Continuation from [insert].
The graphic below shows the daily change in sea ice extent (JAXA). The end of the melt season is about day 259 (about 40 days from now.) The big 2007 was early in July. 2008 had a prolonged melt through August. In the last week or so, 2009 slowed down pretty dramatically. The difference between a 2008-type trajectory and a 2002-3 trajectory in the next 40 days is about 1 million sq km.
Figure 1. Daily Arctic seaice change. Smoothed with gaussian 31-point filter with mean padding (yeah, yeah: there’s undoubtedly a better way of doing it, but I’ve got mean padding handy and not a lot of time today.) Unfiltered 2009 is also shown.
Update: Here is a link to July 2009 predictions of Sept by official modelers. (h/t to reader below for link).
Climate Audit 
778 Comments
So when can we expect CBC to report on the recovering arctic ice pack? Oh well, as always if you want real info, you have to get it yourself. Thanks Steve.
Next year, it will be color of ice, or its porosity? Place your bets now!
“Increasingly thin ice” looks so far to be melting with bigger and bigger difficulties. Do not forget its color!!
A flash of sanity, at last.
Why is there so much daily variation?
Daily values fluctuate by 200,000 sq. km? Is that overnight refreezing or just big estimation error?
Measurement/estimation error, I would assume. The variance does seem rather large, however.
Mark
Re: Mark T (#5),
The derivative of the data is plotted which is notorious for increasing noise.
I’d like to understand where that measurement error is originating, since it is so large compared to the trend of interest.
If nothing else, something that demonstrates the measurement error isn’t introducing a net bias into the trend would be reassuring.
I think this is satellite based, but the question is, what kind of sensor? The method sure seems noisy.
I would bet the variation has alot to do with movement of the ice pack; compaction and dispersion due to wind and currents.
I think there was a comment elsewhere on cloud cover interfering with ice extent measures?
Here’s what I was able to google up:
NSIDC gets sea ice information by applying algorithms to data from a series of Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) sensors on Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites. These satellites are operated by the U.S. Department of Defense. Their primary mission is support of U.S. military operations; the data weren’t originally intended for general science use.
This seems to be a pattern in climate science. The original sensing system wasn’t designed for the purpose, and they apply some algorithm to make silk purses out of sow’s ears. God only knows what the algorithm is, and what it really represents.
Re Craig Loehle (4)
I dont think that there is any night time north of the arctic circle until mid September, although the sun is now getting lower in the sky day and “night”
Re: Ray Harper UK (#11),
That’s not quite right: at the North Pole itself, there is no night (i.e., sun under the horizon) until the Sept equinox. But at the Arctic Circle, there certainly is night by now (although it is quite short and light, the sun not being far under the horizon). The definition (more or less) of the Arctic Circle is that there you have one day without any night (being the midsummer solstice) (and also one night without a day – midwinter solstice).
In any event the sun never rises above 23 and a bit degrees above the horizon at the North Pole – not much insolation at the best of times…
Re: agn (#14),
At the current position of the NP webcam (84.5N, 2.50W) sunrise was at 6:54pm 30 Mar and sunset will be at 3:34PM 11Sep according to the NOAA calculator.
By the way the camera is lurching rather drunkenly, probably the ice under it is melting.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/tmp/noaa1-2009-0806-234847.jpg.tmp
Re: Phil. (#15),
That photo looks to me like most of the melt ponding that was there in July has refrozen.
Re: crosspatch (#17),
Admittedly anecdotal and for what it’s worth, when I flew back from Europe to the West Coast in early July we followed a pretty high latitude course [72-73N] and the skies were clear from eastern Greenland to around Yellowknife [NWT]. The ice extend visible through that part of the arc looking north was essentially uninterrupted, with the exception of some melt ponds around both sides of Greenland.
Anyone interested in sailing these “open waters”, be my guest. 🙂
Re: crosspatch (#18),
Looks to me like it’s drained through the thin ice.
The chart actually shows that we have just passed the period of fastest melt, and the melt rate decline in early August use to persist till the September minimum. By empiric extrapolation, 2009 should end a bit bellow 2005.
Re: Juraj V. (#12),
2009 is certainly turning out to be an interesting year: The JAXA data show that around mid February, Arctic ice extent was as high as the two highest on record [2002 and 2003]. Between mid-April and mid-May, the 2009 ice extent is the highest on the 8 year satellite record by a good margin, and currently is at 2005 levels for the same period.
It would appear that Walt Meier [NSIDC] ever so carefully is echoing the findings of the German/Canadian airborne survey of Arctic ice characteristics earlier this year, which in particular showed the ice to be twice as thick as had been forecast.
It is difficult to see any melting “trend”, other than that it is moving away from the 2007 low [which as NASA and other have shown was largely wind-driven].
In 2007 wind played a big role and supposively blew the entire ice pack together, thus contributing to the record low area. But bunched up ice would tend to be thick, with the entire mass shifting position as the wind dictates. Indeed researchers have been surprised on several occasions recently by the extra thickness of the ice last winter, the Alfred Wegener Institute to name one. Logically thick ice would have a much slower area reduction rate during the melting season in subsequent years. Overall too much emphasis is placed on area, and not enough is known about thickness (total mass).
I expect 09 to have the same trajectory as 08, but will begin to flatten out 10 days earlier. I am eagerly awaiting the results of the aerial measurements made by the AWI. I wonder what is taking them so long.
Here’s a pre-measurement press release by the AWI Polar 5, March 26. (Note they seem to expect to find thin ice): http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/pam_arcmip/?cHash=17cb2bdafa
And here’s the press release, April 29, after the Polar 5 having completed the measurements. Here they appear surprised by the greater than expected ice thickness they surveyed.
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/ende_pam_arcmip/?cHash=e36036fcb4
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#16),
A rather circular argument though, their previous measurements were only made where they could go with the Polarstern which necessarily limited the ice thickness. When they could overfly areas with the Polar 5 that they were unable to reach with the Polarstern they were able to measure thicker ice. No surprise.
Here’s the 2009 yea ice outlook from 16 different experts.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2009_outlook/report_july.php
There is a nifty sunrise/sunset calculator here:
http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html
In Barrow, Alaska (156.yW, 71.3N), the sun rose on Aug 7 at 4:10 AM ADT and will set on Aug 8 at 12:10 AM ADT.
The furthest north latitude where the sun will not set today is just shy of 73 degrees north.
During the equinox, your hours of day and night are equal.
Already hours of darkness in areas like the NW Passage.
A good link for an explanation of Sunset-Sunrise in the Arctic.
http://www.athropolis.com/sun-fr.htm
And the windmill is still standing perfectly erect with the moment exerted on it by the wind. Yeah.
Re: Calvin Ball (#21),
I believe I read that the structure that the camera is on is a buoy that is designed to float. I think it has a roundish bottom.
Re: Calvin Ball (#25),
Although that too appears to be sinking into the ice.
boy….this has been a lot of days in a row with low melts. any predictions? at this rate, 2009 could be much higher than 2008, but i realize that this could all turn on a dime….so i am not making a prediction, just observing the past week or so of low melts.
Re: markinaustin (#26),
2009 is now slightly behind 2008. My prediction is that 2009 will end up over 500,000 sq km behind 2008.
Re: Steve McIntyre (#28),
That puts it at about 5.2 Mkmsq. The six year mean at minimum was 5.3. My guess is it will split the difference between 2005 and 2008 at about 5.0.
Re: Steve McIntyre (#28),
This is looking like a better prediction than the Arctic modelers. AS of today, 2009 is about 380,000 km2 behind 2008 and 2009 seems very likely to gain at least another 120,000 km2 in the next 3 weeks. I don’t think that it’s a given that 2009 goes below 5.3.
month day year ice dd diff
90 8 29 2002 5.912813 241 -0.044843
455 8 29 2003 6.337813 241 -0.015312
820 8 28 2004 5.971563 241 -0.053281
1186 8 29 2005 5.728125 241 -0.043125
1551 8 29 2006 5.957344 241 -0.009062
1916 8 29 2007 4.664844 241 -0.060000
2281 8 28 2008 5.163125 241 -0.015156
2647 8 29 2009 5.539531 241 -0.014688
Re: Steve McIntyre (#646),
Update went up to about 20,000 lost, but it’s near average. Overall 2009 is losing at slightly more than an average rate. Except for some outliers the rate is decreasing. There’s about three weeks left till the average minimum so I would expect that it could lose just under a 500,000 worst case. Half that and you’re just under 5.3.
AS I thought might happen in yesterday’s post, 2009 dropped into 4th place today after another slow day.
month day year ice date julian mm dd diff
68 8 7 2002 6.963984 2002-08-07 11906 200208 219 -0.08136717
433 8 7 2003 7.149219 2003-08-07 12271 200308 219 -0.07203100
798 8 6 2004 7.424063 2004-08-06 12636 200408 219 -0.08906200
1164 8 7 2005 6.552500 2005-08-07 13002 200508 219 -0.05796900
1529 8 7 2006 6.725156 2006-08-07 13367 200608 219 -0.01734400
1894 8 7 2007 5.724688 2007-08-07 13732 200708 219 -0.09046800
2259 8 6 2008 6.579844 2008-08-06 14097 200808 219 -0.14500000
2625 8 7 2009 6.600938 2009-08-07 14463 200908 219 -0.04843700
On a somewhat unrelated note, is it just me or does the ITCZ seem to be farther south than usual for this time of year? Lately it’s been hugging 10ºN and the Carribean has been stormless.
Re: Johne S. Morton (#30),
Should post a relevant link:
http://www.intellicast.com/Storm/Hurricane/AtlanticSatellite.aspx
It’s been quiet, nevertheless.
Yes it’s been persistently further south of the long term average:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/fews/ITCZ/itcz.shtml
This is not something you would expect if the climate was currently in a warming mode.
I will predict 5.5 Million sq km. 🙂
I 60% agree with Steve’s prediction (28) that we will end up over 08, but will do so at around 300K over 08. This I predicted (with my crystal ball) 10 days ago. http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/31-years-of-july-27ths/#comment-8441
Back when, I predicted 5.1 Mkmsq on Lucia’s blog. If my memory is right, it was high compared to other estimates at that time.
Please, with the game now well into the 4th quarter, it is indeed a bit late to be making predictions.
Though the ice pack holds surprises, making predictions at this stage is really not that tough. Next year, all this predictioning ought to be done a little earlier.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#37),
In general, readers are not making “predictions” of the extent; they are making guesses. So I don’t set much store in such “predictions” nor do I get involved.
My making a guess at this stage is based on the rather slow recent melt and the thought that this trajectory will continue to the end-melt day on about day 261.
It’s not a totally trivial guess relative to 2008 since the two years were more or less tied at the time of my making the guess.
Re: Steve McIntyre (#41),
Even the experts are guessing. Too many variables that are “weather” vs “climate”. Two weeks ago the loss was above normal (and it looked like 2009 would follow 2008), this week below (and it looks like it’s tracking 2005). All you can really say, for what it’s worth, is that 2009 is not below any of the 2003-2008 minimums yet so anything is “possible” (hey the long shot won the Kentucky Derby).
