Susan Crockford
If the hottest year ever can’t precipitate ‘ice-free’ conditions in September, what’s it going to take? Arctic sea ice failed to nose-dive again this year, undoubtedly disappointing expects who have been anticipating a ‘death-spiral’ decline for ages. Arctic sea ice hit its seasonal low sometime around mid-September this year and although the precise value hasn’t been published, the average September ice coverage will likely be about 4.2 mkm2 once it gets announced in early October.
This means we have now had 17 years of a near-zero trend for September sea ice, extending the nearly-flat trend NSIDC sea ice experts acknowledged four years ago. This surely busts a huge hole in the prevailing concept that more atmospheric CO2 causes less summer sea ice. Note that CO2 levels measured in August 2023 were 419.7 parts per million (ppm), compared to 382.2 in August 2007, a rise of 37.5ppm with no corresponding decline in summer sea ice (and vs. 314.2 ppm in 1960). Measured in metric tons, CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels rose from 31.1 billion in 2007 to 37.1 billion in 2021 (last year of data), again with no corresponding decline in summer sea ice.
Background
In 2015, Neil Swart and colleagues argued that statistically speaking, the 7-year near-zero trend that was documented from 2007-2013 was caused by natural variability and was eminently compatible with models predicting “ice-free” conditions within decades due to increased CO2 levels. Their models led them to conclude that the possibility of a 14-year near-zero trend (e.g. 2007-2020) was possible but far less likely and that even longer near-zero trends are much more likely to occur when the Arctic is nearly ice-free (i.e. about 1 mkm2).
Surely a near-zero trend lasting 17 years (2007-2023), particularly before extent has reached the scary-sounding “ice-free” level, virtually destroys the assumption that sea ice extent is being controlled by atmospheric CO2 or even global temperatures, especially given the claim that 2023 may be the “hottest year on record”!
This absurd idea that atmospheric CO2 controls Arctic sea ice in summer–but causes only a slight decline in winter and no decline in Antarctic sea ice (Blanchard-Wrigglesworth et al. 2022; Crockford 2023)–has been embraced by biologists who want to see polar bears listed as ‘threatened with extinction’ by every government and conservation organization in the world, whatever the cost to their scientific integrity.
Prior to 2015, polar bear specialists needed to inject the IUCN Red List assessment with a semblance of scientific merit, so they programmed their predictive models to assume a linear relationship between CO2 and Arctic sea ice in summer (Notz and Stroeve 2016; Stern and Laidre 2016; Regehr et al. 2016: Wiig et al. 2015). And in 2023, the same assumption was made by Steven Amstrup and his sea ice expert sidekick when they made the ridiculous claim that CO2 emissions can be directly linked to reduced polar bear cub survival across the Arctic (Amstrup and Bitz 2023; Molnar et al. 2020). But while polar bear researchers generally apply this linear CO2-sea ice concept at a regional (subpopulation) scale (and use a slightly different metric of “summer” ice extent), the effect is the same: they assume more global CO2 means that summer sea ice at any Arctic location will continue to decline in a linear fashion decades into the future.
Which brings us back to the pause and my big question: Are polar bear specialists ever going to acknowledge the 17-year near-zero trend in summer sea ice or will they forever just draw a straight line from 1979 and insist summer sea ice is still declining?
Because, seriously, if the hottest year ever can’t precipitate ‘ice-free’ conditions in September and the long-predicted starving of polar bears, what’s it going to take?
Current Conditions
As shown below, at 15 September 2023, ice extent was 4.1mkm2 and by September 20, seemed to be on its way back up.
Below, Arctic sea ice extent at 20 September 2023 compared to the previous four years.
References
Amstrup, S.C. and Bitz, C.M. 2023. Unlock the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissions. Science 381(6661):949-951. pdf here.
Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, E., I. Eisenman, S. Zhang, et al. 2022. New perspectives on the enigma of expanding Antarctic sea ice, Eos 103. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EO220076.
Crockford, S.J. 2023. The Polar Wildlife Report. Global Warming Policy Foundation Briefing 63, London. pdf here.
