Overview
The summer is more than half over up in the Arctic region and overall temperatures this season are repeating a pattern that began many years ago in that they are running at nearly normal levels which happens to be quite close to the freezing mark. The cold season in the Arctic has featured above-normal temperatures in the Arctic region in a pattern that has also been very consistent in recent years. It is the temperatures in the summer months of June, July, and August, however, which are the most important when it comes to Arctic sea ice extent as this is the melting season up in that part of the world. As long as temperatures remain nearly normal during the summer (melting) season, the chance for any additional significant drop off in sea ice will be limited. Indeed, given this consistent summertime temperature trend in recent years, Arctic sea ice has shown resiliency both in terms extent and in volume. One possible explanation of this persistent temperature pattern across the Arctic region with nearly normal summertime conditions and warmer-than-normal in the other nine months of the year (i.e., the cold season) is increased levels of water vapor in the atmosphere.
Arctic temperatures and the impact on sea ice
Temperatures have followed a persistent trend in the Arctic region during the past several years, in fact, going all the way back to the beginning of the 21st Century. Specifically, temperatures have been running at nearly normal levels during the all-important summer (melting) season of June, July, and August and then usually at well above-normal levels during the remaining nine months of the year.
Nearly normal temperatures in the summer months of June, July and August are typically at levels near or just above the freezing mark and as long as they remain there during the melting (summer) seasons, chances for any significant drop-off in Arctic sea ice will be limited. Well above-normal temperatures in the other nine months of the year have minimal impact on the melting of Arctic sea ice as they are typically well below the freezing mark. Indeed, with this dependable temperature trend in recent years, Arctic sea ice has been rather resilient both in terms of extent and volume.
Arctic sea ice extent has been running at below-normal levels since the middle 1990’s at which time there was an important shift in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) to one featuring warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Arctic sea ice extent headed steadily downward after that shift and reached its lowest point in 2012 at levels not seen before during the satellite era which goes back to the late 1970’s. Since then, Arctic sea ice extent has held rather steady with a general sideways trend during the past decade or so.
In addition to sea ice extent, an important climate indicator to monitor is sea ice volume as it depends on both ice thickness and extent. Arctic sea ice volume is difficult to monitor on a continuous basis as observations from satellites, submarines and field measurements are all limited in space and time. As a result, one of the best ways to estimate sea ice volume is through the usage of numerical models which utilizes all available observations. One such computer model comes from the University of Washington and is called the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003). This model-derived Arctic sea ice volume shows a steady downward trend from the middle 1990s to the low point that was reached in 2012. Since then, Arctic sea ice volume has been showing resiliency with a general sideways trend during the past several years.
Possible role of water vapor
One possible explanation for the behavior of temperatures in the Arctic region during the past couple of decades has to do with increased amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere. Overall, water vapor content has been higher-than-normal in the Arctic region during the past couple of decades largely as the result of warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures in both the North Atlantic (positive AMO) and the Pacific Ocean (multiple El Nino events).
Given the warmer-than-normal water temperatures, there has been increased evaporation and this, in turn, generates more overall water vapor in the atmosphere. An increase in water vapor will have a much bigger impact on temperatures in very cold and dry atmospheres and less of an impact in a warmer and more humid environment. In other words, an increase in overall water vapor could very well result in warmer-than-normal temperatures during the cold seasons in the Arctic region when it is typically very cold and dry, and likely have little, if any, impact during the warmer, more humid summer (melting) season.
Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Arcfield
arcfieldweather.com
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And if one follows Tony Heller, and use records from before complete satellite coverage in 1978, the ice coverage extent seems to be cyclical. With 1978 at a near high extent in the possible cycle.
I agree.
When it comes to temperature cycles, the key issue is the duration of the warm phases. Historical data indicate a 60-80 year cycle, but this data is limited and doesn’t cover a sufficiently long timeframe.
Previous warming cycles before the modern era could have been more intense or lasted much longer. We’ll have to wait and see.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much funding directed towards investigating this.
There are possible indications of the erratic nature of the AMO in the Icelandic sea ice data…
Shown as red dots.
