From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t James Mason
It’s strange that scientists were not panicking about going into an imminent ice age in 2014, when Antarctic sea ice was at a record high!
https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/s_plot_hires.png
Large variations from year to year often occur, and they are usually the result of wind patterns, which either blow away from the continent, thus pushing ice outwards, or towards it.
We only started collecting data in 1979, so the idea that any of this is unprecedented or concerning is nonsense. In fact, the claims of a six-sigma event are fraudulent; you would need thousands of years of data to calculate the statistical significance of this event.
Meanwhile, aforesaid scientists seem to have gone very quiet about their favourite scare, the Arctic, where the ice refuses to disappear as ordered:
For more on Oceans, Antartica, and Sea Ice visit EverythingClimate.com
Perfect time for Prof. Tierny to pull another Ship of Fools stunt. Might not have to be rescued this time.
It is very dangerous to mess about with open waters in the arctic and antarctic.
In 1871 winds had blown the sea-ice towards the Pole, and a much of what was left of New England’s whaling fleet was lured into the waters north of Alaska. Then the winds shifted and the sea-ice came south and something like a hundred ships were trapped. Amazingly, not a life was lost.
Yes even the crab fishing boats on “Deadliest Catch” sometimes lose their traps to sudden overnight onset of sea ice.
And it’s not as if these guys don’t know where they are.
When I double checked, I saw I was guilty of exaggeration. It was 34 whaling ships that were trapped.
The hypothesis for Antarctic sea ice fluctuations is that warmer temperatures over the (little) Wast and (huge) East Ice Sheets cause more melting, hence more sea ice. But it’s rarely above freezing on the EAIS. The South Pole has enjoyed no warming since continuous records began there in 1958.
Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/17/1/2021/
Deglacial and Holocene sea-ice and climate dynamics in the Bransfield Strait, northern Antarctic Peninsula
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/19/1061/2023/
According to this hypothesis, lower sea ice should mean a colder continent.
What are the “scientists” worried about? Less Antarctic sea ice is good for plankton, penguins, whales, seals, fish, krill and other living things.
I think that is the best challenge to clueless useful-idiots desperate to ‘do something for the environment’ – who says more ice is better than less, when it’s plainly obvious less ice would be more beneficial to all the biosphere.
Polar bears?
It is climate science.
Especially penguins because their colonies live on land and not sea ice. It makes the walk a lot shorter.
I’m not sure about the southern hemisphere, but the arctic MOSAiC expedition (despite being inconvenienced by COVID) discovered that sea-ice grows a wonderful upside-down ecosystem, with festoons of algae hanging down from the underside of the sea-ice, feeding all sorts of little critters which feed the arctic cod which feed the seals which feed the polar bears. This was all occurring in an ocean described as a “desert” in textbooks when I was young.
We know a lot less than we think, and every time we look we discover wonders.
Sea ice is an insulator. It protects the ocean from the arctic winter above it. If there is less sea ice more ocean water is exposed to the cold weather cooling the ocean surface. So starting summer with colder water.
Liquid sea water is warmer in winter than the polar air above it. But at the subantarctic latitudes at issue, the air doesn’t get all that cold anyway. The average August low at Chile’s Base Frei in the South Shetlands (62 S) is about -7 C and average high -4. That’s the chilliest month, so to speak.
In an average year, that’s around the sea ice edge. This year, there is less than average ice on the Pacific side of the Antarctic Peninsula, thanks to volcanoes.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
The good thing about being in a bi-polar ice age is that we always have one pole to freak about.
And meanwhile a skeptic like me can freak about the other Pole. It is good fun, (unless you adopt policies which cause starvation.)
I greatly appreciated the new blue “trend line” showing an opposite trend from 2010, compared to the red “trend line”. But why stop there? You can actually draw a blue “trend line” back to 2005, and it still shows sea-ice increasing.
Such cherry picking is great fun, (unless you adopt policies which cause the elderly to shiver in the winter.)
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2023/07/19/arctic-sea-ice-an-oddly-cool-pole/
What is known through history is the bi-polar seasaw behaviour that had occurred. This has been shown over recent decades with the Arctic warming and Antarctica cooling or failing to warm. It is why the Southern Hemisphere oceans seem to have been reacting much slower or failing to warm, whereas the Northern Hemisphere oceans were warming.
