never been anything but assertions that warming is bad, frozen wastelands are good, or anything at all like that.
People and life prosper in warmth and perish is subzero cold.
Besides for everything else, Griff…you seem to be acknowledging that the 1930 had a large reduction in ice amount compared to prior and subsequent decades in the 20th century.
So…what caused all that ice to melt?
It was long before CO2 was high enough to make much of any difference.
And the amount obviously increased for several decades while CO2 was rising rapidly.
Now with CO2 higher than ever and increasing faster than ever, we have had little change for 12 years or so and it if we have a quiet Sun period and reversal of AMO, we could see a secular trend reversal very soon.
So I want everyone who thinks melting ice is bad to say if they also think that if ice amounts increase over the next ten years…will that be a good thing?
I ask because I never see any warmistas take it as good news, when dire prognostications prove to be false.
If melting ice is a crisis, then is not stable ice a good thing, and growing ice a miracle and our salvation from doomageddon?
“Now we have very good records going back into the late 1800s and we can clearly see the current low is worse than anything in the last 150 years, very definitely worse than the 1930s low.”
Not according to this chart. This chart shows less arctic sea ice in the recent past than there is today. You’re getting exercised over nothing, Griff.
“Now we have very good records going back into the late 1800s”
Typical griff hogwash.
For example for the Northeast Passage we have data for exactly one (1) year in the “late 1800s”, 1878, and partial data (as far as the Laptev Sea) for one more year, 1893.
For the Severnaya Zemlya area we have zero data, since it wasn’t even discovered until 1914.
For Franz Josephs land we have partial data for 1873-74 and some years in the 1890’s
Northeastern Greenland – much the same, partial data from 1823, 1869-70 and 1899.
For the Sverdrup Archipelago we have absolutely nothing before 1898. It wasn’t even known to exist. For the southern part of the Parry archipelago we do have a fair amount of data for a few years around 1850 thanks to the several expeditions searching for the lost Franklin expedition. Otherwise data for northern Canada are extrenely sparse until well after WW2. Remember that Air Force Island, 1,700 km2, wasn’t even discovered until 1948.
“very good records”?
Incidentally a study of the data from those expeditions searching for Franklin has concluded that climate and ice conditions then were much the same as now:
https://seagrant.uaf.edu/nosb/2005/resources/arctic-explorers.pdf
” How can they claim the 2nd worst of those 40 years is cause for alarm when they have no idea what happened over the previous 99.6% of the time?”
I would submit that those getting exercised over arctic sea ice amounts should study the arctic in the 1930’s where there was even less arctic sea ice than there is now. Arguing over where the current year is ranked in the period from 1979 to present is ignoring the fact that it melted more in the 1930’s, and that means nothing unprecedented is happening in the arctic today.
The alarmists are looking for “unprecedented”. So they turn a blind eye to the past because that’s the only way they can find “unprecedented” in the present
Here’s a cobbled-together graph of the arctic back to the 1920’s. Do you see anything to get alarmed about today? The arctic has a long way to go today to match the sea ice loss of the 1930’s.
It looks like decreasing Arctic sea ice trend anomalies are leveling off since 2005 or so as Javier has indicated. Around 2008, the summer melt lows and winter growth highs have become increasingly larger. The high variability usually suggests a change is in the air.
https://imgur.com/a/3zDQ75Y
No, they aren’t!
I’m forced to agree with Griff on this one Renee.
How do you justify your assertions?
If you believe the graph you linked to does that please explain your reasoning in words of one syllable or fewer, since I am a bear of very little brain.
Renee
“It looks like decreasing Arctic sea ice trend anomalies are leveling off since 2005 or so”
I disagree with you as did griff and Jim Hunt.
