Guest Post By Willis Eschenbach
I’ve never seen either the Arctic or the Antarctic ice pack. I have, however, commercially fished for roe herring in the Bering Sea, setting purse seine net in “brash ice” off of Nome, Alaska. Brash ice is the broken-up remains of the pack ice. It looks like this:
As a result, polar ice has been a long-time interest of mine. So let me invite you to take a wander with me through the current state of the Arctic and Antarctic ice packs. First, here are the changes in the Arctic sea ice cover:
Figure 1. Changes in the Arctic sea ice cover anomaly during the satellite era. Values are anomalies from the 1991-2020 thirty-year average
Since around 1990, people have been talking about how human-emitted CO2 is busily reducing the amount of Arctic sea ice. When it started dropping very fast around 2015, there was talk that we’d passed a “tipping point” from which the Arctic ice would never recover. And over this entire time, predictions of an “ice-free Arctic ocean” abounded.
But then … around 2018, the Arctic sea ice rebounded.
Why did it suddenly start dropping so fast post-2015?
Nobody knows. Not one scientist on the planet can tell you.
Why the quick turnaround and rebound starting in 2018?
Nobody knows. Not one scientist on the planet can tell you.
Having seen those mysteries, how about the Antarctic sea ice? Here’s that data:
Figure 2. Changes in the Antarctic sea ice cover anomaly during the satellite era. Values are anomalies from the 1991-2020 thirty-year average
More mysteries. Why did the Antarctic ice pack, unlike the Arctic pack, start increasing quite rapidly around 2008?
Nobody knows.
Why did it again differ from the Arctic by plateauing from 2010 to 2015?
Nobody knows.
And why did it then mirror the Arctic by dropping very rapidly from ~ 2015 to ~ 2018, and then, again like the Arctic, turn around and start rebounding?
Nobody knows.
Finally, here’s the global situation.
Figure 3. Changes in the global sea ice cover anomaly during the satellite era. Values are anomalies from the 1991-2020 thirty-year average
It was basically flat from 1981 to 2008, rose until 2010, stayed level until 2015, dropped until 2018, and then rebounded almost all the way back to the 1990-2000 average.
And not one climate scientist on our benighted planet can tell you why … except a couple of things are for certain.
First, in addition to not being able to explain the recent radical sea ice changes in retrospect, there wasn’t one climate scientist on the planet who predicted those large changes in sea ice.
Second, it’s highly unlikely that the cause of the recent gyrations is CO2.
Figure 4. The increase in atmospheric CO2.
As you can see, the rise in atmospheric CO2 has been steady, strong, and unchanged … but the ice cover has been going up and down like a drunken yo-yo.
Here’s the strangest part. Despite the failure of the many predictions of an “ice-free Arctic”, despite the falsified claims that we’ve passed a “tipping point”, despite the fact that the reasons for the curious and unexpected changes in the polar sea ice cannot be explained by anyone and the changes weren’t predicted by anyone … climate scientists STILL insist that they can tell us what the global temperature will be like in the year 2100.
You are free to believe those failed serial doomcasters if you wish.
Me … hard pass. I’ve seen too many of their predictions crash and burn.
Warmest regards to everyone,
w.
My Boring Refrain: As always, I ask that when you comment you quote the exact words you are referring to. I can defend my own words—I choose them very carefully for that exact reason. But I cannot defend your (mis)understanding of my words. Thanks.
I don’t have any insight but I do have some memory. Reportedly the big reduction Arctic sea ice around 1979 or 1980 started with unusually heavy and persistent winds that broke up a great deal of ice and pushed it south, out of the Arctic. Similarly, the drastic drop in Antarctic sea ice around 2015 reportedly occurred through the same mechanism, unusually strong and persistent winds that broke up the sea ice and propelled much of it north. \
While this is how, not why, weather extremes do occur from time to time, beyond human prediction or control.
For those that want to pursue the issue, “ice arches” is the search phrase to start with.
Using satellite images, there was a stitched-together video of the breakup of an ice-arch and the subsequent flushing of ice bergs into warmer southern water.
These flushings were discussed here on WUWT.
Another great article Willis – the areal extent of the sea ice is one thing while the volume extent of the sea ice is another with Antarctica showing a net gain over the graphing period.
Incidentally, one thing that has fascinated me in this whole affair about ice ages, etc for the last 1,000,000 years. The very deep core holes such as Vostok 3 etc all have one extraordinary characteristic in common. They all exhibit a constant annual ice accumulation for their respective locations that transcend all other measurements and sampling taken from the various cores.
Importantly, there is no correlating evidence that the various glacial and interglacial events had any influence on the physical ice accumulation as indicated by core recovery.
The siting of each of these core sites also have one thing in common – there is no lateral movement such as there is in the modern-day glacial extents. If there was movement then it would be impossible to recover the core as the drill stem would be lost.
The good news is that Australia is set to drill a new core hole at dome C over a 5 year period. This will be the first deep 1 million-year-old core hole that will aim to intersect basement below the ice. It may replicate the same basal information that Camp Century and NDIP achieved in discovering the existence of a temperate climate below the ice.