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#37), The most interesting part is always the fourth quarter or the stretch run or whatever metaphor you like, and this particular game seems to be boring until the end. The IARC-JAXA graph shows everybody bunched except 2007 which broke loose early and 2008 which broke loose late.
So we’re watching as they come past the grandstand and it’s great fun. OK, it’s not an essential measure of GW, as we point out when it suits us, but it’s still exciting to watch if you’re obsessed with numbers. My wife uses less kind words.
IARC-JAXA has yesterday’s melt at under 40,000 kmsq. So 2009 is falling behind 2005, 2007 and 2008.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
The fact that the sixteen models that SEARCH shows have such a tight range around a pessimistic result, even as the year progresses and 2009 looks rather normal at least for this decade, suggests that when they get ahold of a good crisis, they are reluctant to let it go.
My take, with no PhD and just Excel running under XP, is that since atmospheric temperatures seem to be at or below normal in the Arctic, that the melt will do likewise, in which case we’re going to wind up above any of the aforementioned sixteen computer models. Probably by a wide margin.
Re: Rob Spooner (#40),
All those models could be wrong. The consensus of science all wrong? Was this peer reviewed?
Re: Shawn Whelan (#45)
One of my professors said that presuppositions have a nasty habit of reappearing as conclusions. That could be a factor.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#45), there seem to be three sets of models, two climate and one of climate interest, which are in the process of going astray en masse. The predictions of the solar cycle transition have been regularly revised but never enough. The latest consensus announced in May is already looking off base.
The Arctic Ice Minimum Extent predictions are looking iffy, as we all know. Plus the various estimates for the hurricane season, which are going down with blame assigned to the moderate and well anticipated El Nino.
I’m not sure what a “peer reviewed computer model” would be, but it seems that at times 100% of computer models by people who write peer reviewed papers can be well off the mark.
Did you mean:
#41 Steve
With 30 years of satellite imagery available, I thought someone might have provided a good narrative of the annual max, min and rate of increase or decrease. Understanding the past in this respect would help remove some of the guess work. I enquired with NSIDC whether such a narrative has been produced and the following is an extract from the reply.
“The following paragraphs were provided by NSIDC’s sea ice scientist, Walt Meier. I thought this might be helpful to you. In general sense, no, no one has published a detailed narrative explanation of the entire sea ice record from 1978 onwards. That’s because scientifically, it’s not particularly interesting. Short term year-to-year variations are mostly influenced by seasonal weather variation – warm summers tend yield lower extents, etc. – that are pretty clear and don’t yield any particular insights. Where the interesting things happen is most notably the long-term changes, about which there have been many many papers written”
Contrary to the NSIDC view, I think that my question is “scientifically interesing”. I’m sure it would be a great project for a graduate student with the time to seek out the meteorological and oceanographic information and piece together the story.
Re: Aylamp (#44)
This imagery is the “effect” not the “cause” and it is only two dimensional, as it lacks thickness. Prediction based on such a record is somewhat dubious. If there was a corresponding record of ice thickness, ocean currents and temperature, air temperature and cloud cover that could also be taken into consideration, a prediction would have a much higher likelihood of being correct.
Re: Daryl M (#46),
As a matter of definition when one is measuring ice extent, it is ice surface one is measuring, not thickness. If one includes ice thickness in the equation, it is in fact ice volume [LxWxH] one is measuring. Since those who have been clamouring that AGW is causing an unprecedented and growing loss of ice in the Arctic have always measured this as a loss of ice extent, to now start pulling ice thickness into the picture when the ice extent numbers are not cooperating, is a bit of “skate”, as it were. Not only that, but as I pointed out above, the German-Canadian airborne survey earlier this year showed that ice thickness is twice what had been forecast/projected/modeled, so the ice thickness numbers are not cooperating either.
That begs the question: what are we next going to be asked to consider as “evidence” for the dramatic loss of Arctic ice we are supposed to be witnessing? Colour, perhaps?
Re: tetris (#57)
I think we are saying the same thing, specifically that simply looking at area or extent tells only about two dimensions, so making a “scientific” prediction based on an incomplete picture isn’t much different than a “guess”.
Re: Daryl M (#59),
We probably are. My experience tells me that, however incomplete, it is always best to work off of best available data rather than guesstimates, hunches or belief systems. Based on best available data, the “unprecedented” melting in the Arctic we are told is occurring falls into the realm of belief systems and not even of guesstimates.
snip – general venting about models
The inclusion of the Unfiltered 2009 data in the graphic is a bit, well, distracting. It looks like someone scribbled with a red pen all over the graphic… Is there a graph without the Unfiltered 2009 data?
So vertical structures with a moment sink vertically, and vertical structures without a moment tip?
Re: Calvin Ball (#52),
It depends how they’re supported, apart from your assumptions about the camera set-up how do you explain the observations?
My guess is that it has been blown over due to the shape of its base. If the ice were to melt, it would right itself.
I’m a little surprised that Jeff Id hasn’t chimed in on this thread. He’s done some interesting compilation of videos showing the seasonal movements of arctic ice over multi-decadal time spans. There’s a large component of circulation and/or wind that effects the melt rate. He’s noted a change in patterns over the last week slowing the melt rate. His current prognosis is a minimum in the 2003/2006 neighborhood. It will be interesting to see how his methodology compares to the models at the end of the season.
It’s worth a visit to his site just to see these videos:
#53 PHIL. …although I remember and therefore recognize your reasoning about the camera etc
at the NP from last summer(2008), I’m glad you don’t claim they’re sinking
through the ice, unless you’re there and…”baby, drill,baby, drill…LOL… All snow that falls around and later softens and melts should
have some deteriorating influence on the ice around these installations…no???
AWI claims they’re the first to use airborne EM profiling, but then
google Christian Haas … then you can also judge if the ice N of
Ellesmere Island is thinning…or not…
Phil, I’m not going to speculate about what happened to the camera. But the overturning moment on a windmill is considerable. That should be intuitively obvious. When those things are planted in terra firma, they’re planted with massive concrete bases. If one is in actual operation in the ice, the ice has to be quite solid.
Maybe someone here has some actual numbers on what the operational moment is, but as a Fermi approximation, if you could imagine a parachute of the area of the circle that the blades spin through (I really can’t tell from that picture), cut that in half, and then apply 30 mph wind and then multiply by the height, you’ll probably not be too far off. I’ll guess that it’s on the order of 10,000 ft-lb.
According to Arctic ROOS, Arctic sea ice extent has made a sharp turn the last few days.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
It seems pretty clear that currents (likely driven by the PDO) and wind (possibly driven the same way) effect ice “extent”.
Using a 15% coverage as the metric we can have any number of scenarios. The ice evenly distributed; the ice pushed up into the Eastern Arctic; the ice melting away; the ice pushed out of the Arctic and down the Labrador Coast. If the winds and the currents trend eastwards, as they are doing this year, ice simply piles up at that end of the Arctic Basin.
None of these scenarios tells us much about the effects of climate change on ice; rather they tell us about weather, and, frankly, not that much.
As we know, there have been years in which the NorthWest passage has been open. See the St. Roch which you can see in Vancouver. But that fact is more about current and wind than it is about the actual amount of ice in the Arctic.
#60 Yes, Phil … It has thinned … about the length of my …
SNIP … underarm 25 cm approx. According to Christian Haas this
close to the Pole area…the summer ice thinning is 30-80 cm…So
now you NEED a drill, baby…
ice may in fact have ceased melting
Phil
You are obviously a reasonably intelligent guy but you worry me. You seem to be completely unable to let go of your belief and take a scientific view of what you see or you are just not able to clearly express yourself. The camera is tilted, yes. Can you be 100% certain that it is caused by the ice beneath melting, no. Why? because I can’t see the surface beneath the camera. You can make some reasonable assumptions as many other respondents have but 100% ? NO, sorry.
You have been posting here for long enough to know that you will provoke a response, perhaps that is your goal. To provoke an argument for ? well I don’t know but I do know there are better ways, for your ‘image’, to start a discussion. I’m pleased that you contribute but please try to do so from an open mind.
Re: stephen richards (#73),
Which is why I said “probably the ice under it is melting”, where do you get 100% from?
But as I pointed out the co-located instruments show that the ice at that site is melting, the ‘scientific view’ is to take the other available data (melting) into account.
What is unreasonable about thinking that a weather station mounted in melting ice might be tilting as a result of that melting?
Regarding the other reasonable assumptions: the one about the round bottomed buoy is a non-starter because the camera is mounted on the weather station; the other suggestions about a storm or vibrations are reasonable but there’s no evidence that they occurred (unlike the melting).
I do have an open mind, I do wonder about those who so vehemently reject the idea that structures mounted in ice might move in response to that ice melting though.
Re: Phil. (#112),
I’ve been spending a little more time examining the NOAA North Pole site. With regards to the weather data from http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np_weatherdata.html , the graphs all end on July 20, so this is all over three week old data now. It was over two weeks old when you first referenced it. As for the camera, http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html has a disclaimer revealing the camera has been functioning sporadically since May 31. The latest images (http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/noaa1-2009-0812-135836.jpg , http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/noaa1-2009-0813-021028.jpg , & http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/noaa1-2009-0813-081637.jpg )all show a new shift in the camera position. It now seems to been very close to the support strut leading down to the ice. It doesn’t look like any melting, but rather the support arm that the camera was on may have broken, and it is shifting around a lot.
Re: Phil. (#112),
I’ve been spending a little more time examining the NOAA North Pole site. With regards to the weather data from http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np_weatherdata.html , the graphs all end on July 20, so this is all over three week old data now. It was over two weeks old when you first referenced it. As for the camera, http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html has a disclaimer revealing the camera has been functioning sporadically since May 31. The latest image (http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2009/images/noaa1-2009-0813-081637.jpg) shows a new shift in the camera position. It now seems to been very close to the support strut leading down to the ice. It doesn’t look like any melting, but rather the support arm that the camera was on may have broken, and it is shifting around a lot.
Re: Keith (#185),
Re: Phil. (#112),
Yes, they’re usually a bit tardy in updating it, the claim of weekly updating is very optimistic.
The front page data was usually updated daily but hasn’t been since the 5th as far as I can tell, by comparison with the NP-36 station it could easily have drifted a further 40km towards the Fram st.
Yes, that’s been there for quite a while.
Although it’s sloping the opposite way to what I would have expected but could be a funny mount. The camera appears to have dipped slightly forward and at the same time swung a long way to the right, based on previous data ~80º. When the support came in view last time it soon went out of view (perhaps by remote command), it’ll be interesting to see if that happens again. What appears to be a cable has moved quite a lot between the two views. No doubt we’ll get some more changes.