The graph you show is perfectly comparable with what everybody can download from colorado.edu, and process using some spreadsheet stuff:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wNtfQi_Td2sKSqCamsvz-iUtuIYSlwMr/view
Even when looking at the Arctic sea ice area data (100 % pack ice, red), there is no flat trend to see, let alone would the extent data (blue) show what only eye-balling can suggest. To look at running means, averaging the high deviations, is better.
And the computed trends (in Mkm² / decade) make it even a lot clearer.
Extent for 1979-2919: -0.55 ± 0.02, for 2007-2019 (Javier’s 12/13 years): -0.45 ± 0.11
Area for 1979-2919: -0.23 ± 0.02, for 2007-2019: -0.33 ± 0.12
*
Average of both for 1979-2919: -0.39 ± 0.02, for 2007-2019: -0.39 ± 0.12
Maybe you overlooked that Javier actually meant summer ice levels since 2007; that indeed is theoretically correct, but… nicely cherry-picked.
OK, thanks for the statistics. What is intriguing in the Arctic sea ice plots are the extreme deviations from 2007-2019 versus the years 1997-2007. Surely different processes are being invoked or amplified. I would be interested in your explanation.
willis noticed this years ago.
Steven,
Wavelet analysis highlights different oscillations also. Strong 5 year oscillations occur post 2007 with a dim between 1995 and 2007. Perhaps related to AMO and/or El Niño? I wish folks would have a discussion on WUWT on cause and effects.
https://imgur.com/a/dZ0DLAR
Renee,
What do you make of Javier’s “AMO” based analysis above?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/15/low-sea-ice-cover-in-the-arctic/#comment-2795823
Graph also at Imgur, rather than embedded in his comment!
Renee
Not every person processing data is able to interpret it and to draw accurate conclusions.
Renee (in your comment below): “Surely different processes are being invoked or amplified”
WR: Different processes and processes that are different in their effect over time. Interesting is the inflow of warm(er) Atlantic subsurface water, flowing under the Arctic ice cover. What happens is visible here: https://climatechangetshirts.org/2017/12/01/atlantification-of-the-trans-siberian-polar-sea/ and is described in the paper by Polyakov et al.: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/285.abstract
That warmer subsurface water makes her trip around the North Pole and diminishes the quantity of sea ice above the warmer than normal subsurface waters. The whole ‘trip around’ takes some 10 – 15 years. At least in the nineties and in the 2000’s huge warm inflows into the Arctic are observed, causing a lower ice cover and an extra melt of sea ice during summer. The extra sea ice melt causes atmospheric changes that enhance the warming effect.
The atmospheric changes (more pole ward air and ocean water transport) temporarily (if measured over decades) enhance the warming (and later: cooling) processes over the Arctic. All against the background of a slowly warming Earth since the Little Ice Age.
It is interesting to look at the behavior of sea surface temperatures, indicative for some movements in the oceans. They reflect the chaotic behavior of the oceans. Following the temperature line in this interactive graphic https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst/ the peaks and lows do not show the same change in SST patterns. Which means that oceanic behavior has an important chaotic element, resulting in chaotically changing atmospheric patterns that in their turn (by changing wind directions and wind speed and by changing evaporation, rainfall and salinity) change the behavior of the oceans. Very complex.
Thinner ice and much less multiyear ice tend to give more mobility and fracturing and therefore more variability due to dispersion etc.
Sea Ice Extent is an absurd metric:
1) It values 100% concentration the same as 15% concentration. 100% is 6.67 times 15%, so there is at least a 667% difference in the energy transfer between those 2 concentrations. Yet they are valued the same. Of course, the difference is even greater if ice thickness is factored in.
2) 14% concentration is only 7% less in energy transfer compared to 15%, yet the ocean at 14% concentration (and below) is ignored.
Why is this considered valid science?
This image provides an intuitive look at why SIE is absurd: https://imgur.com/bxHeA6w
Ice volume is a more valuable metric because it shows the real transfer of energy, however, this is modeled, not measured. We get different results from DMI, NSIDC, PSC/UW, etc. So we don’t really know what is going on.