The Arctic ocean has been cooling over recent years and the Antarctic ocean has been warming slightly. This is the initial sign of a bi-polar seasaw change likely ahead in the near future.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/ArgoGlobalSummaryGraph.gif
“This effect, the bipolar seesaw, has been proposed (Stocker and Johnsen,
2003) to explain the interhemispheric teleconnection of
abrupt millennial-scale shifts in glacial climate known as
Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events (Dansgaard et al., 1993).
We here address the proposed role of the bipolar seesaw in
defining the characteristics of glacial terminations and the in-
terglacials which follow them (Ganopolski and Roche, 2009;
Masson-Delmotte et al., 2010).”
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/6/431/2010/cp-6-431-2010.pdf
This is not a DO event and so the change will not be large. The theory behind it is when to AMOC slows downs the North Atlantic cools, but the South Atlantic warms. Less energy is transferred north so it warms regions further South where this energy would had moved elsewhere.
There are three key points that suggest this bi-polar seasaw behaviour will likely reverse in the near future. (one already mentioned) These belong to two ocean oscillations that are partly shown by the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. (AMO)
The PDO is expected to move to its cool phase by the early/middle of the next decade. The AMO is expected to move to its cool phase by mid to late 2030’s. This is a sign that the AMOC will slow down in the near future and these oscillations will represent this change.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo
Could the recent development to Antarctica sea ice be another part of this bi-polar seasaw jigsaw?
With it only starting in April 2023 it is too soon to say.
Isn’t less sea ice better for penguins?
Yes, they’re less likely to run into polar bears.
Especially in the Antarctic ! 🙂
What about the penguins that fly north for the winter?
Ah.. but if they fly north, they won’t be in the Antarctic, will they !!
https://youtu.be/9dfWzp7rYR4
Until Polar Bears start falling out of the sky.
Is there an index for coastal Antarctic precipitation levels and temperatures? If someone was really worried, shouldn’t they write up a grant to develop such a metric? If those anxious someones were scientists, would they actually try to measure it?
Is genralized anxiety somehow most often scientific, or a psychiatric condition? Maybe a little xanax would help?
Working theory: Polar bears in the Arctic, probably colluding with Russians, are exploiting the global environment by stealing ice from the Penguins in the South. Until there’s measurements of observations, my theory is as good as theirs.
These clowns are really contributing global warming/climate change to a lack of ice in the winter in Antarctica. Electroverse reported the other day the continent recorded -117F the other day.
An unusual warm weather pattern inhibited sea ice growth over the Antarctic winter, but only in certain areas. It’s completely unethical to project an overall sea ice loss across the entire Antarctic, especially when other areas are experiencing higher than average sea ice extents. It’s just a regional blip.
It really is a remarkably low level of sea ice. Here (from here) is a polar plot, with 2023 in black. Ice level is the distance from the centre
It’s been a mild winter in Tasmania. Perhaps the weather is pushing warmth South much more than usual this year. Weather, not climate change.
Tasmanian Devil, it has been an unusually cold last two winters in central Argentina, apparently due to La Niña slowing down latitude winds and allowing a lot of very cold (south) polar outbreaks. so, if more cold air is transported north, what does that do to the heat budget in Antarctic regions? I’m hoping that the developing El Niño will save the wine grapes this year, as last year we lost 30% due to freezing. Not funny.
So, if more cold air is transported north than from another place more warm air is transported south. We don’t want to create a vacuum over the South Pole.
If CO2 be to blame for low sea ice this year, how did it also cause Antarctic sea ice to grow dramatically from 1979 to 2014? And why has Arctic sea ice grown from 2007?
The rational scientific suggestion would be that it didn’t cause it to grow then and so is most probably not causing it to shrink now. If a rational scientist can correct me, I’m all eyes.
Whichever chart supports the narrative this year, is the only one that matters.
Who cares if the charts that were so important last year or the year before no longer support the narrative, we can always find one that does.
Thanks Nick,
That polar chart shows just how scary and how near climate collapse we get every February 23rd of every year for the last 20 years.
I’ll be hiding in my closet during the last week of next February.
You’ll be pretty safe. It can’t go much lower for a while. For most of the perimeter it’s gone in summer, and the Ross and Weddell seas won’t melt for a long time.
Basically.. SO WHAT !
Like the Arctic , which has only partially recovered from the EXTREME HIGHS of the LIA and late 1970s..
This could easily be a delayed recovery from extreme high extents due to it being so darn COLD down there !
How exactly is lower Antarctic sea ice a bad thing?
I have often wondered about that.