Molnár, P.K., Bitz, C.M., Holland, M.M., Kay, J.E., Penk, S.R. and Amstrup, S.C. 2020. Fasting season length sets temporal limits for global polar bear persistence. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0818-9 pdf here.
Notz, D. and Stroeve, J. 2016. Observed Arctic sea-ice loss follows anthropogenic CO2 emission. Science 354(6313):747-750. pdf here.
Stern, H.L. and Laidre, K.L. 2016. Sea-ice indicators of polar bear habitat. Cryosphere 10: 2027-2041.
Swart, N.C., Fyfe, J.C., Hawkins, E., Kay, J.E. and Jahn, A. 2015. Influence of internal variability on Arctic sea-ice trends. Nature Climate Change 5(2): 86–89.
Wiig, Ø., Amstrup, S., Atwood, T., Laidre, K., Lunn, N., Obbard, M., et al. 2015. Ursus maritimus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015: e.T22823A14871490. Available from http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22823/0 [accessed Nov. 28, 2015]. See the supplement for population figures.
Very nice.
As illustrated (profusely) in essay Northwest Passage in ebook Blowing Smoke, there is over a century of qualitative evidence that there is an about 70 year cycle from nadir to nadir in Arctic sea ice. This was discussed much more scientifically in detail in Judith Curry and Marsha (sorry,forgot last name) stadium wave paper. Is available on Climate Etc.
My own research suggests the Arctic summer sea ice nadir was between 2007 and 2012. It’s all good up from there for the next about 35 years. As here.
Marcia Wyatt. https://judithcurry.com/2013/10/10/the-stadium-wave/
Ty. My memory is not what it once was. Still pretty good on basics.
At least you didn’t pull a Biden and call her Wyatt Earp.
Has anyone recently managed to pass through the NW passage by the St Roch route used in the 1940s?
No.
Didn’t think so. 😉
They all skulk round the south via Cambridge Bay, don’t they.
Don’t know which route it took but in the summer of 1984 the cruise ship Lindblad Explorer completed the 4790 mile journey from St Johns, Newfoundland, to Point Barrow, Alaska in 23 days. It was carrying 98 passengers who had each paid $16,900 – $23,000 – a considerable amount of money at the time!
Source ‘NorthWest Passage’, Struzik and Beedell, Blandford 1991
>curryja | October 10, 2013 at 2:36 pm
“Our paper does make a projection about the duration of the current pause…”
So how did that work out?
Here, I’ll help you out:
> “The stadium wave signal predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s,” Wyatt said, the paper’s lead author
Good update from Dr. Susan. Here in Argentina the change to La Niña has produced the greatest snowpack in decades. So, the El Niño/La Nina change/cycles are the most directly visible control of weather/climate. Rud (above) mentions a 70 year cycle. PDO and AMO cycles, with 11 year sun activity cycles, coupled with Inter and intra glacial cycles and recovery from Little Ice Age, all together in complex and even chaotic interactions, suggests the CAGW/Nut Zero/Greenies cannot possibly present a rational alternative theory. Never mind.
When multi-year sea ice in the Arctic hit lows in the early 2010s, I argued that it was probably old, dirty ice with lower albedo that was melting off rather than temperatures, which weren’t unusually different from the years of the prior decade. The newer, cleaner ice would then survive the subsequent summers.
The contrarians will say that ~17 years isn’t a significant span of time. Yet every year tacked on to every pause in temperature increases or ice melting just weakens the idea that we’re headed for runaway greenhouse warming existential Venusian hothouse doom soon…
What a bizarre post! It says no trend in September Sea Ice, and then shows a plot where it nearly halves since 1980
https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Arctic-sea-ice-extent-Ave-Sept-1979-2022-with-imbedded-stall-graph-and-approx-2023-point_20-Sept-2023-1536×1191.webp
And then says “no decline in antarctic sea ice” when we are currently at a spectacular all-time low
As the chart above shows, Arctic sea ice volume in fact reached a low point in the 1940s…
(Source: https://notrickszone.com/2021/01/24/study-shows-arctic-sea-ice-reached-lowest-point-on-modern-record-in-the-1940s-not-today/ )
Nobody cares, especially the bears.