DMI used to provide a daily update in a text file here (but the file is gone): http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/txt/IceVol.txt
Does anyone know where the data can be found now – or did DMI remove public access?
Here is a graph from May 3, 2019 – which was the last time I updated it.
https://imgur.com/qKs88pJ
It looked like the volume was reasonably stable since 2007 based upon that data.
William Ward
1. “Sea Ice Extent is an absurd metric…”
Maybe! But nobody tells you to solely look at ice extent data, when there is area (aka pack ice) data available as well. It is up to your appreciation to have a closer look at the difference between the two.
Arctic sea ice extent and area, Jan 1979 – Aug 2019
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wNtfQi_Td2sKSqCamsvz-iUtuIYSlwMr/view
Antarctic sea ice extent and area, Jan 1979 – Aug 2019
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ouk-L0BbRNz3ydiYZYiZaLqnZ0U2ql5_/view
As you can see, floating ice and pack ice are much nearer in the Antarctic region than in the Arctic. NH and SH have few in common.
2. “… (but the file is gone)”
Yeah. And DMI’s data recently showed less ice volume loss than that computed by PIOMAS:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oGMi6eNTJ1LNVHPyJuqL0o8ejwiZAQcv/view
I sent a mail to their Promice group to obtain ASCII data out of the GRACE NetCDF files, and asked for DMI’s ice volume file, but… no answer.
Rgds
J.-P. D.
J.-P.D (Bindidon) – thanks for the reply.
Yes, I agree – and I do look at all of the metrics (extent, concentration, thickness, volume), mostly from DMI and NSIDC. The data from these 2 organizations don’t always agree.
I suppose, if there ever was a good scientific reason to try to capture the “extent,” it was for the concern about albedo. However, it has become the primary (“go-to”) metric for Climate Alarmists and the media. The common narrative is that all of the ice is disappearing and sea-ice-extent is cited in support of that. It only tells part of the story – and I argue it doesn’t tell a very accurate story. 3.9Mkm^2 of extent at 30% concentration has an amount of ice equal to 7.8Mkm^2 of extent at 15% concentration if thickness is ignored.
From an energy perspective, ice volume tells us the most, as it tells us how much heat is moving from the oceans to the atmosphere. (Making ice warms the atmosphere.) I’m aware of 3 sources of sea ice volume data: DMI, NSIDC and PSC/UW (PIOMAS). My graph from DMI data ( https://imgur.com/qKs88pJ ) shows a very different picture from PIOMAS. DMI shows a relatively stable volume since 2007. PIOMAS shows it going down. The chart you supply confirms that and allows us to easily compare side-by-side. Thanks for sharing it! As I understand it, ice volume is a modeled product – and builds upon estimates of concentration and extent. So (as is typical of Cli-Sci) we take bad data from estimates or instruments that are not capable of delivering the accuracy claimed – and feed it into models that are not verified to work. So I don’t think we have a picture accurate enough to be ranking sea ice by year.
Cli-Sci has a strange and perverse obsession with assuming how the natural world is supposed to behave. It assumes that the way sea ice forms is supposed to be stable – the same “extent”, thickness, age and volume – year after year. Any and all changes are of course a sign of looming human-caused disaster. If it grows, we are putting too many aerosols in the air. If it shrinks, we are putting too much CO2 in the air. There is very little in the natural world that is constant – yet Cli-Sci operates as if it should be.
If we think about how ice forms, it requires a significant amount of energy to be extracted from the water and transferred to the atmosphere. The sea ice coverage is an extremely thin shell – from millimeters of ice crystals to at most ~10 feet near the north pole. A very small amount of water is actually involved in this process, relative to the total mass of ocean water in the area of concern. All it takes is faster moving currents or more churning of sea water and that ice formation is disrupted. The same amount of energy may be taken from the water – but it may come from a larger set of water molecules – so fewer molecules transition to ice. Each molecule that transitions from the liquid to the solid state must give up the full energy required by the latent heat of fusion. Similarly, if currents that are slightly warmer are present, then the energy transfer goes to changing temperature more than changing state. It is quite possible – and likely – that the movement of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere is far more constant than visible ice shows. Cli-Sci operates as if it has certainty on something that is very uncertain.