Previous warming cycles before the modern era could have been more intense or lasted much longer.
on the other hand they were shorter and less intense.
on a third hand if m grandmother had wheels, shed be a bike
if one follows heller your never getting out of stuck on stupid.
records before the satillite era ar NOT observations. they are estimates made b observing the EDGE of the ice in a few areas and extrapolating, like looking at
ice off greenland and guessing at bering straight ice.
with satellites ou av one auditable method, befor sats you have 10 drunken sailors guessing
So there is no history before 1979? How to evaluate dodgy evidence does not make it irrelevant.
As you have shown no impulse to reject Michael Mann’s work, with both cherry picked data and a corrupt algorithm, you doth protest too much.
flat top temperature in summer is obviously due to the large amount of energy (latent hat of fusion) required to melt ice. Until the ice disappears it will always be reasonable constant.
PIOMAS has been flat since 2011.
What is this “until the ice disappears” nonsense ??
You trying to channel Al Gore or Peter Wadhams ??
“Attempting to estimate when the Arctic Ocean will be “ice-free”, Wadhams in 2014 predicted that by 2020 “summer sea ice to disappear,”[4][5] Wadhams and several others have noted that climate model predictions have been overly conservative regarding sea ice decline.”
Wow. I had to Google who PW was and found the above in Wikipedia… that’s it. No “I guess he must have been wrong about that.” or any confirmation that summer sea ice was present in 2020. I’ve never edited a Wikipedia article before, but I feel somewhat obligated to figure it out today.
If you do and your edits don’t pass the approved narrative filter, they will quickly be discarded.
LOL, it has been the same since 1958…….
Yes it is.
And as you say – obviously.
How would air at the surface of the ice get significantly above freezing when the melting ice is using up nearly 80x the energy than does raising the sea-water by 1C?
Latent heat of fusion = 334 KJ/kg
Specific heat of water = 4.2 KJ/kg/K
If what you said is correct, I must have been hallucinating when I was last atop Ben Nevis (highest mountain in the British Isles). The mountain was entirely snow-covered above 1000 meters, yet the air temperature was easily +15C.
The WATER temperature is indeed constant during the phase change, but that has little to do with the AIR temperature as the two phases are not at equilibrium.
This is Physics, old chap. Perhaps you should learn a little next time before revealing your ignorance.
It’s not a comparable situation, you have a very small area of snow and highly disturbed air with rapid replacement from warmer sources.
Of course, the system is not at equilibrium.
“If what you said is correct, I must have been hallucinating when I was last atop Ben Nevis (highest mountain in the British Isles). The mountain was entirely snow-covered above 1000 meters, yet the air temperature was easily +15C.”
From: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“On July 15, 2024, halfway through the month, sea ice extent stood at 8.16 million square kilometers (3.15 million square miles)”
2 things … first the above….
Do you not think that makes a difference to air entering the Arctic from warmer climes to the south?
Like traversing hundreds of miles over an ice surface – and the surface air will because it will be stable (warm over cold).
And Ben Nevis is at altitude so the air blowing past your face came from the same altitude as you were standing some miles distant and therefore was not being cooled by any ice (even if there were any!) under it.
The air over the arctic in the summer will be warmer above the surface boundary lyr – it will be only the surface stable layer that is cooled by the ice surface (depth depending on wind strength and turbulence). But generally only a few hundred feet at most.
“The WATER temperature is indeed constant during the phase change, but that has little to do with the AIR temperature as the two phases are not at equilibrium.”
Eh?
We are taking about a melting ice surface (as in 3.15 million square miles at15/7/24). That is absorbing 80x the energy that is needed to warm water (were it there) by 1C.
The phase change is the melting of the ice … which takes place all through the summer, therefore removes heat from the relatively shallow boundary layer to near freezing.
See this current upper air sounding from Resolute showing air traversing the station from off the nearby ice:
https://weather.uwyo.edu/cgi-bin/sounding?region=naconf&TYPE=PDF%3ASKEWT&YEAR=2024&MONTH=08&FROM=0612&TO=0612&STNM=71924
Notice the shallow surface lyr at just above freezing ????
“This is Physics, old chap. Perhaps you should learn a little next time before revealing your ignorance.”
No: that is physics (and my expertise > meteorology) old chap. And next time a) get a grasp of it (and what I was saying ) and b) don’t be so condescending.
Someone on here may actually know more about stuff than you.