The Arctic actually benefits from the current “less-than-extreme” levels.
Sea creatures have been returning, that have not been seen since the before the LIA
Polar Bears have an easier hunt season.
Sea travel and transport for humans living up there, sometimes becomes possible for more than a month or so in a year.
The world world and all its creatures and plants would be better off if both ice caps completely melted away, so all that wasted water could be put back in circulation, and the lands and seas made productive again since they wouldn’t be covered in ice and hidden from the Sun anymore.
It is very interesting, but in the end really doesn’t matter, because nearly all the sea-ice melts every year off the coast Antarctic. Antarctic doesn’t really fit the “death spiral” theory because the sea-ice is way out at the edge. (I could go on and on about this, but don’t want to get too geeky.)
Another useless graph because the magnitude axis is left undefined in measurement units. Outside of the graph itself, Nick only refers to the distance from center being “ice level” . . . hmmm, would that be in inches, or kilometers? Or is it cc’s or cubic furlongs?
From just looking at the range of values, it certainly appears the radial measurement are “anomalies” from some undefined average value.
I suspect that if this graph were plotted with radial distance being absolute sea ice surface area (e.g., total km^2) or absolute sea ice volume (km^3), with zero value at the center, it would appear to be an offset oval with the color-coded lines for years 2002–2023 merged into one thick line defining the contour of the oval.
‘I suspect that if this graph were plotted with radial distance being absolute sea ice surface area (e.g., total km^2)”
That is just what it is. The values are marked on the x axis. The units are given in the linked text as million sq km.
You are right. My apologies.
I was thinking about the change in sea ice extent relative to total ice area/volume of Antarctica, but that is not the way I wrote my last two paragraphs.
Mea culpa.
Here’s another graph
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
y-axis is extent in millions of km²
Seems to be a “sudden” change in general ice extent
What “sudden” events have happened in the last couple of years?
Not growth in atmospheric CO2, that is for certain.
Maybe something to do with a massive volcanic eruption affecting the stratosphere and altering polar southern vortex circulation!
Probably too early to say why the ice is so much lower than normal, or whether it will last. Obvious point though is the world is currently very warm, and that’s probably down to a number of factors.
I think it’s a bit absurd to just dismiss this as natural variability as this article does.
“so much lower than normal,”
That is a nonsense statement..
How do you know its “lower than normal”…
How do you know it hasn’t been higher than normal for the last 50 years?….
That is what the science seems to indicate
Pretty much at extreme highs for the Holocene.
Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) underwent periods of ice volume loss and gain in the Holocene that affected global sea levels.Rapid ice loss occurred in all ice sheet sectors during the Early to Mid Holocene, contributing between 2.4 and 12 m to the rise in global mean sea level (GMSL).Ice sheet readvance occurred in two sectors during the Holocene, which might have caused a fall in global sea levels of 0.35 m, or possibly 1.2 m.The ice sheet was mostly at or near its present-day geometry by the Late Holocene, but ice loss and gain continued in some areas into the industrial era.
Late Holocene means Little Ice Age.
“That is a nonsense statement..”
Normal for the last 40 years or so. But I’m sure you could have figured that out.
So a piddling amount of actual time
OK! That is why it was a nonsense statement.
Longer term proxies and studies say the current levels are actually very high compared to the last 10,000 years
You say that even though that Antarctica’s sea ice has ONLY been growing.
I think it’s a
bitabsolutely absurd to try to blame enhanced atmospheric CO2 or other human effects in any way whatsoever…… particularly as Antarctic sea ice has been growing for the last few years.
But remember that that growing was because of ….. Global Warming. But now less ice is because of ……. Global Warming.
“I think it’s a bit absurd to just dismiss this as natural variability as this article does.”
What an absurd thing to say. Of course it’s natural variability. What else do you think it could be caused by – aliens? It does tell us that 40 years is too short a period to reveal the true extent of what that variability can be.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere
Not to mention effect on SST.
Thanks for this graph of the areal extent of Antarctic total sea ice.
What is interesting is that my eyeball—”eyeball”, mind you—analysis shows a distinct breakout of the “typical” (2-sigma?) trend in yearly variations beginning in mid-May 2023.
Hmmm . . . I also take note that NOAA officially announced the the current El Nino had arrived on June 8, 2023.
Ref: https://www.weather.gov/news/230706-ElNino
Coincidence?
