Polariced Mysteries

(You have been caught once again for sneaking in, you have been banned yet again) SUNMOD

You were as good as your word Willis. Published on the dot of 6 PM BST!

However you don’t seem to have addressed the main point I raised on the previous thread, so restating it slightly.

What do you suppose the effect of ice-albedo feedback will prove to be over the next 10 years or so? Or if you prefer over the last 10 years or so?

And why “remove the seasonality”. As you correctly pointed out over there, “When the ice is mostly there the sun mostly isn’t”.

Also, Willis, did sea level jump at the same time as both polar ice masses dropped sharply. If not, where did the water go??
I have to say that I read every contribution you make with the greatest interest as you seem to have a mountain of common sense in your approaches to these issues. Please keep up the good work.
BJ in UK

Not sure about the Arctic but those one-two punches in Antarctica are not to be overlooked.

Record-low 2016 Antarctic sea ice was due to a ‘perfect storm’ of tropical, polar conditions – not ‘climate change’ – Watts Up With That?

Consider Blackjack players at a casino. Analysis of the anomaly of the player’s chips will show large variations. Analysis of the Casino’s income will show that it is quite steady. Prediction of the Casino’s income from the chip records of 2 players is impossible unless they play for a long long time with identical betting strategies. We only have 2 players, Arctic and Antarctica.

Perhaps some answers might be found using data prior to 1979. I find it hard to believe that 1979 is the start of the satellite record. The US has landed men on the moon 10 years prior, and had launched Pioneer 10, 11, Voyagers, and Viking to Mars before then. Surely someone had the bright idea to create Earth orbiting satellites well before 1979, and, you know, take some pictures.

Willis

This is a question about your methodology. In these plots you have used CEEMD smoothing, but in previous posts you have used LOWESS smoothing.

What aspect of a dataset determines the smoothing protocol?

Cheers from northwest Ontario.

Antarctic sea ice maximum, unconstrained by land, is higher than Arctic, and its minimum lower.

Since Antarctic sea ice extends to so much lower latitudes, its effect on albedo is far greater.

Arctic sea ice extent yesterday was higher than on that date in every year since 2014, with which it was about tied.

Let’s ask the permafrost….

Cave deposits reveal Pleistocene permafrost thaw, absent predicted levels of CO2 release — ScienceDaily

Thanks Willis. Good stuff as usual, great even. The canary in the coal mine is still chirping, while the dead parrot is still being nailed to its perch frantically.

How’s the paper going?

Figure 3 plainly shows the global loss 2015-2017 was mainly Antarctica sea ice. I went to NSIDC and read their analysis, expecting a global warming claim of some sort. Nope, because not supported by any change in Antarctica winter surface air temperatures for the period.
They (NASA) said it was probably just ‘pushing the envelope’ of natural variability. Storms, winds, waves, overturning, …
In other words, even NASA admits sometimes stuff just happens. No macro explanation needed.

How is sea ice measured and have there been recent changes starting about 10 years ago? It would be entirely consistent for NOAA or NASA to do that just to show declining ice.

Maybe there was strong deep ocean warming in 2015 caused by an undersea magma flow/eruption. The SS may not have been affected much if the heat went into melting ice? Just layman speculation here.

Perhaps the random errors [or variations from year to year] are just overwhelming the trend.
In Figures 1 and 2 you plot anomalies, but in Figure 3 you seem to plot the actual extents, although the y-axis [wrongly] says ‘anomalies’. Figure 3 shows that trends are not significant.

Is a clue to the answer hidden in the terminology?

First, you present records of sea ice: “…here’s the Arctic sea ice area record.”

Aren’t these records estimates that are subject to adjustments, or instrument changes? The record is not the reality.

After presenting the records, you switch to calling the records “total global sea ice”.

Are the records actual measurements, stable and accurate over decades, of total global sea ice?

It would seem that a more fruitful avenue of exploration would be consider why the records show the fluctuations you describe.

Isn’t it possible that the records do not reflect the reality of sea ice?

These records are too short to be able to draw meaningful conclusions.