Australian Antarctic Division prepares to drill million-year-old ice core to understand ice age shift – ABC News
Consider looking at UAH NoPol data
Willis: Is the y-axis on the charts correct? Are we really talking about a variation of about +/- 1%? Seems much smaller than the variability in ice cover and extent data shown elsewhere.
You are right Risk C. The y-axis is clearly wrong.
Change is closer to 10% than 1%
Yes, the current Antarctic cover is below the interdecile range and has been since september, hard to believe that it only amounts to an anomaly of -0.2%. The 1981-2010 median is ~14.5 and current value is ~13.5 which would be about -7%.
S_iqr_timeseries.png
I think the major phenomena influencing Arctic/Antarctic Sea Ice flux are: PDO, AMO 30-year warm/cool cycles, SOI, and ENSO.
During PDO/AMO/SOI warm cycles and Super El Niño events , Arctic Sea Ice generally decreases, and during PDO/AMO/SOI and Strong La Niña events, Arctic Sea Ice generally increases.
During the previous 30-year PDO warm cycle (1913~1945), Arctic Sea Ice decreased significantly, and during the last PDO 30-year Cool cycle (1945~1979) Arctic Sea Ice substantially increased, with many climatologists suggesting we were entering a new Mini Ice Age….not so much…
When the PDO reentered It’s warm cycle from 1980, Arctic Sea Ice extents stalled and then declined rather rapidly until around 2017 when it reentered its new 30-year cool cycle.
The AMO will likely reenter its 30-year cool cycle in a few years, which will likely cause the Arctic Sea Ice recovery trend to increase for the next 30 years (to the consternation of CAGW zealots)…
We’ll see soon enough.
The Arctic and Antarctic regions are earth’s natural air conditioning keeping global temps in relative equilibrium thanks to the Law of Entropy.
Not seen the arctic ice? take a look on this. Not much to see, just ice and northern light.
https://twitter.com/eriksolheim/status/1596760992997703680?s=61&t=VUigVDAabWD9TCvTUrCkxw
To the serious stuff:
Your vertical axis seem to be wrong Willis. The variation is more than 1%.
/Jan
Just to send you ¡¡¡ Un abrazo !!! Willis.
And to say I como to read at WUWT, every day, even if I say nothing, knowing I am No One, and have no academic background, just common sense , but it still gives me hope for my grandchildren.
Mil gracias, jovencita. Folks like you give me hope.
Abrazos,
w.
And this is only tip of the iceberg of things that not a single climate scientist on the planet knows.
“First, in addition to not being able to explain the recent radical sea ice changes in retrospect, there wasn’t one climate scientist on the planet who predicted those large changes in sea ice.”
True Willis, no climate scientist predicted more ice, but I did in my 2018 AGU poster, referring to the cooling effect of solar activity below my decadal sun-climate warming threshold
“Under the long-term solar deficit of TSI energy under 1361.25 W/m2 [SORCE], fig. 13k blue dotted line, the northern hemisphere is now cooling early each winter during the present solar minimum, in fig. 20, also evidenced by Greenland ice growth since early 2017, when the long-term F10.7cm running average since May 1960 fell below 120 sfu/day, meaning early hard winters until 2021± 1yr.”
“Earth has therefore dipped into a “mini-ice age” until TSI > Threshold.” -Bob Weber,12/2018
The effect on the Arctic of the now higher TSI won’t be felt until it breaks the La Nina. This new ice growth will last until the next El Nino sends warm water north again for a few years. The long-term F10.7cm flux running average of 116.5 sfu today means continued hard winters for at least 1-2 more years while the ocean warms more from higher solar cycle #25 TSI.
It’s very satisfying to see my sun-climate warming/cooling threshold science result in such a good prediction when no one else saw it coming, while government agencies spend billions of dollars getting the wrong results.
Serious question. Blocking highs and bubbles of very cold air vortex south pulling warm air north. So it can be freaken cold in the US and seasonably mild at the arctic. So can cold winters in the US mean less ice for the arctic?
Currently, the impact of ambient crustal heating in volcanic zones remains a null factor for most people I have talked to. They say no impact. I can understand no impact globally but not regionally. Volcanically heated water occasionally is pulled from the vast region of the Pacific of with Tonga sits in the middle and I have watched anomalously warm plumes of water be pulled by currents right into the Antarctic ice shelf causing melt and collapse. We saw this 8-10 years ago. So regional crustal heating has to be considered a factor even if we can’t measure it. GOCE and GRACE missions were to measure gravitation variable to help[ measure sea levels to and temp to prove the climate change hypothesis but both programs shut down. Too bad. Too bad, they had to tech to provide some clue to ice extent variation. Gravitational variance is a reasonable proxy (ruling out dense non-magmatic formations) for identifying regions magma compression into the crust and ambient heating of ocean water.
sea-ice-cover-SH-1.png
I’m puzzled as to the source of this data, for example the record low for Antarctic sea ice extent occurred this spring: Jaxa 2.13 million km^2, NSIDC area 1.23 million km^2. I would have expected to see some indication of that in the anomaly graph, what is the basis of the calculation?