This invites the question: Could the effects of the January 2022 eruption of the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai*, which injected massive quantities of water vapor and particulate matter into the stratosphere, have persisted and coupled with this year’s start of an El Nino to create a developing 3-sigma low (perhaps even lower) value in current Antarctic sea ice measurement?
*Ref: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/23/ryan-maue-on-hunga-tonga-hunga-haapai-submarine-volcano/
Coupling between the SH Ferrel cell of atmospheric circulation and the SH Polar cell of atmospheric circulation dumping unusually high heat content on top of the South Pole?
And please, don’t bother to parrot back to me “what the models say”.
This last Austral summer had a record minimum so something had changed before the start of the current El Niño.
What type of mathematical uses words like “it really is a remarkably low level”?
In my limited education, when reporting on science, we avoided “really” in favour of conservative descriptors “hypothetically could be” and used terms like standard deviations rather than “low level”.
Mark Twain cautioned against adjectives, but at present there is a competition for superlatives. My “incredibly” outmatches your “remarkably”.
What is the point of remarking about events like this when nobody has demonstrated scientific understanding adequate to explain it? Absent knowledge, why guess? If the mechanisms were understood, the event would have been predicted. It was not. Natural variation might be invoked as much as any effect related to the hand of man. Geoff S
You state “Absent knowledge, why guess?” My reply would be that you call it “guessing”, but many scientists would instead call it “speculating” . . . which is the very first step in the scientific method.
Further on, you state “If the mechanisms were understood, the event would have been predicted.” Certainly, you must have heard of the “butterfly effect” . . . that propagation of unobserved minor factors over relatively long timespans result is gradual loss of “predictability”. Then too, there is the classic example of the chaotic motion of the double pendulum (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwT0k09w-jw ), the motion of which is theoretically predictable, but practically unpredictable due to inability to precisely establish certain parameters (e.g., friction) even those are perfectly “understood” physically. Finally, there is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to consider.
Chaotic motion is not predictable, even theoretically. An approximate range of parameter variability is predictable, but not the actual trajectory or speed. This is not merely because of sensitivity to initial parameters.
That is a tautological statement.
Not to was too philosophical, but to the extent that chaotic behavior (that is, quantum mechanics) underpins all physics, with the one possible exception of gravity, can anything be said to be “predictable, even theoretically”?
As Heisenberg showed mathematically, the universe has inherent uncertainty, and there’s nothing humans can do about that as they observe and interact with it.
Sorry being a nerd, but theoretically predictable chaotic motion is an oxymoron.
Yes, all real physical motion is inherently uncertain, but for systems we consider deterministic and chaotic we use entirely different math.
For systems we consider deterministic, we can use deterministic math, predicting with a reasonable certainty a lot of events in the future, for example sunsets/sunrises, eclipses etc. but not for eternity, only for a limited range of time and with some error bar. For such systems we estimate the final error bar based on uncertainty of the initial conditions and error propagation. For deterministic math, if we use the same initial conditions and calculate a billion times, we always get the same result: 2+2=4 no matter how many time you try it.
Adding error bars does not change the fact that this is still deterministic math.
For truly chaotic systems, like quantum world, or these coupled oscillators, even the math itself is indeterministic to the extent, that infinite number of calculations with exactly the same initial conditions will produce infinite number of different outcomes. This is what I mean saying that chaotic motion is not predictable. Only a range of possibilities is predictable, with probabilities of an outcome.
Ahhh . . . the quantum uncertainty principle of mathematics!
I never knew it existed.
You should publish on this hypothesis!
Nick. Nick, nick, nick, nick, nick. They have not been collecting data long enough for you to use terminology such as Remarkably, nor maybe, probably, or even possibly.
The minute one of you fools (or tools) of this Central Authoritarian hoax presents a hypothesis for what cause climate change before man discovered the life affirming fossil fuel and its many uses, along with an explanation for why that impetus stopped affecting the climate once the IPCC affixed the blame on coal and oil, along with how the Government(s) of the world are going to prevent such impetus once they have banned fossil fuel use for everybody with the exception of the Faceless Cultural Elite wealth holders and their minions, then we can begin using terminology like remarkably.
for example, how remarkably this flim flam of man causing “end of days” for using a resource that will allow him to survive “end of days” was perpetrated on the “dumbed down” masses of the 21st Century. Now that has been remarkable, aided by the chameleon skin of “Anthropogenic Global Wam…Aahhh, we really meant Climate Change all along” The creation of this Goldilocks perception that if weather conditions everywhere in the world are not “Just Right” then fossil fuel did it and man is responsible.