And they really don’t care about the ice in the Antarctic!
Neither do the penguins – they just move somewhere else that is suitable, witness all the new breeding grounds discovered in Antarctica in the recent past.
They are don’t Care Bears.
2010, 2011 and 2012 are missing.
Why’s that?
Looking at this, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/23/17-years-of-near-zero-trend-in-september-sea-ice-demolishes-claim-that-more-co2-means-less-sea-ice/#comment-3788999 , maybe it’s because 2010 is about the same as 2023 and 2011 and 2012 were lower?
Include those years and Nick’s Venn thing wouldn’t look so impressive?
I think he just chopped off the bottom of the legend.
Maybe. I tried to count the lines to see if there were 3 more lines than years (If he just chopped the legend there should be.) but so many overlap I can’t tell.
The color key was cropped in making the image. They are in the graph. See the active original here (press buttons to select).
Thanks, Nick.
But it looks like there were at least 3 lower values when I followed the link.
And then there’s this.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/
OOPS! I just looked closer and your graph is the SH (Antarctic) while the post is about the NH (Arctic).
Did you make an honest mistake?
You mean “SH” sea ice, as the legend on Nick’s link says?
But the post is about the Arctic sea ice primarily and how “the hottest year ever” has had little to effect.
“Did you make an honest mistake?”
Nick doesn’t do anything “honestly”.
He deliberately changed the subject by NIck-picking
I quoted from the article, which said there was
“no decline in antarctic sea ice”
And there was.
At the time of writing of the cited papers and data (2022).. there wasn’t..
So why keep up the pretence that you are attempting anything by your usual petty distractions.
And you still haven’t given us any human causation for this year’s drop in Antarctic sea ice.
Or do you realise that it is totally natural occurrence, probably related to the Hunga Tunga eruption.
Hi, Nick.
But that one phrase you quoted was a link you quoted as text. It was based on 2022 sea ice with some 2023 added regarding polar bear populations not the 2023 SH sea ice in your graph.
Here’s the whole sentence with a bit of the following context.
PS Following your link and looking at NH does not show NH sea ice the lowest it’s ever been after the “hottest year ever”.
That is a fatuous comment.
Stokes, the resident WUWT clown…
Oh dearie me.. The topic is ARCTIC sea ice, .
And no, there was no decline in Antarctic sea ice until this year… a one off
Something happened… but it sure wasn’t human released CO2.
Heh. And the article also said, NICK, that there has been no trend since 2007. You meant to include those two words, I’m sure… 🙄
Not only that, but there are studies that show that Antarctic sea ice was much less during periods of the last 10,000 years.
And in fact, it was the increase in sea ice during the latter part of the Holocene that made it difficult for Elephant Seals etc to exist in their older habitats.
Dwelling on a 1 year event, that affects absolutely no-one, is stupid, even for you.
Antarctic sea ice winter maximum grew from 1979 to 2014. Arctic sea ice summer minimum fell from 1979 to 2012. Since then, it has grown. The three years of this decade average higher than the decade 2011-20.
How then can CO2 be responsible for waxing and waning of sea ice? It’s idiotic to attribute this year’s low Antarctic sea ice to CO2.
Here we have the tip of an iceberg… at 50.27 South. It’s more than long enough to form a land bridge between Dover and Calais (which is at 50.95N). MIght be a bit alarming to have such icebergs in the Channel… this one is just some way North of South Georgia. But it’s certainly where some of the Antarctic sea ice has gone.
Oops… missed the link
https://go.nasa.gov/3t78YCU
Sorry nothing but clouds in the pic and if I use the reverse arrow a few times I can get some open ocean but I see just a few specks. Maybe you could tell us what settings you’re using to see something big enough to measure. It’s so cool that in the 21st century we all have access to “spy satellite” type photos!
Here’s the ‘berg on the 20th – excuse the rough outline. By the 23rd it had moved North and rotated: you can perhaps now see the more solid outline of the Southern end of it through the thinner cloud.