Phil, just let it go. It is unimportant to the grand scheme of things anyway, and one has to admit that the melting has taken an early break from the normal melt, which nobody (certainly myself included) expected. Whether it (the camera) has tilted from ice melting, or one of the other explanations from Keith or crosspatch, is unknowable on the paucity of facts available to us but not a big deal either way. I enjoy reading your posts here because it presents an alternative view to the vast majority of posters here and is usually very well written and backed by some research.
Re: Michael Jennings (#73),
the melting has taken an early break from the normal melt, which nobody (certainly myself included) expected
I expected it.
July in 2009 was much cooler than July in the previous couple years.
So less heat in the Arctic and an early end to the melt unless some freak warmth now arrives. And that is unlikely.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#78),
My apologies to you then sir! Very impressive indeed!
Re: Michael Jennings (#74),
And yet it’s what would be expected from figure 1, i.e. a reduction in the rate of loss at day ~200. Not surprising really since most of the ‘easy’ ice has gone over the last month and the bulk of the remaining ice is in the Arctic basin, not surprisingly the current trajectory is tracking 2008 at present.
Location ice remaining Cf 2008
Baffin………….0…………….=
Greenland……0.13………..+0.03
Barents……….0.02…………=
Kara……………0.08…………-0.05
Laptev…………0.08…………-0.25
E Siberian…….0.20…………-0.1
Chukchi……….0.00…………-0.05
Beaufort……….0.14………..+0.14
Archipelago…..0.28………..+0.02
Hudson Bay…..0.02…………-0.02
Arctic Basin……3.20………..+0.30
Last year’s exceptional melt in the Beaufort is matched this year in the Kara and Laptev.
Outflux from the Basin is into Greenland Sea and Beaufort Sea.
Re: Phil. (#114),
Phil, I think the most telling statistic there is how much greater the extent in the Arctic basin is this year compared to 2008 (and 2007). The peripherary areas will wax and wane depending on the year, but the Arctic basin is the heart of the ice pack…and it appears much healthier overall this year.
It is also for that reason that it is unlikely 2009 will finish as low as 2008 now.
…And another slow [NB “slö” in Swedish means “lazy” so the ice is
just lazy in] melting day: 35.000 km2 less, 6.566.000 ca preliminary?
Calling sea ice forecasts “guesses” may be a little harsh. From Websters:
to predict: To state, tell about, or make known in advance, especially on the basis of special knowledge.
While to guess is more akin to shooting blindly in the dark, like “guess what number I have in my head”? There is a lot of information and data that can be applied to allow forecasting of sea ice extent minima. Perhaps we can agree on “an educated guess”?
Barry W
In horse racing, all horses start at the same start line. The 7 and 15 day forecasts are getting more and more accurate.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
Even long-term 30 day and 90 day forecasts are actually becoming useful. Statistically the long shots can be eliminated at this stage. Right now there’s no evidence of anything existing up there that is weird enough to trigger a big surprise.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#77),
I wouldn’t bet money on this horse race. We don’t even know what weight (ice volume) the horses are carrying. El Nino is cranking up, what’s that going to do? I doubt that the minimum will be greatly above what the predictions have been but who knows? Hasn’t been a great year for predicting sunspot, hurricane or temperatures so far.
Re: BarryW (#84),
Actually Barry, the El Nino is dying and was a weak one to boot. Joe Bastardi of AccuWeather called this right months ago and also has nailed the Hurricane season in the Atlantic too. Maybe people should pay a little more attention to some Meteorologists like him and Anthony Watts and less to Gavin and Hansen about what is actually likely to happen.
Re: Michael Jennings (#99),
And I’ve been hearing that the lack of Atlantic hurricanes was due to the El Nino comming back strong. I’m glad meteorology is such an accurate science (about like solar science it seems at least in terms of predictive capabilities).
Re: BarryW (#101),
Bastardi says the El Nino is a result of atmospheric conditions leading into it and was not the driver of the weather but being driven by the weather/atmospheric conditions and is a secondary factor in Hurricane development as well. That is why he predicted it to be a weak and relatively short one that will end early this winter. The predictions by NOAA and others that this El Nino would be a moderate to strong one have only recently started to change their tune and get in line with Joe’s predictions made back in February (on tropical systems too). For those that want to read these things it requires a subscription to the site and therefore I can’t link it.
Very interesting is the fact that scientists, like those at the AWI, very often cite global warming as a factor when making their predictions on sea ice minima. So, if the globe is indeed cooling, it means their predictions will be under-estimating sea ice extent every year. Sometimes I wish these guys would open up a betting office.
if this keeps up, we could see quite a recovery from last year…….thoughts?
month day year ice date julian mm dd diff
69 8 8 2002 6.882617 2002-08-08 11907 200208 220 -0.08136717
434 8 8 2003 7.032031 2003-08-08 12272 200308 220 -0.11718800
799 8 7 2004 7.308594 2004-08-07 12637 200408 220 -0.11546900
1165 8 8 2005 6.513906 2005-08-08 13003 200508 220 -0.03859400
1530 8 8 2006 6.689063 2006-08-08 13368 200608 220 -0.03609300
1895 8 8 2007 5.649063 2007-08-08 13733 200708 220 -0.07562500
2260 8 7 2008 6.485625 2008-08-07 14098 200808 220 -0.09421900
2626 8 8 2009 6.566719 2009-08-08 14464 200908 220 -0.04328100
Looks like we don’t really need to analyze the numbers.
The melt numbers are HUGE I tell ya’…HUGE!!!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090809/ap_on_re_ca/cn_canada_ice_retreats
Re: John M (#83),
Uh, yeah. Except when it’s not… Then it’s just weather noise.
Re: John M (#83),
Such poor journalism.
Average temperatures for Tuktoyaktuk degrees C
July 2007 12.7
July 2008 13.13
July 2009 8.62
Some warming trend
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/dailydata_e.html
#86 If my calculation is correct (Combining the correct Tu Tiempo
series+EC … According to raw GHCN+USCHN[NASA-GISS] ONLY 4 months of July were
colder in the rather cold period 1958-1989, 1960: +7,6C; 1980: +7,8C;
1985: +6,0C; 1986: +8,2C…No wonder the NWP didn’t open in the eighties…
#87 …BUT WAIT … there’s more: Eddie Gruben 89,the AP “veteran observer”
is described in NYT 1988-08-18 as: “Eskimo millionaire” owning an
equipment company…The airport in Tuktoyaktuk is called “James Gruben
Airport” … James Gruben was Eddie Gruben’s son, also a prominent
businessman. [He was killed in a collision on the ice road between
Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik on April 13, 2001] AP just didn’t take anybody
to get a message…
This was the last slow day for a while last year. Maybe it’s time to start looking at 2006.
month day year ice dd diff
70 8 9 2002 6.801250 221 -0.08136717
435 8 9 2003 6.932813 221 -0.09921800
800 8 8 2004 7.199844 221 -0.10875000
1166 8 9 2005 6.467344 221 -0.04656200
1531 8 9 2006 6.635000 221 -0.05406300
1896 8 9 2007 5.565313 221 -0.08375000
2261 8 8 2008 6.485000 221 -0.00062500
2627 8 9 2009 6.525156 221 -0.04156300
Re: Steve McIntyre (#90),
I second that. My earlier feeling for a minimum was 300-500 thousand km2 behind ’08, but now that the jet stream has apparently made its move, ’06 or greater starts to make sense…
5.8-6 million km2. I’ll peg that as my predicted min for this year.
Cheers!
Only down to 6,525,156 on the prelim tonight which is another slow melt day. Where is this headed?
getting very interesting indeed…another week of like this past one and we will be looking at another fairly impressive recovery versus 2007 and then building upon 2008’s recovery…
Are those dates adjusted for leap years in 2004 and 2008? We should probably be comparing day 222 for those years to day 221 this year.
@90
Expect an acceleration this week.
Shawn Whelan,
Overall summertime temps in the Arctic play only a minor role.
More important is the preceding winter ice thickness, summer wind patterns and Arctic summer water temps. It is indeed far more complex than temperature. Projecting ice extent based solely on surface temps will only mislead you.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#93),
So just where did I say Summertime temps are the sole factor in the melt?
Variation in cloud cover, including fog, likely plays a major role in the amount of seasonal melt. Anyone know of an Arctic daily or weekly cloud cover measure?
Arctic Roos is showing an increase in extent.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#100),
Arctic ROOS smooths their data (Rloess). As several threads have pointed out, smoothing can have a dramatic effect on endpoint behavior. Not to mention that I don’t trust Arctic ROOS anyway. Uni-Hamburg has posted their July area and extent data. I’ll have more when I get back from vacation.
Re: Carrick (#6),
I haven’t been able to find much about the algorithm JAXA uses, but Spreen and Kaleschke have papers available on line (here and here ) describing their algorithm and its validation. Both S&K and JAXA use data from the AMSR-E sensor on Aqua which has about four times better resolution (6.25 km compared to 25 km) on the 89GHz brightness temperature channel than the lower frequency channels on either Aqua or the SSM/I satellites.
Shawn Whelan,
No. 80:
Perhaps I’m discerning too much from your statement. Sorry.
INGSOC
6 million?! I think that’s really getting up in the clouds now. Not that I’d mind the effect that would have on the media and political blather. But, there’s going to be an accelerated melt this week I think.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#102),
But, there’s going to be an accelerated melt this week I think.>/I?
Based on what?
Shawn,
That’s got to be some sort of adjustment. Everyone else is showing ice extent over 08. There’s no way things are freezing up there right now. The author of that chart must have fallen asleep for a week or so. That chart cannot be taken seriously.
I’m beginning to think that neither the NW passage or NE passage will have meaningful openings this year. This is based on how much ice remains clogging both waterways, and by the projected pattern in the Arctic for the next week or two. Looks like a very +AO pattern overall, which is generally good for cooler temperatures and not too much wind up there.
Here’s the link to the Uni-Hamburg data archive in case anyone needs it.
Slow day again with -47031
If the ongoing slow down holds, it is perfectly conceivable that 2009 late summer/fall numbers will be closer to 2006 than 2005 for the same period. If so, this will further support the argument that 2007 was the [statistically speaking] outlier and not the harbinger of a continued and growing AGW driven Arctic “melt down”. As much as “warmists” want to hold up air temperatures as the culprit, wind patterns [as demonstrated by NASA] and SSTs are probably the better place to look for an explanation and Bob Tinsdale’s data on regional SSTs – in this particular case the Arctic basin – make for interesting reading.
boy…this is getting fascinating…..we have not had a 100,000 day in 18 days and counting. but does it mean anything? i guess it could all start melting very fast….time will tell.
Phil, you are a smart guy, but you don’t need to melt down (no pun intended) because the 2009 season is going slower than previous years. Most of your posts seem to hedge toward melting ice, and you have reacted in a semi-wild manner ever since this season has slowed considerably.
The ice is melting, but not at a very alarming rate (exactly the opposite…very slow). Does it matter if the north pole cam tilted? It probably does not.