“They have not been collecting data long enough for you to use terminology such as Remarkably”
What is remarkable is that anyone finds remarkable my use of remarkable. It really is a big excursion, and many have remarked on it. It may well fizzle out in the spring.
I predict that nothing bad will occur if the polar wastelands become somewhat less frigidly frozen.
Nothing bad at all.
Antarctic sea ice has only been measured since the late 1970s.
How the heck do they know the current level is “unprecedented”. !
It is not like the Arctic, where proxy evidence from many sources shows that the current level is in the top 5% or so of the last 10,000 years.
How do we know that this drop isn’t just the start of a recovery to a period of less sea ice?
Temperature reconstructions show that the Antarctic has been warmer that now for a lot of the past 2000 years with a dip during the LIA
The ice caps are unnatural! Most of the Earth’s history has been free of polar ice. The Antarctic has been ice covered for only 35 My and the Arctic for only 8 My, rounding errors compared to the roughly 500 My since life began.
The current high level of sea ice only really appeared during the LIA, with another smaller extreme in the late 1970s.
Because the globe is only a degree or so above that cold LIA, the sea ice extents on both pole remains very high compared to most of the last 10,000 years.
Sure, not common for the most of Earth’s history, but they are not artificial either…
The maximum monthly temperature on the coast of mainland Antarctica for June 2023 had been between -10c and -24c.
The minimum monthly temperature on the coast of mainland Antarctica for June 2023 had been between -16c and -38c.
The shortfall area is only a very small amount of what the maximum gain and loss occurs over a year. With these temperatures around the coast it has nothing to do with the mainland.
We have records going back to 1979. We have no idea how much the antarctic sea ice varies over the centuries.
Calling it a ‘six-sigma event’ with a sample size of 43 and without any idea about the long-term variability is statistically absurd.
The last glacial maximum (LGM) was 23k years ago. A six-sigma event is only expected to occur naturally once in 7.5M years.
They are making a prediction on how likely a one-in-7.5 million year event is based on 43 years of data.
So they’re saying that, despite dozens of likely ice ages, that there has probably been only ONE reduction in Antarctic sea ice of this magnitude in history? Pure madness and abuse of statistical methods.
It’s like measuring the movement of a retired couple’s vehicle day to day. You measure it for 43 days and find that they go a maximum of 10 miles in a day.
Then the 44th day the vehicle moves 300 miles. OMG! A once-in-a-trillion-year event! Impossible! We should be very worried! They probably got their car stolen!
It turns out, however, that they take two 500+mile road trips a year, so the real likelihood is twice a year. You would have known this but your sample size was far too small.
“there has probably been only ONE reduction in Antarctic sea ice of this magnitude in THAT 7.5M YEAR history”
Late Holocene = Little Ice Age.
which the Antarctic has not yet recovered from properly.
I thought that sea levels practically do not change when floating ice melts. This is true even for a glass of water with an ice cube relatively large comparing to the amount of water in the glass, let alone globally, with the sea ice minuscule relative to the volume of oceans. Water produced from melted ice takes less volume than the ice and the overall change is close to zero. Global sea levels change when ice accumulates or melts on continents. Another contributor is water expansion/contraction due to water temperature.
“They are making a prediction on how likely a one-in-7.5 million year event is based on 43 years of data.”
Math is hard, propaganda is easy.
Re the above figures: the way data is presented graphically can distort perceptions.
It seems that co2 only started working in the last 6 years or so. I wonder why that is?
12 ppm co2 must have made all the difference.
Tipping points!!!
Seems like a slight step down around 2015/16.
Now I wonder what occurred then 😉
I see this as an outlier similar to what happened in the Arctic in 2012.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
The low Arctic sea ice years, eg 2007, 2012, 2016 and 2020, all occurred due to late summer cyclones, which pile up and spread out the floes. Two cyclones struck in 2016.
Antarctica’s notorious katabatic winds similarly control its sea ice extent.
Geothermal activity?
Not really and it’s in the wrong place.
Well, let’s see . . . the Quaternary Ice Age (the one Earth is currently experiencing with ice caps at both poles) started about 2.58 million years ago. From then up till now, we’ve had around 40 glacial/interglacial (aka stadial/interstadial) cycles of ~40,000 years each plus more recently around 10 such cycles of ~100,000 years each.
Almost by definition, a glacial interval involves growing icecaps, and an interglacial involves melting icecaps.