It, and it’s companion (originally part of the same berg that split) are now here
It’s interesting that when these large iceberg’s break off, the don’t melt right away, and in fact spend a few YEARS floating around in the sub-zero (salty) waters around Antarctica until the winds and currents manage to nudge it north to warmer waters. “Warmer waters causing ice shelf to break off” – I think not!
“Ice in the interior being held back by floating pack ice” is another stupid idea trumpeted by researchers with a totally straight face, and some with a believable anguished and worried face to journalist who have forgotten how to ask questions. I wonder how other glaciers manage to stay in the mountains without a huge mound of pack ice at their bottom (think glaciers in the Alps, Himalayas, or the Rockies) when we’re supposed to be doomed about the land ice on the much flatter and colder Antarctic.
“where some of the Antarctic sea ice has gone”
Actually, no. Icebergs in the SH come from bits of the ice shelves breaking off, not from sea ice, which leaves ice floes when it breaks up. Big difference between ice shelves up to 2000 metres thick and floating sea ice, a few metres thick.
And to remind you that icebergs are common in the western Atlantic as far south as 40°N (remember the Titanic, which sank at 41.9N, same latitude as Rome?).
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817
Thank you for pointing that out – warmunists seem to insist on that warming started about 1850 when all the evidence shows the nadir of the Little Ice Age was about early 1700s (after a peak in warmth in the 1200s, warmer than now). It started warming before the Industrial Revolution – I should say “re-warming”!
“warmunists seem to insist on that warming started about 1850″
No, they don’t.
Nick is correct…
Alarmists insist it started in 1979.. the COLDEST period since the much warmer 1930s/40s, and at the end of the “new ice age scare”
ps, Nick… You really ought to look at Mickey Mann’s charts. (your heroette).
According to your high preistette, warming started around 1850
And yet the North Polar expedition the following summer by HMS Dorothea and HMS Trent to Svalbard ran into that “impenetrable barrier” and were unable to get further than 80ºN.
And then says “no decline in antarctic sea ice” when we are currently at a spectacular all-time low
So much drama. Reminds me of some of the drama queens (Both sexes) that I had to work with sometimes.
Still can read, hey?
Can’t
Missed the inset graph didn’t you Nick, the zero trend is clearly demonstrated.
There is no readable inset graph when I look at the post. In any case as a follow up to Nick the global sea ice is at an all-time low.
“global sea ice is at an all-time low.”
Which is of course absolute balderdash.
Arctic sea ice was often near zero in earlier parts of the Holocene, and Antarctic sea ice was lower than now as well.
Please, don’t be as ignorant as Nick… !
A lot of people were really hoping you didn’t mention the antarctic 🙂
Why? Give us evidence this year’s drop in Antarctic Sea ice is related to anything humans have done.
Hmmm, nowhere in the above does it say anything about the relationship between polar bears and sea ice. Probably because there isn’t any. Elsewhere you can find all sorts of claims. After a very short search on “bears sea ice” this comes up:
Polar Bears International…Polar bears rely on sea ice
as a physical platform from which to hunt seals and
also to travel and mate. Sea ice is critical for their
reproduction and survival …
It’s the seals, not the bears that rely on the ice. The seals need a place to haul out that is relatively safe where they can have their pups every spring. If they had to haul out on the beach, the bears would really have a field day.
The bears follow the seals, not the ice.
It’s a classic “look here, don’t look there” text book example of misdirection.
Obviously, this precipitous decline is troubling and signals that global boiling is worse than we thought.
(from Ron Clutz’s excellent site: “Science Matters”)
and on and on and on and on it goes . . .
Frankly, it is serious “wrong-think” to say that less sea ice is a bad thing.
The partial drop down in the Arctic from the extreme highs of the LIA and similar 1979, allowed the return of many ocean species that had been driven south because of TOO MUCH sea ice.
Polar Bears have less distance to travel, so lose less weight,
Human travel and transport becomes easier for longer periods of the year. (Still need those big ice-breakers handy, though.)
And no-one or nothing is badly affected by less Antarctic sea ice. Travel between rookeries becomes less arduous etc. Travel from land to the ocean becomes less.