WW
Ps – Thanks for the links!
WW
Thanks in turn for your thoughtful reply. I don’t know the expression in English, but Germans name that ‘über den Tellerrand hinweg schauen’.
“The chart you supply confirms that and allows us to easily compare side-by-side.”
This one will even do a better job, as you had presented absolute data from DMI:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19e7mQLZwM-XAGUdDxpzpb9GZen0Vfw07/view
What looks to me a bit strange and disturbing is the recent situation in Antarctica. This harsh drop beginning in 2016 is amazing, to say the least. As usual, the absolute plots show much less dramatic, but.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S3gqYa5X2YLYCJrABkLf8TIGFxrGvVuJ/view
But just prior to losing a bunch of ice, Antarctica had the highest amount in the satellite record.
And current levels do not look very different from 1986 or 1979.
The biggest problem I see is, very little is being done to understand what is happening in any objective way. Everything is tied in to climate change caused by CO2.
Which obviously cannot explain the pattern we see in Antarctic sea ice over the past several decades.
Science works poorly when conclusions are arrived at first, and data and hypothesizing is winnowed to comport with that preconception.
Nobody ever learned anything by making up their mind before asking any questions.
On another topic,
I have not seen one in a while, but the last time I did, the graph of total global ice was amazingly consistent over time…more so than either pole alone, IIRC.
J.-P.D. (Bindidon) – thanks for the German lesson! Are you in Germany? For years I used to visit Hamburg on business – and liked it very much.
Thanks for the über den Tellerrand hinweg schauen showing DMI and PIOMAS modeled Arctic sea ice volumes. It is interesting that they both show increasing ice volume over the past 4-7 years. If that is correct, and the decreasing extent is correct, it just shows that the ice is more concentrated in a smaller area – not that we are heading towards being “ice-free.” How is the hysteria justified in light of the data available?
I have an interesting 5-minute video to share that touches upon Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, before the “satellite era”. The video, titled “Nimbus: Recovering the Past,” discusses the Nimbus Satellites, launched in 1964.
https://youtu.be/bvGIE1y3cXA
In addition to other things, these satellites took daily pictures of sea ice through the 1960s and 1970s. The satellites transmitted the information back to ground stations and film was printed to record the images. This data was forgotten until recently. Reels of this film (over 250k images) were found, digitized, and analyzed by NSIDC. In the 1960s, there was more Arctic sea ice, but there were large holes in the ice. The holes were unexpected and we still can’t explain them. In 1964, the Antarctic sea ice extent was the largest ever recorded – more than we had seen in the satellite era up to 2014 (when the video was made). Two years later in 1966, we observed the smallest sea ice extent ever recorded. The earliest maximum sea ice extent was recorded in 1969. So, in the 1960’s we observed a lot of dynamic behavior.
We also have ship captain’s logbooks that go back to the 1800s with lots of information about changing arctic sea ice conditions. The data may not be of numerical scientific value – but we certainly get empirical evidence that conditions in the Arctic have been changing for a long time and are cyclical.
Regarding your last chart, I wonder if your fitting algorithm exaggerates the curve over the past 3 years due to the end data. The recent pattern doesn’t appear to deviate much from the previous few decades. If you cut and pasted a few years of data from an upward pattern – as hypothetical future data, I would expect the curve to smooth out. What do you think?
WW
Nick,
I agree with you about shoehorning all explanations into CO2 causality.
Your point about total global ice is interesting. It would make sense that heat may flow more to one pole or the other based upon a lot of cyclical factors – but the total heat is the same. It is just where we see it manifest.