So, where’s the data, going back 2.58 million years in the past, saying that today’s “lack of sea ice growth”—note: not even considering sea-ice reduction over years, but just lack of growth—in Antarctica is UNPRECEDENTED?
Isn’t “lack a growth” a prerequisite for switching from growing to melting???
And for anyone wanting to assert this “lack of growth” is unprecedented, please identify the paleoclimatology proxy or proxies that is/are used to back out floating sea ice surface area or mass changes over tens of thousands of years. I am not aware of any such.
The stupidity . . . it burns.
There are proxy and bio-studies.. eg…
Stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet during the pre-industrial Holocene | Nature Reviews Earth & Environment
I can’t download it because I no longer have Uni access…
… and I’m sure there will be the obligatory publishing requirement of mentioning “climate change” somewhere in it.
But it appears to show that the AIS is actually at a rather high level, barely changed from the LIA.
Well, it’s only a couple of degrees C different between LIA and now – though it seems like there should’ve been a bigger difference based on the anecdotes. Probably the poles and equator don’t change much and so smooth out the temperature differences.
Soil isotopes show the massive EAIS stopped receding about 3000 years ago.
Doesn’t the “soil isotope” proxy, almost by definition, only relate to the amount that glacial ice (aka “ice shelf”) has extended out into the Antarctic oceans in the past?
My understanding is that the vast majority of floating sea ice forms in-place during the Antarctic winter and it does NOT have a significant component of glacial ice (i.e., icebergs).
It measures the gigantic East Antarctic Ice Sheet, with most of the world’s fresh water. Vastly more important than seasonal sea ice.
I specifically referred to floating sea ice, not the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The two are different.
Scientists being concerned has become a “funding” tactic
No they’re not!! They’re smiling and laughing about a piece of new fodder to sustain the endless stream of doom-laden propaganda. That is, if they are climate scientists. Real scientists are saying ho-hum.
The Bloomberg article has a photo of an iceberg, although the article is about sea ice. So much for informed journalism in the twenty-first century. Just look at the poor penguins – adrift at sea! Perhaps they should learn how to swim….
“So much for informed journalism in the twenty-first century. “
In climate attribution parlance…
“highly unlikely”
Scientists Are Worried
That their funding is about to be taken away because of desperate alarmism?
The blue line on the Arctic sea ice plot is a bit of Moncktonesque wishful thinking, IMHO. Those of us who claim to occupy the intellectual high ground need to be scrupulously rigorous.
Uhhhh . . . correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t see any discussion in the above article about the “blue line” on the Arctic sea ice plot (the bottommost graph in the article).
Sure, it’s there, but so what?
It seems to have cherry-picked start point.
I would rather see a Monckton style calculation to find the zero trend line backward from “now”.
Maybe the chart is borrowed from another source and already had the line on it. But in any graphical presentation of data, if a trendline is shown then an explanation for it ought to be given. In this case, the data speaks for itself and the location of the line appears a bit random.
OMG how stubborn can you be! The leveling off on the decline in Arctic ice is unprecedented!!!
Ah yes, the Polar See-Saw.
Wiki: “The polar see-saw (also: bipolar seesaw) is the phenomenon that publicity given to temperature changes in the northern and southern hemispheres may be out of phase.”.
OK, so that’s not the exact quote, but maybe it should be.
I appreciate the interesting graph Nick Stokes contributed, as it allows me to look back at other years.
It looks to me like there was another record-setting period of low sea-ice in November and December, I think in 2016, judging as best I can from the color of the line. However when I look back to the prior May, it seems (I could be wrong) a line of the same color is setting a record high.
Perhaps we should adopt a wait-and-see attitude, although I am very interested in what causes these ups and downs in antarctic extent. I know a lot about what variables are in play to the north, but the south? Not so much. What variables affect the south?
The plot at the original site is active, and you can click on any year in the color key to make it show in black. Here is 2016; it is as you say. And I agree on wait and see; I wouldn’t be surprised to see 2023 return to the pack by about September.
My wife is likely not happy. This darn post has had me spend an entire evening rooting about on the web, seeking information which the-powers-that-be make hard to find. In the process I did not attend to what my wife deems important. God help me. In any case, mostly I learned we are not seeking the data we should be seeking. And here is the post I produced:
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2023/07/27/antarctic-sea-ice-record-low-extents/
Nice find… 🙂
Plot twist!