I happened across a blog from a pair of Royal Marines attempting to sail/row through the NW Passage. Today’s entry:
8/10/2009 6484688 -47031 -48750 -74307
8/9/2008 6417656 -67344 -82634 -83343
8/10/2007 5527813 -37500 -83147 -86578
8/10/2006 6589219 -45781 -53995 -57479
8/10/2005 6410000 -57344 -65245 -76250
8/9/2004 7111875 -87969 -91919 -78208
8/10/2003 6909688 -23125 -78415 -79750
Here come the numbers. 2009 was slow again, which I find personally
surprising in view of all the low-concentration ice there is up
there. Maybe there’s not enough wind? Anyone knows something about
wind predictions for the next week?
Shawn Whelan, no. 100.
Arctic Roos appears to have re-discovered melting again. Chart has been revised.
My predictions, like everyone else, is based on my own crystal ball. And there is a lot of thin ice out there.
#114 Phil. … What’s EXCEPTIONal if it also happened in 1995,2002,2005,2006,2007, that is similar melting in Both Kara and
Laptev Seas…In Laptev[only] it also happened in 1988,1990,1991,2000,2003…If your definition of “exception” is less than 20%, we can buy it, but for me, FYI it’s less than 10%…[UIUC source above]…Also only in Kara, a somewhat surprising candidate:
1985!…
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#118),
As should be clear from my statement “Last year’s exceptional melt in the Beaufort”: it is the previous year’s melt in the Beaufort which was exceptional. As indicated by the table the shortfall in the Beaufort is more than matched this year in the Kara and Laptev. (+0.14 vs -0.30)
The Beaufort last year had thinner than usual multiyear ice caused by exceptional melting from below in 2007 followed by extensive breakup and melting in 2008. This year that ice has been partially replaced by outflow from the Canadian coast.
For those interested in the progress of the yachts, Silent Sound is close to clearing the narrows near Lambert Island, their current position is about 68.47N, 114.24W.
They should be in Cambridge Bay in a day or two.
Back from holiday and the fast gallop that was happening before I left has turned into a slow canter. 2009 had been 300+K below 2008 but is now over 100K above. My 4.8×10^6 might be too low now, as might the concensus of the experts in the graph Steve put at the top which is even lower than that. The NE and NW passages both look still less clear than I thought they would too, though I still think they will be open.
Last year one of the poles on the webcam tipped over due to the ice melting rather than anything else, so I think history would tend to back up Phil rather than any other cause 🙂
Regards
Andy
Two British Marines rowing/sailing through the Arctic in a small boat.
8 August, 2009
Summary:
Adventure in the Arctic is a constant battle with the elements. This time it’s the ice which, according to the captain of the area Coastguard ship, is the worst he’s ever seen. The predominately north-west winds have forced loose ice into the Strait. Recent satellite imagery apparently shows the southern part of the channel increasingly filled with ice. We now find ourselves locked in a major ice flow, unable to move. We’re in regular contact with the Coastguard who advise that there’s nothing to be done but wait for the south-east winds to break up the pack. We are drifting south-east at about 1 Kt. It snowed last night and we had a baby seal playing around the boat. Other than that, we’re catching up on our books; we could be here for a week. We’re safe and comfortable, having made an improvised shelter over the boat with a tent fly sheet.
http://www.arcticmariner.org/#blog
Re: Shawn Whelan (#120),
It looks like they made a strategic error, there’s a fairly clear lead to the north (which you might expect from northerly winds). Judging by their position they tried to go south and got stuck, see Terra/Modis image below and Google Earth image showing their position.
Silent Sound took the Northern route and has passed through the lead and should have open water to Cambridge Bay now.
Baloum Gwen and Arctic Watch are not far behind and should have a clear run too. Bagan coming the other way is at Young Bay and report that “the central area of The Passage seems to be breaking up before our eyes” and a lead is starting to open up.
MODIS & Google Earth
Re: Phil. (#132),
It was never like that in the 1930’s Phil.
Maybe they should head North and follow Larsen’s 1944 route.
Not likely any of them will make it to Resolute.
Less ice in 1944 or all the years of the late Twenties, Thirties and early Forties when they easily navigated the passage.
No chance any of them will navigate the Northern Passage like the CGS-Arctic did in the early 1900’s or like Parry did in the early 1800’s. Or like the Resolute did in the 1850’s. Or like Larsen did in 1944. Why don’t these boats travel the Northern route like those ones did? Much more ice now. Seems more like global cooling than warming.
Boats routinely went to Gjoa Haven in the Thirties. Some warming.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/arcticexpedition/icebreakers/cgs-arctic
Re: Phil. (#132),
from today’s posting it seems they are trying to drag the vessel out over the ice to the North:
Re: Phil. (#132),
Phil, is that modis image recent? It seems to contradict what the Canadian ice service SAR results are for yesterday
Can_Ice
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW (#144),
Yes day 221, born out by Silent Sound having sailed through the lead, their current position is about 69.15N, 115.27W at 05:05UTC.
Re: AndyW (#144),
The regions labeled ‘F’ in the CIS map are ~75% ice covered so could be navigable with care.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#149),
Those little sailboats need a lot less ice than that to get through.
They need a wind to clear a route through the ice.
At this point a West wind will plug the passage.
They seem to be stuck in that blockage, it’s all plain sailing for a bit after this part. They have not had to eat their boots yet anyway.
Regards
Andy
Final revised number: 6485938
Up till now 2009 really has been a crazy year with the relatively high extent in May (highest on the JAXA chart), the breaking away from ’05 and ’08 and for a while hunting after ’07 with five 100K+ melt days in a row and then the recent turnaround with melting collapsing pretty hard. I wonder if it really is over now like VG and Shawn suggest, or that 2009 has another trick up its sleeve. Either way, I love watching this race unfold. And I’m glad there is a special thread for the Arctic Sea Ice over here, so thanks a lot, CA!
2009 is now above 2005 and less that 100k below the average JAXA data. If it finishes fourth that’s going to be hard for the alarmists to explain (this is going to take some real spin to explain).
year extent weekly change
2003 6.90969 -0.54891
2004 7.11188 -0.64344
2005 6.41000 -0.45672
2006 6.58922 -0.37797
2007 5.52781 -0.58203
2008 6.41766 -0.57844
2009 6.48594 -0.34000
BarryW (#124),
And why is this? There is still a trend that is significantly pointing downwards, right? 2007 was a freak year (just like 1998 was for global temperature anomaly). If 2008 and especially 2009 would have had the same freaky weather conditions minimum sea ice extent would probably have been below 2 million square km or maybe even gone in September.
It’s not so strange that people who expected the trend to gradually move towards an ice free Arctic over several decades were completely taken by surprise when the 2007 melt hit. It’s not strange either that people who sincerely believe AGW could become a big problem hit the alarm button when 2007 happened and highlight the Arctic Sea Ice melt as a possible emerging consequence of AGW (with a lot more research on the Arctic being done). And it certainly is not strange that people who are benefiting from AGW – Al Gore comes to mind – will try to capitalize on it.
But on the whole, the only spinning of any importance that can be done is that by the people capitalizing on AGW not being true. They have at least one year for some extra spin. Of course, still depending on what 2009 does.
Re: Neven (#125),
I think the level-headed among us saw 2007 as a likely outlier in a rather short period of observations, and thus nothing to panic over, while others saw 2007 as a sign of the apocalypse and definitive proof of runaway global warming.
As usual, I think cool heads will prevail.
Re: Jared (#128),
Allow me to commend you on your level-headedness. I can easily understand people’s jaw dropping when you have an outlier that beats the previous record by a whopping 20% in a trend that is already bent downwards. Good thing they’re wrong though, if they are wrong. The albedo and melting permafrost feedbacks and all make it difficult to remain level-headed.
Re: Neven (#125),
Many of the alarmists have loudly proclaimed doom in the immediate future and keep predicting that not only things are getting worse but accelerating. Only when confronted by contrary results do they invoke weather and noise as an explanation. As far as trends go pick your start and end points. I’ve plotted two 60 year cycles in the temp data and I think we’re starting into a third, so we may be seeing the start of an uptick in the ice just as there seems to have been a flattening of the sea level rise. Only true believers stick around when the space ship doesn’t land as predicted by the cult leader.
@BarryW: Since growing glaciers are blamed on global warming, why not growing arctic icecap?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1203500/In-pictures-How-global-warming-changing-face-northern-hemisphere.html
Level-headed AGW Proponent is an oxymoron.
every day gets more interesting….another week of this and 2009 will be in excellent shape to end this season….i wonder if the report about strong winds starting Saturday are true? that could make things very interesting next week….
re 124
Depends on whether you mean ‘the models are badly underestimating melt and 2007 was just the start of an acelleration so its all going to be gone by 2012’ crowd. This years lack of melt is pretty much the death knell for this theory.
However even 2005 was well ahead of model projections on ice melt, so if the ice can recover to above the 2005 level with a change in weather patterns than maybe this shows that the models were right after all and it will take until somewhere in the 2050-2100 timeframe for the summer ice to disappear.
I personally think somewhere in between, which relies partly on the ice thickness and multi year ice reducing strongly, which of course seems to be a far less certain data point than the ice extent figures.
In 2008 there was a lot of late season melt, NSIDC commentary blamed this on thin first year ice. So if the NSIDC were right about this, and the ice is as thin as some are saying, and weather conditions don’t intervene we should see a strong finish to the melt season this year.
Weather conditions: According to GFS there should be some warmer air moving into the Siberian sector of the Arctic, and generally slack pressure systems so low wind. Towards the end of the 7 day period a fairly strong low seems to spin up towards the center of the Arctic, causing rather colder and windy conditions.
What the boats commonly do is follow an icebreaker through the ice.
The English had a large steamer go to Cambridge Bay in the early 1850’s. No GPS, no maps, no radar to show them the route and no icebreaker to follow behind. And a huge ship compared to these Tonka toys.
Nothing on the Silent Sound blog that says they are through to Cambridge Bay. Where do you find the info that they are through Phil?
http://www.openpassageexpedition.com/index.html
Ocean Watch says they are all waiting for the Passage to open.
http://www.aroundtheamericas.org/story/Crew+Log+60+-+Pearce+Point+Harbor%2C+Amundsen+Gulf
Re: Shawn Whelan (#135),
What I said was “Silent Sound took the Northern route and has passed through the lead and should have open water to Cambridge Bay now.”
Their site shows they are through the lead, they have open water through to Cambridge Bay.
11 August, 2009
Summary:
We’ve started dragging the boat over the ice and intermittently floating it through narrow leads.
We’re heading North-East towards open water about 5-10 miles from here.
Kev’s managed to break a paddle (he’s just too strong…), however, the 2-in-1 pulley system is working well.
So we’re still moving, albeit slowly.
The Canadian weather service reports that there is 90% more ice than normal for this time of year.
However, the forecast is very promising with warm weather on the way and winds in the right direction.
Still no power in the laptop.