WW
Have you looked into the early declassified reconnaissance satellite imagery from the 1960’s and 1970’s? For example the first satellite image ever, from August 8 1960, shows that the sea off Mys Shmidta in Chukotka was then completely ice-free.
Admittedly the data is very spotty and largely from the summer, but the early (1962-64) mapping missions with KH5 Argon cameras covered very large areas. I remember looking at a single strip image that showed the ice distribution all around Svalbard and Franz Josephs land in great detail.
Nicholas McGinley
“On another topic,
I have not seen one in a while, but the last time I did, the graph of total global ice was amazingly consistent over time…more so than either pole alone, IIRC.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12yPvYDIiqrsXufCcxvN5tfyHyD_QRB3T/view
Colorado’s data for N+S looks fine until about 2007. Later on, the sum goes somewhat abroad.
No idea what happens.
WW
Those “large holes” (=polynyas) are interesting, because it seems that they may once have occurred in the Arctic as well. They are frequently mentioned in early russian polar literature, e g Uspensky treats them extensively in “Life in high latitudes”.
However there is little trace of them in the recent satellite record.
Bindidon,
Interesting graph, I had not seen that exact one before.
I did find a link to a article from here a few years ago by Willis Eschenbach.
The graphs are a little out of data, but there are several separate ways of projecting and visualizing the data, including a detrended one that is very interesting.
I am not a huge fan of anomaly graphs, for a couple of reasons.
While they do exaggerate variations and so make them more readily apparent, I think the way our visual cortex works and processes visual information, such exaggerations may not be letting us quickly understand what we are looking at in a realistic perspective.
A few tenths of degrees of GAST variation can be made to appear the world is falling off a cliff, or about to melt into the Sun.
Colored maps can make a small variation in temperature be perceived as a planet which is burnt to a crispy crunch, when in fact most of the globe is much colder than people find comfortable.
(Case in point…the Pacific Blob…makes water that is so cold it would kill an average person in a few minutes, appear red hot)
Anywho…here is the article with this charts.
Maybe someone knows of an updated version of these presentations.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/06/the-awful-terrible-horrible-global-sea-ice-crisis/
Sorry about typo…graphs are a little out of DATE…
Mods, I seem to have a comment lost in moderation for a while now.
tty,
Thanks for the comments about polynyas. After you mentioned it, I remembered reading about them some time ago, but didn’t really retain the info. I found this NSIDC article on them: https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/polynyas.html
In the video about the Nimbus satellite images, the holes they are talking about are in the Arctic Ocean. For some reason, they didn’t refer to them as polynyas. It is interesting that they were occurring in the 1960s when it was colder – but are not occurring in the Arctic now.
This link reports on a recent study of a polynya in Antarctica spotted in September 2017. The conclusion was that a cyclone led to the formation.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190424102234.htm
I have not seen the early declassified reconnaissance satellite imagery you mentioned. Do you have a good link to learn more?
William Ward
Sources
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/north/monthly/data/
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/south/monthly/data/
DMI used to provide a daily update in a text file here (but the file is gone): http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/txt/IceVol.txt
Does anyone know where the data can be found now – or did DMI remove public access?
DMI changed over some of their data to PolarPortal, could try there:
http://polarportal.dk/en/sea-ice-and-icebergs/sea-ice-thickness-and-volume/
Phil.
I tried many times, no hope to find anything there but giant NetCDF files at PROMICE.
Thanks for the PolarPortal lead Phil. I had come across that in a Google search, but didn’t actually take the time to learn what it was about until seeing your comment. As Bindidon said – that site doesn’t appear to have raw data available. DMI didn’t have a link to their data from their website – but if you found the directory, the data was available. Perhaps we just have to find where the files are hiding now.
William Ward
“As Bindidon said – that site doesn’t appear to have raw data available.”
I never said that. I said I saw only NetCDF files, no ASCII stuff.