In this case me.
Ooh, I seem to have touched a nerve…
Now you know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of your smug, patronising comments.
Exactly until the ice melts the temperature is constant at the melting point, only when the ice has substantially gone will the temperature rise significantly.
Exactly. Temperature doesn’t go up (or down) while a phase change is happening. High school physics.
Only at equilibrium, or if the phase change is very slow.
Re: latent heat of fusion.
That’s an interesting point, but those are graphs of the air temperature not the water temperature. Now obviously having lots of 0°C ice around is going to put a damper on air temperatures – but the ice extent and volumes have been remarkably stable for over a decade in spite of ever increasing emissions. A fact not consistent with “until the ice disappears” or climate doomsayers.
It is frustrating that this feed has been dead since mid-July, we do not know how July turned out for this metric.
Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut (dmi.dk)
?? Link shows last update 4th Aug 2024.
Interesting, the graph is not updating on their site.
But the data is there.
20240716 198 273.898346
20240717 199 274.092285
20240718 200 274.081146
20240719 201 273.907349
20240720 202 274.016052
20240721 203 274.083313
20240722 204 273.661102
20240723 205 273.657410
20240724 206 273.682068
20240725 207 273.777740
20240726 208 273.967346
20240727 209 274.061249
20240728 210 274.065765
20240729 211 274.224335
20240730 212 274.308044
20240731 213 274.371063
20240801 214 274.033356
20240802 215 273.835022
20240803 216 273.725189
20240804 217 273.624695
Go figure, control F5 flushes the browser cache and the plot shows the current values. Gota love Microsoft…
I didn’t do that and the problem affect Vivaldi on Android and Windows
It was stuck on July 15th for quite a while. Finally updated yesterday.
Good to know I am not the only one staring at things such as this over coffee. maybe there is hope for me.
It was not updating from the 15th July (from memory) until the 4th of August. I have a look everyday. Normally I email DMI to tell them when this happens on any of their pages, it’s been more frequent in the last couple of years. However I couldn’t find their email in my contacts and they get a bit uppity if you use the wrong one.
It looks like they updated the graph Aug 4. I’ve noticed they have lags now and then. Probably the person doing it was on vacation for a couple of weeks.
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index graphs are detrended, the North Atlantic sea surface temperature has warmed since 1850 about half as fast as the global average temperature, while correlating well until 1966 then strangely separating for some unknown reason possibly due to those ubiquitous and constant ‘adjustments’ that climate scientists love fooling around with.
Maybe they have not yet got around to finishing the job.
I have figured out why the 60’s were so cool.
It was because of the B-52 in conjunction with the Vietnam War.
The absorption of energy in the phase change from ice to water in the summer melt season will always have flattened the summer temperature variations ever since the ice cap first formed
The amount of winter variation will always have been controlled by the level of ingress of air from lower latitudes.
That brings us back to the vigour or otherwise of the tropospheric polar vortex around the pole.
A strong vortex maintains a more powerful latitudinal circulation with less ingress and a weaker vortex allows more ingress of warm air.
A fast tight vortex with less ingress results in less snowfall and a contraction poleward of the ice sheet for a reduction overall. That is what caused the falling trend until 2010.
After 2010 the vortex became more variable and the loss of ice ceased.
I would expect that during the mid 20th century cooling period the vortex was more variable than now which led to the observed increase in ice during that period. The Little Ice Age would have seen an even more variable vortex.
There is evidence that the variability of the tropospheric polar vortex is controlled by a top down solar effect in the stratosphere which raises or lowers the tropopause height over the pole via solar effects on the balance of the Ozone creation/destruction process in the polar stratosphere.
Arctic sea ice showing resiliency is because it’s turning around – it’s a cycle (oscillation).
Summer temperatures staying close to zero/freezing is because of the sea ice.
Simples.
Exactly, and the ~30 year warm phase of the cycle should be coming to an end very soon.
Well, one could discuss why there is a reduction in artic sea ice. But basically it is consistent with an overall warming within the NH. And as it gets warmer, you will have to expect less ice.
The interesting part is how “climate science” as a whole ignores the logical and obvious consequence. With less ice and more open water, the climate will move from continental to maritime. We know this phenomenon. Trondheim (Norway, 63N, Jan. mean -1°C) and Yakutsk (Russia, 62N, Jan. mean -37°C) outline the issue.