No easy Passage 🙂
Re: Carlo (#136),
Hmmm, that’s odd, didn’t see your comment until after it refreshed from posting mine. Sorry for repeating it.
Forgot the link
http://www.arcticmariner.org/#blog
another weak day…..this is closing in on 3 weeks without a 100,000 day. i think this is day 19 in the books with a 43,000 melt off. we are now tracking above 2005 for ice!
i wonder when the big melting days will come? could start tomorrow i suppose.
What was unusual about 2008 was that it kept having 50,000+ high melt rates over last part of August and early Sept. An accumulation of 50,000/60,000 days can still result in 2008-style levels but I’d be very surprised if we see it. The potential for 100,000 days has passed – not just this year: even in 2007 or 2008.
month day year ice dd diff
72 8 11 2002 6.682 223 -0.066
437 8 11 2003 6.887 223 -0.023
802 8 10 2004 7.058 223 -0.054
1168 8 11 2005 6.373 223 -0.037
1533 8 11 2006 6.536 223 -0.053
1898 8 11 2007 5.469 223 -0.059
2263 8 10 2008 6.344 223 -0.074
2629 8 11 2009 6.443 223 -0.043
Re: Steve McIntyre (#142),
8/24/08 5426875 -73281
8/25/08 5305313 -121562
8/26/08 5222969 -82344
But it is unlikely. Right now the smoothed rate is lower in magnitude than all but 2006 in the JAXA record. Ice concentration is about 66%, well above 2008 but below 2006. Concentration usually hits minimum about now. Assuming a minimum on 9/15, the average loss in extent from this day has been 1.15 Mm2. That would put the minimum at about 5.3 Mm2. Using the same logic in 2008, though, the predicted minimum was 5.2 Mm2 on 8/11. That didn’t hold up too well.
@phil 145
is there a chance that their nice boats finally get stuck and crushed in the ice ?
Re: Manfred (#146),
Of course, that’s what makes it fun.
Phil and DeWitt,
But the Modis image makes it seem very clear and more agrees with AMRSE at Bremen than the Canadian maps, as you can guess I’m trying to determine which is more accurate now that Shawn has brought this other data more into the limelight.
Another contradiction is SST anomalies, Unisys paint a different picture to the Japanese for instance. Along with the various ice area and extent plots not agreeing it does seem that the humble ice enthusiast seems to have to “shop around” to get an actual real feel for the actual state of play (or more importantly to win armchair arguments 🙂 ).
Regards
Andy
There seems to be a growing sense of irrational exuberance here that 09 could even finish above 05.
This is all very premature. Let’s not forget, we are currently just a tick above 08, and it is only 12 August. An average melting of 50K over the next 30 days puts us a mere hair above 08. Plus there’s the potential the ice melt season extending into late September. I’m still expecting an acceleration this week, which will hold till late August. Then you’ll see 09 flattening out and departing away from 08. Then 09 will meet with 08 again on about Oct 1-5.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#152), the ordinary rate at which the ice melts declines sharply as August wears on and September begins. Wunderground seems to show below normal temps now, so I don’t see why we would expect anomalously high melt rates. 2008 and 2007 were unusual. There’s no good reason to expect even a normal rate, considering the weather.
Daily mean temps inthe Arctic have fallen below zero.
Compare 2009 to 2007.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Re: Shawn Whelan (#154),
Thanks for the link. That is an interesting display. Can someone explain the reasons why there is so little variance in summer temperatures relative to winter temperatures?
Re: bernie (#155),
It is difficult for the temperatures to get much above freezing until all the ice melts.
Re: bernie (#155),
Melting ice maintains a constant temperature until it’s all gone, that’s why you put it in your drink.
If you put the drink in the freezer it will reach whatever temperature that you set it at.
That’is it now, we’re all doomed. The Arctic melted completely during the night.
Re: Flanagan (#156),
The Antarctic apparently melted too …. all if it … in the winter!
No. 155 Bernie
I’d say it’s due to the latent heat of fusion. Melting ice and ice water stays at 0°C until it is completely melted, no matter how much heat is applied. When you got that amount of ice surrounding you, surface temps will remain stuck near the freezing point. I’d say the DMI graph of summer temps is a very poor tool for predicting ice melt.
No matter what year you click on, summertime temps are stuck at around 0°C. There’s still much ice below the 80° latitiude, an area the DMI graph does not represent.
…And meantime “kavlugnt” på Karahavet 2009-08-11 23:23:50, reports
the Swede from Gothemburg, Ola Skinnarmo…completely still, so they
use the “iron genua”… Approaching Dikson, named after another Gothemburgian participating in the Nordenskiöld expedition 1878-80,
they had to “hibernate” not too far from Bering Strait[WEST-EAST] On
July 18, 1879 the ice loosened its grip…and the rest was…a lot
of parties, celebrations, but in Japan only for Nordenskiöld himself
Most of the crew
left in Naples, Italy and took the train home to Sweden…[party-
sickness…] Nordenskiöld himself endured the whole trip around
the block of Eurasia and arrived in Stockholm late in April, 1880…
#160 Ooops!… Rule 1: Never put com after a dot…To reach Ola
Skinnarmo’s website omit 2 dots, GWS…
Have I been banned? I don’t post very often and not anything controversial that I know of. But I submitted a response to the question about arctic summer temperature variation and it did not get posted. Not surprisingly a number of others also posted responses to that – so no great loss – but still.
Re: MikeP (#163),
MikeP, I am sure that you have not been banned. I too occasionaly have a problem getting a post to take.
68,000 melt….that’s a bit more than we have been seeing. not too high, but not exactly low either…
Re: markinaustin (#167),
that’s pretty high for this time of year. The 2008 push came late, maybe 2009 will as well.
I think the camera is tipped over because the Team was up there playing hockey, and somebody whacked it. Now it’s all pucked up.
ah…ok steve. makes sense.
well…we shall all see. if we averaged 70,000 per day for the next 30 days, we would lose 2.1 million…..highly unlikely, but that would bring us back to 2007’s level. somehow, i don’t think that will happen……
50,000 for the next 30 days and we would be down to 200,000 above 2008’s level. that’s more possible eh?
Let’s compare with previous years then
8/12/2009 6374688 -68281 -45156.14286 -74182.26667
8/11/2008 6291563 -52343 -78571.43 -82947.9
8/12/2007 5421094 -47500 -67053.57 -82005.2
8/12/2006 6496719 -39531 -42611.57 -56942.7
8/12/2005 6324063 -48906 -50625 -75796.86667
8/11/2004 6994531 -63282 -89486.71 -77552.1
8/12/2003 6861563 -25468 -59799 -75598.93333
8/12/2002 6615938 -65937
So it seems 2009 actually just beat the JAXA daily melt record – but let’s wait for the usually upwards correction. I think the most honest conclusion is that we’re back to the 2008 level. As mentioned earlier, the Beaufort and East Siberian sea ices are very fragmented since last week. On top of that, the region between the central Arctic basin and Russia also seems to have collapsed somehow. All in all, I think we might see a late melting just like in 2008 (as Steve said). My guess is that it will all depend on the wind pattern. Negative air temperatures are more a sign of strong melting than anything else.
One cannot look at how much ice melted the other years, and expect it will proceed similarly this year. No.
Every season starts with different initial conditions and is acted on by different factors of varying degreees. For this year, you have to look at the initial start conditions of the 09 season and then apply the factors that acted on it thereafter. Then you can come up with a good educated guess.
A majority of the modellers above are going to get it wrong becuase they are using a flawed, biased approach.
I see that yesterday’s ice melt has accelerated. 🙂
Flanagan,
Steve said we’d end up at ca. 5.5 million.
#165 … Phil. … Please, if you present case 1. as exceptional
and then says case 2. is matching case 1. … don’t you think most
people would say you’re trying to indicate that both case 1. AND 2.
are EXCEPTIONAL?? [YES I want to get to the original sense of this word]….But after all, we have only 30 years of good enough? satellite images of the Arctic…OR: Never mind… [said Humpty-Dumpty]…From LTTL: The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.
“They’ve a temper, some of them – particularly verbs, they’re the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!” …
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#175),
No they shouldn’t, the adjective ‘exceptional’ was only used to qualify the Beaufort melt. The exceptional melt of the Beaufort sea last year resulted in the sea ice area there going to zero which doesn’t normally do. As shown in the table it hasn’t done so this year but the extra ice there compared to last year has been more than compensated for by the greater loss of ice in the Laptev and Kara seas (that does not mean that the melt there has been exceptional, their combined areas are ~3x the Beaufort). What it shows is that the area in both years is about the same but the locations of greatest melt wrt the norm is not.
no comment
Re: VG (#176),
If the area is increasing that would mean the concentration of the extent is increasing.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#177),
Do you mean that the concentration is decreasing?
Re: Robert (#178),
No.
Ice extent is the cumulative area of all polar grid cells of the Northern Hemisphere that have at least 15% sea ice concentration, using the NORSEX algorithm. Ice area is the sum of the grid cell areas multiplied by the ice concentration for all cells with ice concentrations of at least 15%. Ice extent and ice area are calculated for a grid resolution of 25 km. The difference between area and extent for our data is always positive. This difference represent the area of the open water in the pixels partly covered by ice (i.e. ice concentration less than 100%). In other words, ice area takes into account that there is a fraction of open water in pixels with ice concentration above 15 % and below 100 %”. Ice extent does not include this effect and gives therefore a higher number of square km than ice area.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Re: Shawn Whelan (#182),
Thank you for your most patient explanation. I am sure that I have read this before on CA and forgot.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#177),
Concentration is increasing. CT area increased by 0.086 Mm2 today and the resulting concentration (CT/JAXA) is 67.7%. This is 2006 territory not 2008. On the same DOY in 2008, the concentration was 61.7%. This would seem to indicate that melting for the rest of the season should be at a lower rate than last year. All those areas where there is low concentration ice are now seeing about half of the summer peak insolation. We’re about seven weeks past the Summer solstice and the net radiation balance will soon be negative, if it isn’t already.
Mmmm… What I had in mind was more like 4.7-4.8 million km2, but in any case both predictions are still below the linear trend, so they would both confirm the long-term decrease.
I just happened to take a look at this site which plots artic temps and they’re presently below freezing. A fairly quick drop in arctic temps from the look of it.
VG
This is the 2nd time this week someone’s bumped into Roos’s plotter while plotting, or so it seems. I don’t know why they show sea ice area increasing when it is not.
Anyone else notice that on the Cryosphere today site, the Antarctic ice graph has shot straight up in the last few days? It has equaled the highs for this time and later last year with another month of potential gains still to go.
Re: Michael Jennings (#184),
You might also notice that it did the same last year. Also that ‘month of potential gains’ didn’t show any last year, it just wiggled around the long-term average.