The data in a NetCDF data base can be raw raw raw. But it costs you lots of time to extract what you really need out of it, because of the resolution, which can go below 1°.
I didn’t mean to misrepresent what you said Bindidon. You mentioned PROMICE, but I thought the site being discussed was Polar Portal. I was looking for the daily Arctic Sea Ice Extent model output (text format). Isn’t PROMICE about the Greenland Ice Sheet (not Arctic Sea Ice)? What am I missing? Thanks.
William Ward
You’re right. You missed nothing!
The PROMICE links were the only interesting ones, and they indeed have to do with Greenland, especially with the evaluation of GRACE’s gravimetry data, which, though Greenland being an ice sheet on land and no sea ice, shows ‘grosso modo’ the same behavior as the Arctic.
Thank you Bindidon for the clarification!
The latest JAXA/ViSHOP extent shows a new minimum for 2019, which puts it in “2nd place” below the 2016 minimum. A picture is still worth a thousand words, but you’ll need to click through to see:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/JAXA-20190915.png
I would like to point out an interesting consequence of the now universal 15 % cutoff for ice.
It was introduced in 1979, and the odd thing is that before that 10% had been equally universally used. Ten percent intervals is the basis of the international Ball scale still used for ice reporting (0 Ball = less that 10%, 1 Ball=10-19 %), and 10% ice is the limit for sailing ships penetrating ice areas according to Scoresby and contemporaries (who should know), and this is therefore the limit obtained from old logbooks and similar sources.
The beauty of this is that ice areas before and after 1979 can therefore never be properly compared, and that there was therefore a good excuse for ditching the early satellite data for 1973-78 (which featured in the first IPCC report, but then disappeared without trace). And of course ice maps before 1979 will always show larger areas (10 % cutoff) than maps of similar ice areas after 1978 (15 % cutoff).
Neat, isn’t it?
It is so neat it’s fraudulent.
tty
Thanks for the valuable info, I didn’t know about this indeed very unlucky decision, but… you are in fact talking about sea ice extent.
Thus if extent data leaves you unsatisfied, you still might look at sea ice area (100% pack ice), and compare the two.
Does historical (pre-1979) pack ice data exist?
“Does historical (pre-1979) pack ice data exist?”
Not much. It might be possible to get some out of early Nimbus (weather), Corona and Argon (recce) satellite data back to the early 60’s. Very little older data. Ships for obvious reason never penetrated dense ice in the sailing era and very rarely later. There are data from a few sledging expeditions, a very few ships drifting in the ice, a fair number of “single spot” data from wintering parties and ships, and that is about all.
tty
Thank you for the reply.
Was any good reason given for changing to 15%? That would seem to be a major change which skews all the previous data. Not something a reasonable person would do lightly, I presume.
It’s the best number which gives good agreement between satellite and surface measurements.
Could you or someone elaborate on this?
its in the papers. I could look it up, but not playing librarian today
I thought it was based on the ability of a naval vessel to sail through 15% concentration but not 100%!
However I may have misremembered, and I’ve no time to play librarian today either!
Arctic Sea ice has been monitored via satellite prior to 1979. It has been charted in the 1990 IPCC report where the extent was much lower. Cherry picking.
Jimmy
Thanks for providing data about that.
Irony? Toi?
A graph of the data Jimmy is apparently missing can be seen here:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/mean_anomaly_1953-2012.png
Thx. Je ne sais pas tout!
No weather satellites before 1964. That chart is largely imaginary.
The 1973-78 data is available on p. 224 of the IPCC AR1 report here:
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
tty,
Sounds as though you’ve joined Nick in the Tony Heller fan club?
First weather satellites were launched in 1960 or 1961, if what I was reading the other day is accurate.
I do not know what sort of coverage they had.