Can anyone tell me a down-side ?
Can’t start with the down-side when you haven’t finished with the upside – and I’m sure the warmunists will make up lots of fanciful reasons that cold and darkness, and trapping all that fresh water in ice, are good things.
The best thing that could happen to the biosphere is that the world returns to the ice free conditions of bountiful, paradise-like periods like the Cretaceous or Eocene. With no ice to shade the plankton for the precious few hours that the Sun is visible in the Arctic spring and fall, not to mention the 24 hour Sun of the summer, the productivity of the whole food chain will improve. With all that trapped fresh water melted, and circulated around the world, evaporated to eventually rain down our thirsty world, the greening of the past half century because of the gentle warming and increasing CO2, will be accelerated.
Sea Ice looks like a better temperature measure than all the thermometers that the IPCC uses in urban areas where the asphalt and concrete heat up due to the Sun and warm the atmosphere.
I get what you’re saying, but sea ice extent is a much worse thermometer than even IPCC approved stations. For instance the lower extent in the Antarctic has nothing to do with temperature but with the prevailing winds this year restricting the outward flow – resulting in thicker ice but not as far from shore as before – it’s been discussed on WUWT recently , and previously storms in the polar regions were mentioned here as affecting the build up – and unusually stormy season would impede ice from forming.
The data must be wrong, because with planetary boiling there can be no ice.
Working out about the same as the prediction of several that the Arctic would be ice free during the summers.
If that actually happened how would the doomsayers explain the explosion in polar animal populations? I don’t think they actually want their predictions to come true.
Sorry meant to say “how would… explain the explosion in polar animal populations that would result from the ice disappearing?”
Indeed changes in Arctic sea ice are driven by the amount of inflowing warm Atlantic water and the Arctic Oscillation’s winds that either trap ice or blow ice out into the Atlantic
Watch: WHY COOKING WITH GAS WONT MELT ARCTIC SEA ICE: Temperature Anomaly Graphs Obscure Important Dynamics
I think an issue with making polar bears the poster children for ice loss is how little care people fave for polar bears – especially since they can and have adapted to changes. Now if global warming affected something important like pizza delivery time or Internet speed….
I see an arctic research scientist in a big fuzzy coat shrugging, like what? There’s nothing else up here.
But isn’t this just a repeat of “No significant warming since 2xxx”, where the start date just keeps moving?
Both NSIDC and JAXA produce daily sea-ice datasets, of which only the last value usually gets (slightly) updated. Anything older than 3 days can be considered as “quality checked / stable”.
NSIDC link : https://noaadata.apps.nsidc.org/NOAA/G02135/north/daily/data/
JAXA link : https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent
NSIDC has a minimum extent of 4.213 Wadhams (*) on the 17th of September, with the extent rising to 4.357 by yesterday (Sunday the 24th).
JAXA had a minimum of 4135960 km² on the 16th, rising to 4316399 yesterday.
Attached is a graph using “daily minima” I started following the proliferation of “Ice-free Arctic by 2016 ! ! !” headlines around 2012 and 2013, updated to 2023.
Note to Nick (and others) : Never use one year’s numbers to decide what “the climate trend” … which by (WMO) definition requires at least 30 years of data to calculate … “is” going to do.
_ _ _ _ _
(*) The “Wadham” is the new SI-approved measurement for “Arctic sea-ice extent / area”.
“One Wadham” = “One million square kilometres of sea-ice with concentrations greater than 15%”.
Among the “leading Arctic sea-ice experts” — for example Professor Peter Wadhams, according to no less an authority than the Grauniad — an “ice-free Arctic summer” will be declared when (not “if” …) the minimum sea-ice extent (“area” numbers are slightly different) falls below 1 Wadham.
So the minimum sea ice this year is less than in 2021 and 2022, but higher than in 2019 and 2020, probably near the average of the previous four years. Nothing to see here!
About this time of year, the Arctic loses its sunshine for about the next six months, which means that the sea ice area will most likely grow until next March. Like it or not, winter comes every year.