Re: Phil. (#186),
NOT at the straight ascent being seen right now. Could this turn tomorrow and level out? Sure it could but it might just continue as well. Nobody can predict whether it will continue to rise for the next month but it doesn’t have to go up much more at all to surpass 2008
Re: Michael Jennings (#190),
Looks pretty similar to me.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/iphone.currentarea.antarctic.html
Re: Michael Jennings (#190),
Phil is correct. Almost the exact same thing happened last year but this year it’s two days early.
year DOY area
2008 222 14.441
2008 223 14.685
2008 224 14.838
2009 220 14.473
2009 221 14.686
2009 222 14.836
Re: Shawn Whelan (#191),
Maybe not in so many words, but you certainly implied it. And if this doesn’t convince you that the CIS ice data is at least a week or two behind then nothing will. At the very time the CIS 8/11/2009 map was indicating 70-80% ice concentration on the north side of the channel, the Silent Sound was actually negotiating the channel reporting 10 to 30% ice concentration.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#194),
Well Dewitt with all due respect I may have implied it but I never said it wasn’t possible.
Don’t you think with the 150 years of global warming it would be a gimme?
Think about it. We have had more than 150 years of AGW since the British navigated a huge ship through the passage and you think there is less ice since a little boat slipped through the flows?
Really think about it.
And many have run the Northern Route of the Passage. Something you wouldn’t think about now. In the 30’s it was routine to run the length of the Southern Passage. How do you explain all those that have gone the length of the Northern Passage? (impossible now)
Never in the Thirties was the route blocked with ice.
Re: Phil. (#186),
Thats not true Phil.
2009 is nothing like 2008 on that graph.
Much less heat has entered the Arctic this year. The ambient temps were lower and northern Canada had a cold Winter so much less heat entered throught the rivers.
“revealing the camera has been functioning sporadically since May 31.”
They went through a period of cloudy weather and very little wind. Speculation: not enough juice in the batteries to send pictures for a while. When the pictures did come back, they were partial at first but now appear to be complete. I believe the wind has come up and they are getting some power.
And yes, it looks like the camera is flopping around.
Latest update from Silent Sound “Clear waters ahead from here to Cambridge Bay…hope to be there for Friday afternoon fun”, judging from their progress so far they should make ‘Happy Hour’ easily. 🙂 Despite Shawn’s prediction that they wouldn’t make it to CB
Re: Phil. (#189),
Never said they wouldn’t make it.
And you must consider the English took a huge ship to Cambridge Bay in the 1850’s. So after more than a 150 years of global warming you are celebrating the fact that a tiny boat can navigate an ice filled passage which a huge ship navigated in the early 1850’s? So is there less ice now? Not likely.
And remember that huge English ship had no satellite, no radar, no ice breakers and no maps. Should make a person think. Well if they wanted to think.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#191),
What you said was.
“The first ship went to Cambridge Bay in the early 1850’s. Doesn’t look like these boats will make it that far after a 150 plus years of AGW.”
Not celebrating just following with interest, the Silent Sound used the classical Amundsen method of picking their way through a lead on the windward side of the ice. Next week there won’t be any ice there anyway. As for less ice Larsen wasn’t able to find his way through to CB in 1940 he had to back out and overwinter on Victoria island. He got caught in 8′ thick ice in Pasley Bay the following August and after overwintering finally got out by blasting his way through the ice, we’ll see if it’s that bad there later this month.
Re: Phil. (#195),
There is no record of Amundsen picking through the ice.
He had ice free sailing through the passage.
He was amazed that the huge British steamaer negotiated the channel in the 1850’s.
I suppose if this small boat makes it through someone could call the passage “open” even if they did have to drag across several miles of ice, but I don’t think any commercial traffic will be taking that path this year.
Re: crosspatch (#200),
Those would be the two marines in their very tiny boat!
The boat that has reached Cambridge Bay is the Silent Sound is a 40′ yacht and weighs 17tons, they didn’t pull that one over the ice!
Re: Phil. (#219),
“The boat that has reached Cambridge Bay is the Silent Sound is a 40′ yacht and weighs 17tons”
Wake me when a freighter makes the trip.
Amundsen had free sailing through the passage?
Actually he was trapped in ice half way through for the better part of 3 years.
And what is this about a large ship making it to Cambridge Bay in 1850? In 1845 Franklin led an expedition into the NW passage which was trapped in ice and abandoned in 1848. From 1850 to 1854 McClure attempted passage and again had to abandon ship after being trapped in ice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
Shawn,
Do you have any references to support claims of passage through an ice free NW passage prior to the 21st century?
Re: Michael Hauber (#201),
Shawn tends to exaggerate particularly when referring to the ease of passage through the ice!
He also gets mixed up, the ship he refers to is HMS Enterprise which actually made the trip in 1852 (failed to make much headway in 50 & 51).
Enterprise spent August fruitlessly trying to find a way through the ice they actually turned East on 13th Sept and finally made Cambridge Bay by the end of the month when they were frozen in for the winter. They weren’t able to leave CB before Aug 10th the next year because of ice and encountered more problems with ice on their way west (in contrast to most this area being ice free for some time this year). By the end of September they were frozen in for the winter of 83/4.
Re: Phil. (#205),
Should be removed.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#209),
Why?
Re: Phil. (#215),
Simple to understand Phil. Why would you question?
Quote
No more arguing about Amundsen or 19th century voyages, please. Editorially, there’s been more than enough on that.
Re: Phil. (#205),
Phil, Most likely, you have read more about Amundsen than I have, but I believe that your statement that “he was trapped in ice half way through for the better part of 3 years” is misleading. During this time, he was setting up weather observation facilities and learning from the Inuit on how travel/survive in polar conditions. What he learned was very useful in his future travels. I do not know when he could have moved on, but his stop was not just because he was trapped with ice.
Melt for 8/13…54,800
No more arguing about Amundsen or 19th century voyages, please. Editorially, there’s been more than enough on that.
I wonder if the CIS does 2 lots of results, very up to date for mariners in the area and then later they put up the data for the website for public information purposes? That would explain the apparent lag behind the other graphical sources and the boats reporting in the actual area / MODIS photo’s.
I am starting to think the minima will be over 5.0×10^6 now, perhaps 5.1 to 5.3. There is only about 3 more weeks to go because in mid September the movements are not very big as we move over to freezing.
Regards
Andy
Here come the numbers
8/13/2009 6320625 -54844 -46964.28571 -71927.1
8/12/2008 6222500 -69063 -71763.43 -82531.26667
8/13/2007 5379219 -41875 -62276.71 -80192.7
8/13/2006 6456875 -39844 -40803.57 -56114.6
8/13/2005 6294688 -29375 -45111.57 -75083.33333
8/12/2004 6905313 -89218 -86830.29 -77359.36667
8/13/2003 6804531 -57032 -59531.29 -72786.46667
8/13/2002 6549531 -66407
An average day for 2009… I was thinking about adding some new measure: the relative melt, defined as melt/extent*100%. I somehow think it could be instructive. For example, for yesterday that would be
-0.867699001 in 2009
-1.109891523 in 2008
-0.778458732 in 2007
-0.617078695 in 2006
-0.46666332 in 2005
-1.292019638 in 2004
-0.838147405 in 2003
-1.013919928 in 2002
so, which measure is the best do you think?
Re: Flanagan (#206),
I kind of like that change Flanagan and it is more of a complete picture.
Re: Michael Jennings (#212),
Orwell would understand.
Re: Flanagan (#206),
What about % of minimum:
8/13/2009 6320625 117.5
8/12/2008 6222500 116
8/13/2007 5379219 100
AndyW
That’s about what I predicted here:
15 days ago, when Jeff Id was entertaining the possibility of another record ice melt, and before the melt free-fall had stopped.
Could anybody here enlighten me to this graph. What is happening here?
Re: VG (#208),
Looks like someone’s wet dream. 😉
Re: VG (#208), The up tick does look suspicious. It seems about 3 weeks early for a net increase in Ice area in any previous year.
Re: VG (#208),
They’re still trying to work with the SMM/I satellite which is having trouble, the little dashed lines indicate problems also the smoothing is giving an uptick, a few days ago their extent product was showing an uptick like this and the area was a straight line now it’s the opposite!
Re: VG (#208),
I still think it’s an artifact of their smoothing algorithm. There was a one day uptick in area at Cryosphere Today yesterday, but today’s data corrected that so there was a small net loss over the two day period. It was a big uptick, though, so it could have had an exaggerated effect. There has been much discussion of how to deal with end points in smoothing algorithms here at CA. See here for example. I’m betting the Arctic-ROOS area plots won’t show that sharp upward curvature in a few days as the uptick gets further from the endpoint.
Mr McIntyre, can we get the top graph updated from time to time please?
The plucky Commando’s are now free
“Summary:
Land ahoy! Our 5 day spell in the freezer is over. After an initially frustrating pull across a couple of miles, leads opened for us. We had a magical 2 hours in sunshine in the company of 20 seals, one playing with a short line off the stern. We then spent 10 miles rowing in 4/10ths ice to land at midnight. As I send this, we’re beating into east winds, but it’s a joy to be free. We also managed to read the messages, which capped a good day.”
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW (#221),
Here’s a MODIS image showing the ice they went through (X) and the location of Cambridge Bay (CB).
Well, for once the JAXA adjustment was downwards. Extent is 6319375 and daily loss -56094.
Looks like its running much closer to 2005 than any other year right now. Considering 2008’s really steep dive in latter August and 2009’s considerably higher ice concentration, it looks as if this year will not match it.
Doesn’t sound like Silent Sound is in Cambridge Bay.
I hope the’re OK.
um… how to say this… we finally hit land… sooner than hoped… training for survival suit decathlon
http://www.openpassageexpedition.com/
Re: Shawn Whelan (#228),
It sounds like they ran aground in the Bay itself, from what I read in Collinson’s memoirs it’s a fairly shoal ridden approach. Ironic after spending a couple of days dodging ice floes to run aground in sight of the harbor in open water.
Re: Phil. (#232),
Latest on Silent Sound”
Tied up to the dock in Cambridge Bay…our journey through the Arctic is half over”…….about 2 hours ago from TwitterMail
Looking forward to their next blog post…..
Re: Robert (#230),
Here’s an entertaining one from the Ocean Watch which is about a day behind, they met up with the two marines on a beach who had the following story:
big day today! 90,000 K
90k was a big drop indeed. Will be interesting the next few days what happens, this has been a very interesting year and still hard to tell how it all turns out.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#233),
We might be seeing the action of increased winds. Temperatures look like they are below average above 80N and the “pole” cam is showing an internal temperature of 0.5 degrees on its last update suggesting it is below freezing there (84.542N as of 5 Aug) as well.
Definitely getting cooler up there. The arctic north of 80N is normally mostly ice every year anyway, and it is a little further away from the pole that the melting is happening at.