In that post it is stated: “Before we jump to any conclusion we might be wise to wait-and-see. Perhaps the sea-ice is currently compressed, and a shift of winds may spread it out like a small pat of butter over a large piece of toast.”
However, in that post the author focusses on extent but if he’d looked into sea-ice area as well he’d have seen that the area is also is a record low so it is not a case of compression.
The similar plot of Nor. Hemisphere extent (same link from Nick Stokes) is right in the middle. Looks like Climate Catastrophe has migrated South this year. Maybe the CO2 in the Antarctic has much more unicorn energy than the stuff in the north.
I remember seeing a graph of Arctic sea ice many years back that included a trend line that was dropping almost vertically towards zero by the time it got to the RHS of the page.
I think that must be around the time they were predicting Arctic ice would melt away by 2014 or so.
That is basically a RECOVERY from the EXTREME HIGH of the late 1970s.
I calculated 2278, based on the 1Mkm2 drop from 1995-2020.
I generated the attached graph at the end of September last year.
If the original 2001-2012 trend had continued people would be eagerly anticipating the crossing of the 1 million square kilometre “Ice-free Arctic ! ! !” threshold either this year (if “natural variability” went the “right” way) or next.
Arctic sea-ice is a classic case of when “alarmists”, e.g. Prof. Peter Wadhams, collide with “actual empirical data” …
-Story Tip-
The era of global boiling has begun!
Antonio Guterres
Yes, Guterres says it is no longer “Global Warming”, it is now “Global Boiling”.
He must be listening to Al Gore.
Jim “Boiling Oceans” Hansen. AKA “Venus Express”.
I guess we are going to have to start calling it “Human-caused Global Boiling” from now on.
Shouldn’t that be global broiling?
Maybe global steaming?
global blanching?
global braising?
global grilling?
global stewing?
I’m waiting for global sublimation.
Weather where I am is sublime!
Being winter, it is rather cool in the morning, but with blue cloudless skies warms up nicely during the day. Currently (mid afternoon) 22C
Just been for leisurely walk with the dog. 🙂
Poaching?
Scrambling?
Coddling?
Over easy?
Earth isn’t exacly egg-shaped, but not perfectly spherical either.
Haha. Global over easy. Climate scrambling.
Of course he got that idea while lounging in the hot tub of the luxury hotel provided by WEF.
It’s amazing how much science™ they can come up with when they try
He wants to take over from algore as Archbishop of the first church of the Boiling Globe.
Antonio Gibberish
Is it possible, just possible, that this may have something to do with volcanoes?
That paper is a study of the response of SST to the eruption of Mt Pinatubo.
It does however show the distinct possibility of large volcanic eruptions affecting ocean currents.
There was a very large volcanic eruption pretty recently, y’know !
A lot of heat would have been released by that eruption.
It has to go somewhere !
Yes, you are correct, I linked to the wrong paper. Try this.
That identifies a heat source of the order of 2500 MW. A couple of power stations. That won’t do anything to the sea ice sheet. Plus, there is no evidence that it has changed.
No evidence it hasn’t either.
You really are incredibly stupid if you think volcanic sources are constant.
Ignoring the uptick in extent over the last few years, the extent has dropped 1 M km2 from 1995 to 2020, so 11 x 25 yrs to get to an ice free Arctic, so 275 yrs., if we forget about the uptick. I thought it was generally accepted that we would be ice free by now – I think climate science and the IPCC owe the taxpayers of the world a refund.
I thought I had recently read an article saying (using NASA data) that the Ice was building up at the Eastern end of Antarctica although some was breaking off at the West, to the extent of increase of Billions of tons per year. All very strange.
All these different and concurrent global heat-related phenomena each have their own distinct explanation here at WUWT.
Record low Antarctic sea ice extent – ‘underwater volcanoes’.
Record heat in the UK – ‘RAF jets’.
Record heat in Palermo – ‘air conditioning vents (or maybe a nearby lightning strike)’.
Warmest month on record globally – ‘urban heat island’.
Warmest sea surface temperatures on record globally – ‘urban heat island (??)’
Record-breaking heatwave in Europe – ‘fake news coupled with mass delusion… ‘
On it goes…
If only science could come up with a simpler, all-encompassing explanation for all these record heat-related things happening at once.
Not one you can actually counter
Do volcanic eruptions cause heat?
Are jet engines VERY hot.?
Are air-conditioners and concrete roofs hot in hot weather?
Does urban heat island effect cause significant warming?
Were heatwaves in Europe HYPED beyond all rational thought, just to draw in the gullible fools?