What was the ice doing since 1900? No one really knows although there is historical news articles suggesting a loss of ice at times. What was the ice doing from 1950 to 1978? That would be very interesting to know as I suspect the ice was building up until at least the mid-1970’s.

Without any of this historic data, you cannot match it up against CO2 emissions – which in themselves are suspect until 1957. All you can do is use proxies which people interpret however is most convenient to their bias.

I suspect the sea ice may be growing for a few years… It’s just a hunch, not scientific, but if it does it will be fun to watch the clowns trying to cover it up or explain it away.

Why does anyone believe anything that comes out of NASA these days.
What about the integrity of the instruments being used, we know there have been problems before.

“There’s very little month-to-month variation in the record over that period”
.
Figure 1 does not have enough resolution for you to see any “month to month” variation.

The Ice Albedo Theory….

The Arctic and Antarctic are very different, because all the land masses and industry are in the northern hemisphere. That is why EVERY interglacial warming era is associated with a northern Great Summer (a northern Milankovitch Maximum) rather than a southern one. The poles are polar-opposites.

So what if Arctic sea-ice extent is actually governed more by industrial soot and the resulting lower ice-sheet albedo, rather then CO2? If this were true, then Arctic ice would have decreased after about 1995, when China started pumping out industrial smog. But Antarctica would not be effected by this.

And this is exactly what we see in the data-record.

And if you want to see what China’s industry has done to the Arctic, do a search for ‘Dark Ice Project’ website.

https://www.darkiceproject.com

Hmm, 404, site not found. Why is that?  

Oh, yes, it is because the Dark Ice Project never did get a government ir educational grant, and was privately crowd-funded – because they had the audacity to never mention CO2. That is the state of modern ‘science’ – you are de-funded if you do not follow the consensus. 

Unfortunately, most of rhe Dark Ice images have gone from the web too. So take a look at this article instead.

https://ensia.com/features/black-carbon

Ralph

Willis, could the problem be either or a combination of the following?

1) Satellite change
2) Sensor change over
3) Algorithm change
4) Model change
5) Team membership change

You work spotting the sea level satellite change was excellent.

“There is no overall increase or decrease in total global sea ice for the entire ~ forty-year period from November 1978 until 2015 or so.”

Willis, JAXA mark that period down as a net loss of about 2 million km², if I’ve read it right.

One thing I would do is link the to polar areas with a 6 month offset and see what the yearly change really is. I am not sure this would show anything, just that I would compare winter with winter and summer with summer.

Ja. Ja. It is the 3 M’s at it again. It is either the man, the method or the machine….

”thirteen years of very large month-to-month variations with little overall change in ice area. Is this real? Is it an artifact? Unknown. ”

This is in my opinion just a result of seasonal adjustment. Arctic ice formation (and melting) are very rapid in the autumn/and spring. This means that the area compared year on year vary much just because of freezing/melting delay of a week or so. Imagine two years ice area as to sinus curves. Identical in amplitude but shifted a week. The differnce from one year to the next (vertical distance) is very large. (this year was exceptional with area difference of a million sq km just because of the late ice formation).
When the seasonal effect is calculated it will some year subtract the ”normal” Ice area to get the seasonally adjusted area. A year with the ice formation delayed and subtracting the average seasonal
effect will produce wildly swinging results.
Probably there has been a number of years with one seasonal pattern and then a period of another pattern. This will produce exactly the effect that is shown in the graphs with quite years and wildly swinging years.

Oscar K

Or the “data” is garbage?!

Castaneda? You must be a refugee from the 60s. I bet you read Dune, V, Cat’s Cradle and At Play in the Fields of the Lord too.

The polar see-saw effect, as the solar wind weakened from 1995, the Arctic warmed, and the Antarctic cooled.

Here, the obvious mystery is, just what the heck happened around 2015-2017 to cause the Antarctic ice area to drop so precipitously?

I followed the progression of cyclone Debbie down the east coast of Australia in March 2017. It dumped a lot of water on the east coats. A patch of warm water went all the way down the east coast of Australia.  