Current weather seems to be pushing some warm into the Siberian sector. A low seems set to intensify and cross over towards Canada, which makes for an almost opposite pattern to that which dominated 2007 and which we’ve seen a reasonable amount of this year – i.e. high north of Canada bring warm air up from Siberia. This low will tend to blow ice towards the Bering Straight instead of away from it. Not sure if this will melt the ice as its pushed into warmer water, or spread it out across a greater extent. I’m guessing both. There does seem to be a large tongue of thin ice jutting out towards Siberia, and the combination of warm air now, and stronger winds in a few days might get rid of a large amount of ice extent in that sector.
A warm incursion looks like occurring in the Atlantic sector towards the end of the 7 day forecast period. The ice in this area is usually the most stable with the least distance between the boundary in winter and summer, so I’m not sure if this warm air will make no difference at all, or melt ice in an area it almost never otherwise melts.
Usually surface melt stops first, and compaction from wind and melt from below continues to reduce extent a little longer, so I would guess the SSTs could play a significant role in the fate of the last part of this season’s melt. Unisys seems a little warmer than 2008, but a fair bit cooler than 2007. But if this was a reliable indicator why did 2008 have a much stronger end to its melt season? Perhaps the SSTs in unisys are inaccurate, or perhaps there was warmer water below the surface in 2008. Or thinner ice in 2008. Or some other factor…
I am going to make a highly anecdotal observation here. I have kept feeders out for the migratory birds here for several years. The comings and goings of certain species has proven to be a harbinger of seasonal changes to an uncanny degree. This year, the three best indicator species -Black capped Chickadee, Slate Junco and Evening Grossbeak -have all arrived late and returned early. All three species are here right now.
Will continue this post after recharging laptop battery!
Cheers
Re: INGSOC (#236),
Where is “here”?
Re: BarryW (#237),
Yes INGSOC, do you live in Oceania, Eurasia or Eastasia? 😉
Well predicted, Pierre Gosselin! What do you reckon will happen next?
I predicted an acceleration earlier this week, on Monday, see No. 94. Today we have 90K melt! :).
Rob Spooner 166, Shawn Whelan 106
Surface temperature is a minor factor. Right now my prediction made in 152 looks to be in the works, which is a finetuning of my prediction I made in way back late July (before the decleration): http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/31-years-of-july-27ths/#comment-8441
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#238),
But the change in wind patterns is most applicable methinks! 😎
Gotta run. I’m already an hour late for a clutch job I promised.
Cheers!
P.S. I accept that my observations, opinions and speculation are utterly anecdotal and possibly even erroneous in some cases. I just find the correlations interesting FWIW.
Antarctica could reach 2007’s record high. It’ll be close.
This is probably what’s really happening not pro or anti AGW
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
a bit less than last year. But the re-icing 2009-2010 will probably be 100% normal and the year after as well…
Sorry, I hate it when that happens. BarryW; 60 miles East from Vancouver BC. Canada. In an area called the Chilliwack River Valley at the very Northwesterly end of the Cascade Mountain Range. (Google Earth “Tamihi forest service recreation site”) Sort of an inter zonal area between the Fraser Valley and the BC interior. In past years we have experienced much the same weather as the Fraser Valley which is akin to Vancouver but a tad cooler. This year we have had weather just like the interior, with Vancouver experiencing much the same but to a slightly lesser degree. However,the snow melt and end of negative overnight temps were much later here than in the Lower Mainland Vancouver area.
To continue my bird observations: Two years ago, the Juncos arrived in January just before the snow melted. Black Capped Chickadee (BCC’s) arrived shortly after in early February, after the snow was gone, and the first Evening Grossbeaks (EG’s) arrived at the beginning of March. Last year, the Juncos arrived just before the melt which was about 2-3 weeks later (early Feb.) followed again shortly by the BCC’s in late Feb. The EG’s again were last at the end of March. (It should be noted that along with the EG’s are a similar species called Black headed Grossbeaks [BHG’s]. More on them later) This year, the Juncos arrived, again just before the melt: However in late April, practically simultaneously with the BCC’s. this time around. Their numbers were much greater this year as well. The EG’s and BHG’s arrived much later on June 1st. All arriving about two months later than previous years, but still coinciding with melting snow and a shift from sub zero overnight temps.
The most interesting change has been the early arrival on their fall retreat this year. The BCC’s arrived two weeks ago with young in tow (a first in my observation) followed almost immediately by the Junco’s less than a week later, and yesterday the first of a hoard of EGG’s arrived en masse. Strangely, the BHG’s never really left here this year, choosing to rear their young in the local area, affording me the first look at a juvenile Black headed Grossbeak! (The EG’s and BHG’s being lovely birds I might add) Overnight temps are hovering around 8-10 degrees here for the past few days. The “heat wave” we were experiencing abruptly came to an end two weeks ago when the jet stream went South. We have had rain and gradually cooling temps ever since, with warmer weather predicted next week. (I’ll wait to see it before I believe it)
The question that comes to my mind is; is this portentous of a coming early change of season in Canada and it’s relative effect on polar ice? I’m thinking the birds would tend to be a good indicator as their lives depend on gettin’ while the gettin’ is good!
I have copious notes on avian comings and goings around here, along with twice daily temp records going back many years. I am going to spend some free time correlating them if I can find any. I will post the results in the un-threaded thread when complete if anyone is interested… I apologize for the poor grammar etc as time is short for me today.
Cheers!
Re: INGSOC (#242),
Uh-ho, that doesn’t not sound good. When the birds are bailing with their young this may be one bad winter.
Re: BarryW (#244),
I did apologize for my grammar, did I not?
LOL
Hey look. I just find it interesting, OK? No-one is more aware of the lofty nature of my flights of fancy than me. Have you any idea how hard it is to type with birds all over your arms!!! Damn things wont let up… Feed me, feed me… argh! I have taken to pecking at the edges of my wife’s mouth in hopes of food! Nee Nee!
🙂
Here you go;
http://forecast.weather.gov/showsigwx.php?warnzone=WYZ008&warncounty=WYC003&firewxzone=&local_place1=20+Miles+NE+Ten+Sleep+WY&product1=Winter+Weather+Advisory
The lead is opening up on the Boothia coast and the Bagan has reached as far south as Pasley Bay.
Final total for yesterday is 6,231,719 km2 which drops the total to under 90,000 at 88,000, still a substantial melt day.
More mimimum ice in 2009 than 2008.
The ice is increasing.
60,000…..not too big, maybe yesterday was an anomaly and it will start to go back down now?
6176250
-55469 melt day.
Yes, that was an average day
8/15/2009 6176250 -55469 -55781 -72224
8/14/2008 6071094 -60781 -59218 -81172
8/15/2007 5307344 -40469 -48817 -76172
8/15/2006 6363438 -40625 -46517 -57213.
8/15/2005 6183125 -68594 -47254 -73932.
8/14/2004 6753906 -68907 -79241 -77318
8/15/2003 6677656 -64219 -50625 -72688
8/15/2002 6375000 -86094
2009 is now third, after 2007 and 2008. I would not say however that “ice is increasing”. If you look at Steve’s original post, a linear trend of the multidecennal sea ice decrease would give something like 5.6 million km2 for the Sep minimum. Iw we get a higher value than that, then maybe we could speak of ice increasing. Otherwise, it’s just returning to the long term decline rate.
Re: Flanagan (#252),
We’re about a month past the average maximum loss rate with about a month to go till we start seeing increases in extent occurring. 2008 had some larger than average losses during this time but the average loss rate is going to be around 50k or less from this point out. So if we estimated an average loss over the next 30 days at 30k a day we’d see just under 1mil loss to come so 2009 would come out to 5.1mil. At 50k worse case you’d see 1.5 mil for a final of 4.6. For comparison 2007 = 4.25, 2008 = 4.71, and 2005 = 5.3. So 2007 is safe, 2008 unlikely, and 2005 close but I’m guessing not.
Re: Flanagan (#252),
“I would not say however that ‘ice is increasing’.”
We are at the point now where temperatures in the Arctic usually begin to cool rapidly. It is going to continue to melt around the edges but concentrations should start increasing at the higher latitudes soon. Having a look this graph suggests that within 10 days from now the freeze line will be considerably South of 80N.
turns out that after the adjustment, yesterday was only a 49,219 melt day. still fairly significant, but not as big as we were thinking initially.
The melt for 8/15 was revised down to 49,219.
Re: BarryW (#253),
For comparison purposes – daily melt average:
2005 had an average of 73,900 from 7/15 to 8/15 and then an average of 23,725 from 8/15 to 9/15
2007 had an average of 77,400 from 7/15 to 8/15 and then an average of 33,750 from 8/15 to 9/15
2008 had an average of 81,900 from 7/15 to 8/15 and then an average of 41,900 from 8/15 to 9/157
2009 had an average of 71,700 from 7/15 to 8/15
..
I think the possibility exists that the average melt over the next 30 days could be 20 – 25K, making 2009 come in at 5.6 – 5.3mil. Of course, it could trend more towards 2008 and approach an average of 40k. However 2008 had some huge days in the first 15 days of August (4 days over 100K and 2 days over 90K), where 2009 has not (one day over 80K in the same period).
Re: Agland (#256),
2008 bottoms out in 26 days but 2007’s bottom is 40 days out. 2005 is in between at 38 days from now.
small day….only 22,000ish.
and suddenly 2009 is in 4th place. if this continues, we may have to mention some other years…..but i doubt that. still, it is in the running to beat 2005 as a possibility. that would be quite a recovery indeed!
Re: markinaustin (#259),
2005 is certainly possible, but I doubt it can pull up high enough to reach 2004 since there it is only 374k above 2004’s minimum.
Interesting here
aroundamericas
What a great trip that would be, fantastic idea.
I’m now favouring more 5+ than under 5 for the final value with a race against 2005, just not enough days left with no sign of any massive changes in increase. Now that would be interesting as we go back towards winter. It’s been fascinating this year.
Regards
Andy
“massive changes in increase” is terrible writing, I mean no sign of big upswing in daily melt rates.
Regards
Andy
Very surprising. I would have bet good money we would have (and we still could I guess)have some big melt days coming up after the 10th or so but that does not appear to be the case. With the Antarctic apparently having a big year also, global sea ice will have a good year.
Re: Michael Jennings (#263),
Cryosphere Today Arctic area has dropped a lot in the last 3 days. It’s still above 2008 but it wouldn’t take too many days at the current rate to catch up. If the area rate follows the pattern of the JAXA extent rate, the area loss rate should slow tomorrow.
Could be Dewitt, we shall see. The areas where the ice has been above the 2008 levels the most are the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Basin according to the Cryosphere breakdown. Not sure if that is significant or not.
70K on 8/11
55K on 8/12
90K on 8/13
50K on 8/14
are substantial melt days for mid August. Three more weeks at an average of 30-40K daily means another million.
Well, make that three quarter million.
There’s a real possibility that sea ice may not even shrink to 5.5 million this year. Now what would that say about the 16 expert modelers mentioned above in Steve post.
What would cause 16 “expert” Arctic modelers to so overly state ice melt? Obviously there’s something they do not grasp.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#268),
I’m guessing a lot of their models are using trend type analysis. They probably weighted the 2007 season (and possibly 2008) more heavily than they should have, and the predictions for 2009 came in between those two seasons on many models.