The whole IPCC report WG1, be it AR6 or earlier versions, ingores this. It is just not part of their considerations. They do assert the polar amplification is strongly linked to the decline in sea ice, but fail to make the connection.
https://greenhousedefect.com/basic-greenhouse-defects/the-mysterious-polar-amplification
Weather “not normal” here in Wokeachusetts- it’s way hotter and wetter than I’ve seen in my 74 years here. The environment looks like the Amazon. Gonna rain heavy all this week. Since I’m retired, I don’t mind so much. But when working as a forestry consultant (for very rich landowners in western Wokeachusetts)- bad weather meant not working, other than the endless amount of useless paper work forced upon me by the worthless state forestry burro-ocracy. The state forestry people who manage state land, of course, didn’t mind so much, they’d just hang out in their offices drinking coffee and getting paid! I didn’t get paid on such days, being a “free enterprise” guy.
Meanwhile, check out Savine Hossenfelder trying to deconstruct John Clauser- implying he’s an idiot. I wonder how many Noble Prizes she’s won? Her video is: “”Climate Change is a Myth” — A Nobel Prize Winner’s Embarrassing Ideas”
Here in Michigan we have had a lot of rain and people are complaining how hot it is. When you look at the actual temperatures, it’s not really that hot but it is very humid.
I have a good sense of weather having worked outside for 50 years. This summer in Wokeachusetts must be a record breaker. We generally don’t get more than several over 90F days each summer- some years none. This year, dozens. On one day it was 95F had a power outage. I was livid.
Similar in NJ we keep getting Heat Advisory warnings from NWS, frequently over the last couple of weeks the Tmax has been around 12º above the average high for the date. Looks like it will be getting better over the next week or so, wetter and cooler.
“Hossenfelder” gets many things wrong from the very start… and doesn’t even realise it.
Hossenfelder gets things wrong from the very start… and doesn’t even realise it.
Right from the definition bit at the start.. where she doesn’t read any further than the basic description of the outcome…
She should read further down to were the IPCC talks about energy imbalance due to increasing CO2.
Clauser is absolutely correct, as that is the very basis of the AGW scam. and it is false.
Why would she do that It is a very poor piece of propaganda… but enough to fool the AGW collaborators.
She tries in your YouTube channel to cover too much territory. In one video she admitted not being successful in academia, so this is her way to earn a living- by discussing everything in science- which is fine to try, but it’s just all too complicated. Dissing a Noble Prize winner is risky unless you have a few too.
The alarmist view has been that reduced reflectivity of the Arctic surface, resulting from the melting of sea ice, will lead to increased energy absorption and a spiral of warming. This ignores the fact that at greater levels of incidence,as experienced in the Arctic, more sunlight is reflected off the water surface than off ice.
Absolutely correct.
Add to it dark water does not absorb more light because it is dark, it is dark due to optical depth, which is akin to skin effects used in radar calculations, which also covers angle of incidence, reflectivity, etc. Radar is electromagnetic. Light is electromagnetic. The math is the same.
Now work the spherical geometry of the atmosphere above the arctic, zenith not radial. Seems the light approaching the high latitudes has to pass through a lot more air before it reaches the surface.
The DMI has their algorythm on areal ice cover perfected where any time the total area begins to approach their 1981-2010 averages the area suddenly drops in a very short time to avoid approaching their “normal”.
Paul Dorian does not understand how summer melting and summer temperatures in the Arctic are related. During the summer the average temperature in the Arctic does not go much above melting temperature because any extra heat is invested into melting more ice and not into raising the temperature. Melting ice is a constant-temperature process that requires a lot of latent heat.
The Arctic summer temperature gives no information about the climate. For the average Arctic summer temperature to go significantly above 0°C a major part of the Arctic summer ice has to be melted, and that is not going to happen.
Someone help me out here, please. My understanding is that Arctic Summer Sea Ice extent is primarily controlled by sea water temperature in Arctic Seas of the Northern Atlantic Ocean and by direct insolation ( incoming energy from the Sun ).
Has their been some new science that refutes this long-held view and replaced it with Arctic air temperature?