I noticed that the sea ice extent in September 2017 was lower than it had been for some years. 

When you look at SST anomalies around Antarctica in September 2017 you see all three oceans had warm water at the ice interface – up to 5C warmer than usual. 
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/09/03/1200Z/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=66.75,-85.85,369/loc=-51.265,-46.680
Literally like a ring of fire.

I figure the loss of ice is the alignment of the three ocean circulations and the global impact of the 2015-16 El Nino.

Willis,
How did you remove the seasonal effects? Just out of curiosity I downloaded the file
Sea_Ice_index_Daily_Extent_G02135_v3.0.xlsx from the website you list and if I take
for example a simple average of the Southern Hemisphere daily sea ice extent for 2010 I get 12.1 million square kilometres. However in Fig. 3. your value is below 10. Similarly all of your values appear to be several million square kilometres below what a simple average would give.

As for your question about why the Northern and Southern extents are so similar the answer would be just luck. The Arctic sea ice extent clearly can’t grow significantly since the arctic is surrounded by land and 100% of the sea is already frozen. In contrast the south pole is on land and the Antarctic is quite large so the amount of sea ice is limited as well. A more sensible metric would be the total amount of ice cover in each hemisphere and that would again be roughly equal because the earth is a sphere.

Thank you for another wonderful logical article! Solid questions!

“There is no overall increase or decrease in total global sea ice for the entire ~ forty-year period from November 1978 until 2015 or so. This is despite increasing CO2 and general gradual global warming. Why?

• Up until 2015 or so, when the Arctic had more ice area, the Antarctic had less ice area, and vice versa. Why?

• Around 2015, after forty years of global ice stability, both Arctic and Antarctic ice areas dropped, leading to a very visible drop in global ice area. Why the drop, and why then and not earlier or later?

• After the drop, the global ice area seems to be starting to recover … again, why?”

A) Remember, for decades, “sea ice” reports ware provided by a “service” by interested parties, e.g., Denmark..

B) The look of the sea ice chart looks exactly like a chart would that combines and joins many different sources.

• Keep in mind that until modern polar satellites were launched, sea ice was strictly visual identification. Either passing ships and coastal towns reported sea ice or handfuls of people counted pixels on grainy pictures from various aerial sources, including some satellites.
• Every period of time that had reporting delays, often for weeks, sea ice area claims were just so many adjusted estimates.

Ba) For a few years, I accessed to the experimental the “NexSat- NRL/JPSS Next-Generation Weather Satellite Demonstration Project”

• The Arctic is not well sequenced. Instead, it is a patchwork quilt of satellite/aircraft pictures, with many overlaps. A decade ago, the stitched patches were not equal.
• Updates to the patches are not sequential or coordinated. Major patches went weeks without updates as aerial photography could not take pictures through clouds.
• A situation that plays havoc to people counting pixels.

C) The deep plummet in Arctic sea ice is right around the time that multiple groups of people got serious about their versions of sea ice.

D) Modern “sea ice area” reports are selectively initiated as starting in 1978. Sea ice has been reported for many years prior to 1978 with Norway, Denmark, Canada and Russia very intent on knowing sea ice estimates.

1) Suggestion: Identify actual sources. i.e., exactly what the various services used for sources to prepare their estimates.
Along with the granularity and methods that drove their estimates.

I know from the “NexSat- NRL/JPSS Next-Generation Weather Satellite Demonstration Project” that weeks went by sometimes without a clear image of ice, with many areas of the Arctic never clear of overcast; at least whe the aircraft/satellite passed through..

Frankly, it is quite hard to tell white clouds from white sea ice.

2) Life is far more important than feeding WUWT’s audience abyssal hunger for knowledge.
Enjoy Life!

The Arctic data looks almost certainly due to bad calculations, if not deliberate fudging. A large change tends to look less noisy, but that sticks out like the dog’s proverbials. Are there changes in satellites that coincide with the start and finish?

Here are some changes l have noticed in the NH snow extent that maybe linked to the changes in the Arctic sea ice extent since 2008.