Aah, here we go:
“As early as 1946, the idea of cameras in orbit to observe the weather was being developed. This was due to sparse data observation coverage and the expense of using cloud cameras on rockets. By 1958, the early prototypes for TIROS and Vanguard (developed by the Army Signal Corps) were created.[3] The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched on February 17, 1959.[4] It was designed to measure cloud cover and resistance, but a poor axis of rotation and its elliptical orbit kept it from collecting a notable amount of useful data. The Explorer VI and VII satellites also contained weather-related experiments.[3]
The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1, launched by NASA on April 1, 1960.[5] TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then. Beginning with the Nimbus 3 satellite in 1969, temperature information through the tropospheric column began to be retrieved by satellites from the eastern Atlantic and most of the Pacific Ocean, which led to significant improvements to weather forecasts.[6]
The ESSA and NOAA polar orbiting satellites followed suit from the late 1960s onward. Geostationary satellites followed, beginning with the ATS and SMS series in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then continuing with the GOES series from the 1970s onward. Polar orbiting satellites such as QuikScat and TRMM began to relay wind information near the ocean’s surface starting in the late 1970s, with microwave imagery which resembled radar displays, which significantly improved the diagnoses of tropical cyclone strength, intensification, and location during the 2000s and 2010s”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_satellite
I think we were keeping a close eye on the Soviets as soon as possible. I wonder if the imagery collected by those has been declassified and might be useful?
“I think we were keeping a close eye on the Soviets as soon as possible. I wonder if the imagery collected by those has been declassified and might be useful?”
It has. The KH4 Corona, KH5 Argon, KH6 Lanyard and the KH8 and KH9 low resolution imagery is declassified. The oldest relevant imagery is from 18 August 1960.
It is of course very spotty, and is only useful for times and areas with daylight and clear weather.
The oldest available weather satellite imagery is from 1964.
The weather satellite imagery has been digitized, the recce satellite imagery has not, as far as I know.
Javier
I’m not very happy to have had to ‘accuse’ you in a reply to commenter Renee, of cherry-picking! But I couldn’t write different.
You wrote upthread in a reply to commenter Jim Hunt:
Facts are stubborn. No summer Arctic sea ice decrease in 12 years. It should be 13 next year.
Correct!
The linear estimates of extent and area in the Arctic for the September months in 2007-2018 are as follows (in Mkm²/decade):
– extent: 0.10 ± 0.41
– area: 0.09 ± 0.36
{ Let us silently agree to overlook the fact that the 2 sigma are four times the trends, what makes the latter pretty good insignificant 🙂 }
Thus, when looking at the summer month with the lowest sea ice levels each year, we see that the average trend is even positive, for both extent and area.
But… let us do the same for the month with the highest sea ice level each year.
The linear estimates of extent and area in the Arctic for the March months in 2007-2018 are as follows:
– extent: -0.64 ± 0.25
– area: -0.63 ± 0.31
This would be the cherry-picking complementary to yours: the March trends are way below the all month average for 2007-2018 (-0.45 ± 0.11) for sea ice extent, and nearly half of that for sea ice area (-0.33 ± 0.12).
We could do a similar job by taking more months than simply March and September, btw having a better winter >< summer comparison; but I don't think this would change much.
Rgds
J.-P. D.
Question is not “is extent shrinking” over time.
Question is, is it shrinking faster than would be expected from purely natural drivers?
If the rate of retreat appears natural, it is a good thing, right? Northwest passage and all that. There are some big up sides to less ice.
If the rate or retreat is faster than natural, then, we have something different.
I don’t see anything that says this rate of retreat cannot be totally, or at least nearly totally, natural.
Thus, interesting, but, not worrying.
I noticed the ENSO meter has taken another little drop.
I think we can all agree that the June 2010 forecast (and insults) from this Joe Romm piece have not verified.
https://thinkprogress.org/arctic-death-spiral-naval-postgrad-schools-maslowski-projects-ice-free-fall-by-2016-3-yrs-8451a607c916/
Careful if you follow the link – stuff there eats up a huge amount of CPU resources.