No, cold Arctic air blowing South over the North Antlantic ocean has no influence on SST’s. The only exceptions are near coasts or sheltered, much shallower seas like the North Sea. Likewise, warm air from the South blowing North above colder SST’s over ocean has no influence.
I did research when SST’s cool and that was when direct insolation reached around 200w/m2 or lower in sub-Arctic and Arctic regions. One example in Iceland off the Southern coast, when it reached these levels later in October the SST’s start dropping. This value is also around the level where snow won’t melt on the ground in most conditions of the temperature near 0c or below.
Fun I have not looked at ice for years, it’s fun to see JAXA extent charts again. Thanks.
“Arctic sea ice showing resiliency” : The most correct viewpoint is the sea ice volume, which has been stable since the mid-2000s. Looking at the PIOMAS sea ice volume we see that error bars overlap all the way back to maybe 2006 — simply meaning w can’t be sure there has been any change. The two red lines show the stable time period.
Arctic sea ice changes are mainly due to an internal cycle. You will get more sea ice after the ocean naturally vents out energy (which is happening now). This added sea ice then allows energy to build up again by insulating the water. Each phase is ~30 years and has a noticeable influence on NH temperatures (and the AMO).
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/103492/#105132
One thing that makes ascertaining the cold/hot benefits/harm dynamic challenging, is the fact that the coldest places, in the coldest times of year are warming up the most by a wide margin and the warmest places, especially the warmest and humid places in the warmest time of year are warming the slowest.
The rock solid physics behind this is that H2O is actually a much more powerful greenhouse gas. At several absorption bands, H2O is already absorbing a great deal of radiation.
If that band is NOT already saturated from H2O, then CO2 can add to the absorption band until its saturated………then, it doesn’t matter how much more H2O or CO2 you add. Like pouring water into a container thats already full. It can’t hold any more water.
COLD air can’t hold as much moisture/H2O as warm air, so the long wave radiation absorption bands in colder air are NOT saturated by H2O. This allows CO2 in colder places to ABSORB MORE AT THOSE BANDS. Those same bands in warm, humid air may be saturated from H2O or have little room left for absorption by CO2.
Interestingly, DRY places are also warming faster than HUMID places for the same reason. LESS H2O to absorb radiation and more opportunity for CO2 to do its warming thing.
“Well above-normal temperatures in the other nine months of the year have minimal impact on the melting of Arctic sea ice as they are typically well below the freezing mark.”
These are the ideal conditions for increased snowfall around the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. These substained can lead to a reverse in the glacier decline and change towards an increase. The Arctic is cold enough for an Ice age, what is lacking is precipitation.
The very cold glacial periods usually last around 90,000 years and alternate with cold interglacial periods, like the present, that last around 10,000 years.
It has been around 12,000 years since the last glacial period so another one might start at any time, although the length of the interglacial periods can be quite variable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation
Every ice age starts from a peak warm period like the present or warmer, where CO2 levels for that period are at there highest. The build-up of glaciers is belived to start with a very wet snowy period in key regions that last hundreds of years, leading to a significant drop in temperature that later dries the climate. The only way to increase snowfall in the very cold Arctic regions is for warm air to bump into the cold air on a regular basis.
Eventually the albedo at the surface increasingly reflects sunlight from the ground, becomes significantly colder and forces the boundary between Polar air and sub-Tropical air further South. This in turn builds up glaciers in more mid-lattitude areas of the Northern hemisphere eventually leading to a full blown ice age. The southern hemisphere significantly cools, but less than the northern hemisphere due to huge areas of ocean in mid-lattitude areas.
Also using the DMI temperature plot as an indication of the average temperature of the Arctic is inappropriate, as they themselves say:
“The temperature graphs are made from numerical weather prediction (NWP) “analysis” data. Analyses are the model fields used to start NWP models. They represent the statistically most likely state of the atmosphere, given the information available to make the analysis. Since the data are gridded, it is straight forward to deduce the average temperature North of 80 degree North. However, since the model is gridded in a regular 0.5 degree grid, the mean temperature values are strongly biased towards the temperature in the most northern part of the Arctic! Therefore, do NOT use this measure as an actual physical mean temperature of the arctic.”
Cloud cover over the Arctic Ocean has increased since 2000, while cloud cover over Arctic land masses has declined.