1 Since around 2004 there has been a clear sharp decline in the snow extent during April to June.
2 While roughly from 2000 and onward there has been a noticeable increase in snow cover during the Fell.
3 l have kept a first snow record in my local area here in England since 1977, and from around 2010 to the present l have noticed there has been a noticeable increase in the year to year swing away from the average date during that time. But with the average date remaining roughly the same during that time.

The first thing I would be looking at is whether the method of measurement changed. I have no idea how to do this or whether it did, but it certainly looks like you would want to verify the data as first step.

After all, this is Climate Science…

Dear Willis
“Other than saying that equal ice areas at the poles MAY be a result of my hypothesis that the climate is a giant thermoregulated heat engine with a host of emergent phenomena that tend to stabilize the temperatures and equalize the hemispheres, I fear I have no answers to these curious polar questions … all comments welcome”.

Well you could say that Willis, but it would be similar to trying to paint the whole side of your house with one brush stroke. You are partially right without understanding why.

Equatorial / low latitude convection, the volume, timing and duration of intrusion into the atmosphere controls more than is understood. It has a global effect. This is especially obvious between the months of May to early October when another separate phenomenon causes a multiplying effect on convection intrusion.

Without this convection zonal winds would diminish considerably, as we find out every now and then. They call it SSW. 2002 was a classic year. Also of importance is the difference in volume of convection between the SH and NH in any given year. The hemispheric balance.

I call it “Atmospheric Entanglement”.

Lets look very simply at a couple of years.
2014 was the peak Antarctic year for sea ice area.
A nice steady rise from the 4th Sept to the peak on 20.9.14, then a decline. Go to Charctic to see the Ice profile.
Below is the Zonal wind speed at 70mb. 70mb acts as the default average for all of the heights measured. Note how the wind speed drops on the same date as the sea ice increases. The peak ice stops increasing and reduces as the wind rises again. The ice gross area is maintained due to falling Zonal winds and calmer sea surface. When the zonal winds reduce – Cold air flows from the Antarctic continent onto the sea / sea ice assisting the sea ice formation.

https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/figures/merra2/wind/u60s_70_2014_merra2.pdf

Compare that to 2016
A rapid rise in zonal wind speed coinciding with a decrease in sea ice.
No cold air flowing outward – sea surface disturbance

https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/figures/merra2/wind/u60s_70_2016_merra2.pdf

It becomes more evident when you move away from averages and get into the daily detail.
There is more to it than the simple explanation provided here.
Thanks for your great posts, it gets us thinking.
With regards
Martin

Thanks for your great job Willis! Debunking all this propaganda.

I found this paper very intresting regarding “Little ice age”: A perspective from Iceland. Where they show some ice index observations from 1650-1990.

1851-1990.

Here is a link to the paper:

“Little Ice Age” Research: A Perspective from Iceland (springer.com)

If you are basing your assessment on just that chart, well, I think you need to look at things in more detail…

You need to consider changes in ice thickness and volume, influence of snow cover, feedback, effect of warming peripheral oceans…

Look at the way maximums have lowered as well as minimums… and much more.

You could start here:
Arctic sea ice – Arctic Sea Ice : Forum (arctic-sea-ice.net)

It would have been more informative if the ice anomaly was expressed in percent relative to average.

That also goes for ice in Greenland. I think the reason the alarmist never uses perscent for this is to make the graphs more ambiguous. After all, the volume of ice in Greenland today is just 0.3% lower than 120 years ago. That’s not frightning enough for the audience.

One thing that comes to mind is advice several years ago that satellite sensors could not distinguish melt water on top of ice from ocean water. (There are areas of melt water on top of ice, I think those will vary with drifted snow and tilting of ice from floes pushing into each other due wind.)

Perhaps someday they will be able to.

Willis, perhaps looking at the aftermath of all big el nino’s may hold a track:

Last big el nino had the warm waters veering mainly south instead of north. (Saw that on a mainstream global warming makes el nino’s worse video)

Not sure if that volume would be enough to make such a big difference?