See also https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/18/sea-ice-news-volume-4-number-4-the-maslowski-countdown-to-an-ice-free-arctic-begins/ which has a nice list of improbable forecasts, often related to Maslowski’s forecast. BTW, Maslowski doesn’t seem to be publishing much these days according to Google Scholar.
See also this summary of predictions from last April, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/30/terrifying-predictions-about-the-melting-north-pole/
OTOH, I wouldn’t say this claim that ice cover has “turned the corner” has verified either. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/21/sea-ice-news-volume-4-number-6-arctic-sea-ice-has-most-definitely-turned-the-corner-maslowski-is-falsified/
Thank you Ric!
I knew I had seen a few of these over the past few years.
Jim, these no doubt contain many if not all of the “they” I referred to upthread.
maslowski was specifically called out as “WRONG” by the IPCC
Yay, something we can agree about with the IPCC!
Gotta link Steven?
I daren’t link to my own analysis of the Maslowski/Gore “debate”!
“No answer!” was the stern reply?
Here’s my link:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2014/09/david-roses-apocalyptic-vision-of-al-gores-nobel-lecture/
Two New Papers: Rapid Deceleration Of Greenland Ice-Sheet Melt Since 2013
https://climatechangedispatch.com/greenland-rapid-deceleration-ice-melt/
Greenland’s ice sheet mass losses have significantly decelerated since 2013 – a reversal from the rapid retreat from the 1990s to 2012 driven by cloud forcing and the NAO (Ruan et al., 2019).
The post-2013 “relatively stable” ice sheet even gained mass during 2017-’18 (Andersen et al., 2019).
Decelerated Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Driven by Positive Summer North Atlantic Oscillation (Ruan et al., 2019)….
While WUWT is still on top for traffic and honest reporting of science, take note that one of CAGW’s and Michael “I lied about being awarded the Nobel Prize” Mann’s cheerleader supporters and “authenticators” Lefty ThinkProgress website closes, lays off staff.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/lefty_thinkprogress_website_closes_lays_off_staff.html
September 7, 2019
Lefty ThinkProgress website closes, lays off staff
By Thomas Lifson
One of the purported leaders of left-wing online journalism closed its doors yesterday, laying off its unionized staff. Sam Stein reports for the Daily Beast:
ThinkProgress, the influential news site that rose to prominence in the shadow of the Bush administration and helped define progressivism during the Obama years, is shutting down.
The outlet, which served as an editorially independent (does that mean void of any requirement to maintain any editorial standards?) project of the Democratic Party think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), will stop current operations on Friday and be converted into a site where CAP scholars can post.
Following NISDC datas, arctic ice extent were 4.220.000 km² on 15th september
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
And it is at 4.1 on Sept 19th much talk AWI was right.
Any kudos Anthony.!?!?
Yup. This year’s minimum did just pip out 2007 and 2016 for second lowest. But it’s still way above the 2012 low. Might drop below 4 M sq mi in NSDIC data, but even so yet far from the record.
IOW, practically no difference between summer minimum in 2007 and 2019.
The low years of 2007, 2012 and 2016 were followed by higher years. We’ll see if that happens again in 2020 and 2021. The highest years since 2007 occurred in 2009, 2013 and 2014.
“This will mean drastic changes in the Arctic, with consequences for the climate and ecosystems, as well as for people, including us in Europe,” it’s statements like that that ruin these guys credibility. Just flat out alarmism to scare people. What if an ice free arctic was a good thing? Would any of them ever mention that? Has anyone ever entertained that idea?
I for one am absolutely certain that frozen wastelands are not necessary for human survival, and are in fact…frozen wastelands that are all but stripped bare of life and flat out deadly.
Lots of good information and commentary in this thread. Thanks to all involved.
The pleasure is all mine Tom 🙂