The answer to all these questions is a provable and resounding YES.
Seems you have absolutely NOTHING as usual… except DENIAL of basic physics.
Science HAS NOT come up with a single scientific reason except that hot things cause temperature increases.
Certainly there is no scientific evidence of enhanced CO2 causing warming, otherwise you would be able to produce it.
You are currently batting negative 100.
A complete FAILURE at every non-attempt.
Just the continued mindless waffle !
And all those RECORD COLD that happened just last year. 😉
Record-setting cold snap hits Europe, France – The Washington Post
South Pole Hits Record Cold November Temperatures – The Daily Sceptic
An Awful Chilly Global Warming in the Southern Hemisphere – ClimateRealism
How many do you want me to list.. because there are lots, lots more..
And in case you were so incredibly dumb that you still haven’t figured it out.
They are NOT happening all at once.
The warmer than usual WEATHER event have happened as the trapped cell moves across Europe.
At least try to pay some attention to what you are going into a fit of manic, deranged apoplexy about.
FYI,
According to CR, Italy, and most of Europe are now BELOW the 1979-2000 “normal”
Antarctic is WELL below normal..
Poor Foolish Nitwit… Nothing he can have apoplexy about. !
The supposed “hottest month in 120,000 years record” is totally bogus.
If you go to earth.. nullschool and change the settings to see ocean surface temps, the water around the edges of the seaice are above -1.8 C. So it seems to me the question is why are ocean temps around Antarctic warmer than normal. Ocean heat loss around Antarctic will be greater than normal due to less ice.
I normally only update my “Sea Ice” spreadsheets at the beginning of April (Arctic max / Antarctic min in March) and October (Arctic min / Antarctic max in September), but this article piqued my curiosity enough to update it to June.
As we are (supposed to be ?) talking about “global warming”, the attached graph is of the sums of extent, i.e. the Arctic plus the Antarctic sea-ice numbers for each month, as downloaded from the NSIDC website.
Starting URL : https://nsidc.org/data/g02135/versions/3
There was a definite step down in 2015/2016, mostly due to a fall in Antarctic sea-ice levels while the Arctic continued the “zero trend” it has been on since ~2007, but global behaviour since then has been fairly stable.
So far, at least, 2023 doesn’t really look out of the ordinary.
NB : Monthly data, dashed line = 12-month trailing averages.
Two 2016 Antarctic weather events plus super El Niño of 2015-16 caused the step down from huge high ice in 2014.
Scientists Are Worried About Antarctica’s Unprecedented Lack of Sea Ice Growth
Worried? I’d say this one has gone downright insane!
Climate researcher: ‘We are witnessing the sixth great extinction’ | Watch (msn.com)
The only great extinction is good scientists and what we have instead are emotional activists.
It’s a good thing they’re not worried about the big ozone hole over Antarctica.
Interestingly, strong waves in the polar vortex can be seen, which could bring weather anomalies to the southern hemisphere.
I registered at Bloomberg’s site to read the article and find out *why* “Scientists are worried”. But sadly, the scientists were so excited about the large deviation from a small sample that they failed to give any reason why having less sea ice would be a problem for anyone reading the article. But they did have thier own personal slice of horror: it’s a bad year for scientists trying to put equipment on sea ice. Why, two post-doctoral students put their equipment on “what little ice there was” by the Peninsula, and a storm came through, broke it up, and they lost their equipment. It’s not clear to me how the ice extent growing more slowly than usual caused the storm….
Let me start, I’m not a scientist. But, I once stayed at a Holliday Inn Express. There seems to be a crap ton (scientific unit of measure) pissing and moaning about the melting poles. The thing I will also point out that I am a 65 year old retired man who has struggled through life with just a High School Diploma (graduated Class of 1975). As I see it, there is a shit load of ice in the north and the south. There is also a metric butt ton (another unit of measure) of liquid water that has to my great joy, filled in the low parts. Now, there is a point where the wet comes in contact with the not wet, and that tends to move around a bit. My solution to the dilemma don’t get too close to the wet. MOVE. It is my understanding that it is a bit of the ‘burrr’ in the north and south. Is it getting less burrr there? Don’t know, don’t care. By the time it becomes a problem, if (a big if) becomes a problem, it won’t be MY problem. Or yours.
I wise man once said, it’s rather arrogant of us to think that man can control this planet’s thermostat. So, what’s the point.
As with all things, your milage may vary.