Considering that many of these articles that we read about new records being set have mentioned “climate models” and how the 2007 season was the start of a death spiral, it wouldn’t be a surprise that many of them are weighting the most recent seasons very heavily.
If you look at history the Arctic ice has been at at a very lower level many times.(and that is just very recent history) Now the consensus of science can fudge some facts and decide that that the ice is going to go away because there is a tiny increase in CO2. And they think that proves CO2 is warming the Earth.
Now the ice increases. I await the explanation.
The predictions with the most aggressive melt estimates tended to be dynamic models which attempted to take the actual ice condition at the start of the season and calculate how much ice would melt based on specific weather conditions. The estimates based on heuristics and trend analysis tended to be for higher melt extent, probably because both 2007 and 2008 had much lower ice than any trend longer than a few years.
What could have gone wrong with the model estimates?
Incorrect physics – the models don’t accurately model the processes for how ice melts.
Wrong weather – the modellers attempted to guess what type of weather we would experience over the melt season and include this as a model forcing – as far as I can tell none of the models actually attempted to predict the weather using dynamic modelling. Generally this was done by applying weather conditions similar to what was historically experienced during a particular time period. If the actual weather was colder/cloudier/less windy then expected then less ice would melt then expected.
Wrong initial conditions – perhaps the ice was thicker at the start of the melt season than allowed for in the models.
Ocean Currents – a variation in either wrong weather or wrong initial conditions could be errors in modelling the ocean currents.
Wrong physics? Over the longer term models have been significantly underestimating Arctic ice melt. Unless the modellers have changed the physics significantly in reaction to this, I would consider it unlikely that the models have suddenly been overestimating melt due to a physics issue. Most assessment of why 2007 etc were so far ahead of predictions has talked about unexpected weather circulation, and not incorrect physics, so I don’t think this is why models have been predicting too little ice this year. In contrast to discussions on ice sheet melt which have focused on the idea that models do not have the correct physics to capture the effects of melt in lubricating glaciers or other processes that may cause ice sheets to crack and fall apart.
Wrong initial Conditions? I remember last Autumn there was some discussion about Arctic amplification, and that it was happening much sooner than expected. One factor in Arctic amplification is more ice freezing than normal, and the fact that freezing ice releases large quantities of heat. If something other than colder weather changed last Autumn to cause faster than normal freezing (such as changing salinity, or less wind) then mayabe this would cause both faster and thicker ice formation, and warmer than normal temperatures.
Wrong weather? My impression was that weather for much of July in particular was very favourable for melt, although conditions appear to be quite different the last few weeks. The melt pattern overall has been quite symmetrical, which is similar to 2006 in particular, which had more ice at minimum, and contrasts with 2007 and 2008 which had rather lopsided melt distributions and had less ice at minimum. My guess is that a symmetrical melt pattern reflects much less movement of ice by wind or currents across the Arctic and out the other side, and a lower overall melt. If this is a big factor, and the symmetric pattern continues, I would expect less ice this winter, due to less cold air being transported out of the Arctic into the far north Atlantic and Pacific where the ice boundary is in winter. And that the colder air in the Arctic could result in the ice thickening faster than normal.
Finally roughly a 3rd of the predictions did predict more ice than 2008 (although from memory few of these higher end predicitons were based on models). For a brief period in July ice melt appeared to be accelerating away from 2008 and set to possibly challenge 2007. It is still not certain that we will end with substantially more ice than 2008, or even any more at all, so its still not certain that there has been much overestimation of the melt in these predictions.
Re: Michael Hauber (#271),
“The predictions with the most aggressive melt estimates tended to be dynamic models which attempted to take the actual ice condition at the start of the season and calculate how much ice would melt based on specific weather conditions.”
I would go with “Wrong initial conditions”.
They assumed the ice was thinner than it really was. The one theme I heard consistently this year from everyone who actually physically touched or otherwise surveyed the ice was that it was “thicker than expected”.
Re: Michael Hauber (#271),
Excellent analysis, Michael!
Re: Michael Hauber (#271),
I think you can add this one to your thoughtful analysis. I think too many scientists are going on trend or “inertia” when predicting the disappearance of the Arctic ice. Last year I suggested cycles (PDO) and was criticized by some. We have a lot to learn about what happens to ice.
Re: Gerald Machnee (#285),
And at the start of this melt season I suggested as one of several possibilities that the cool PDO increased wind from Pacific to Atlantic side, and transport of ice across the Arctic, resulting in higher summer melt, and that a change to El Nino might reverse this effect.
Re: Michael Hauber (#298),
Thanks. It is a complicated procedure to analyze the reasons for ice decrease. The wind moves ice out creating illusions of a melt. Compaction does the same thing. How much of any decrease from now will be actually due to “melt”? Next question is What percentage of the seasonal decrease is actually melt. If we can answer those questions we could forecast better. Then if we can figure out if the sun has an effect???
melt of just over 46,000 as the initial estimate. i guess we will see if that corrects. still not so bad and another day off the calendar with nothing shocking. the rate continues overall to be rather slow. probably 30 days left of melting or less…..
oh…and i was thinking how interesting it would be if we ended up with more ice than 2002. looks unlikely, but still not out of the range of possibilities if we see things start cooling down rapidly soon…
Re: markinaustin (#273),
A minimum extent higher than 2002 would require an earlier than average minimum, about 9/9/09, and for the rate to stay about 5,000 km/day less negative than the 2003-2008 average. Possible, but unlikely. I’m guessing that the minimum will fall on the 2003-2008 average or 5.35 Mm2.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#276),
Agreed DeWitt. I don’t think this one will end up higher than any of the previous years outside of 2007-2008 except maybe 2005. 2006 is still a possibility, but that one flattened out pretty fast, maybe this one will do it too, but it needs to make up almost 200,000 sq km right now to do it. So I find that unlikely.
2009 has given us a good ride. I think it has showed many things. First of all, that the “death spiral” predictions after 2007 were garbage; we saw so many predictions of how it would just get so much worse in the next few years after that because of inability to recover with the thinner ice in the summer. Secondly, that the pattern up there is pretty important since 2009 was going below 2008 and almost threatening 2007 for a bit early on, but will likely not finish within even shouting distance of either and could easily finish above 2005, though that is a toss up. Thirdly, there could be something to this “-PDO theory” where the earth is going a bit colder now, and the ice will be able to build back up like it did in the 1950s through the 1970s. Maybe not on that level, but the same pattern.
2009 6114531 -46094
2008 5909688 -73437
2007 5194688 -46718
2006 6303125 -36094
2005 6044219 -55937
According to Cryosphere Today, Global Sea Ice Area seems to have gained roughly 0.5 Mkm2 in the last days, meaning that the sea ice area increase in the SH was quite bigger than the sea ice area decrease in the NH, which is quite unusual for this time of the year. The average behaviour would show increases in Global Sea Ice Area starting not earlier than September.
I agree with the wrong initial conditions.
But I also have to add that these modeller-projections are all skewed by their pre-existing belief that the arctic is in an AGW-induced death spiral. THAT’S THE FIRST AND FOREMOST FALSE INITIAL CONDITION they all used. That’s really bad science.
As it appears now, all these modellers shot way off to the left side of the barn. With a properly calibrated scope. the scatter of their projections would have been centered about the 5.2 million mark, and not the 4.6 million mark.
According to the latest Resolute image from Uni-Bremen, a Northwest Passage is either open now or will be in a day or two.
Indications are that 2009 is behaving like 2005 on the whole right now. That would put the minimum at about 5.3. Anyone know if the distribution of ice is similar?
mean 6.116094
2003 6.633594 -0.006719
2004 6.611250 -0.081563
2005 6.044219 -0.055937
2006 6.303125 -0.036094
2007 5.194688 -0.046718
2008 5.909688 -0.073437
2009 6.114531 -0.046094
Re: BarryW (#282),
Here’s a side-by-side comparison, the similarity appears to be the extensive melt on the Eurasian side.
2009/2005 comparison
Re: Phil. (#287),
The large chunk that’s missing in the 2009 image from the side towards Alaska doesn’t bode well for 2009 remaining close to 2005. A good portion of what’s remaining seems to be around 50 percent or less in that area.
i will say that the chance that 2009 will catch 2008 in terms of melt off is almost unthinkable. in fact, if it averages 50,000 per day for the next 10 days, it will be an extra 200,000 behind 2008. i am guessing it is above 2008 about 400,000 or more, which is a similar recovery to last year’s recovery over 2007.
thoughts?
Note also that side-by-side comparisons at cryosphere today are now available, including 2009.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=08&fd=17&fy=2008&sm=08&sd=17&sy=2009
It appears clearly that 2008 has a different pattern as compared to 2008. Less ice close to Russia, more ice in Northern Canada.
And here are the daily numbers
8/17/2009 6113125 -47500 -53259 -68182
8/16/2008 5909688 -73437 -72566 -80942
8/17/2007 5194688 -46718 -47589 -74416
8/17/2006 6303125 -36094 -40870 -54635
8/17/2005 6044219 -55937 -52254 -72036
8/16/2004 6611250 -81563 -71517 -78630
8/17/2003 6633594 -6719 -39442 -69145
8/17/2002 6348594 -42500 / /
Another average day for the season. Nevertheless, 2009 had the 3d largest average melting rate over the last week. We will see quite soon if it sticks with 2005 or not. 2008 and 2005 separated in the second part of August.
So much for area loss slowing down. The change in Arctic area today was -0.164 Mm2. The concentration is back in the 2008 area and the area is headed there. The average concentration has dropped from 67.7% to 63.2% in 5 days and the area has decreased by about 0.5 Mm2 or over 10%.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#289),
That’s interesting, could be another slow bottom out like last year then.
The north pole webcam has a rare sunny day today. Is it me or is it tipping over more?
Regards
Andy
Re: DeWitt Payne (#289),
??
The change today has been -47,500 km2 and decrease in last 5 days has been -262,000 km2, some 4%.
Re: Juraj V. (#294),
Area not extent, as DeWitt(Re: DeWitt Payne (#289)), pointed out the concentration (area/extent) changed as a result. If you look at the regional data you’ll see that all the peripheral regions except Beaufort and Fram are ~0 or closing in fast, the exceptions are being fed by multiyear ice from the Arctic basin where it will melt. Long term not a good scenario for the Arctic sea ice.
Re: Juraj V. (#294),
Links to Cryosphere Today ice area graphs with current day’s digital data (updated daily, no archive).
Arctic
Antarctic
Global
Uni-Hamburg area and extent data for both poles (updated monthly, data goes back to 2002 with some gaps).
Definitions:
Extent is the sum of the area of all pixels containing a minimum concentration of ice, usually 15%. Because of the map projection used, pixel area is not constant.
Area is the sum over all pixels with an ice concentration greater than some minimum value, usually 15%, of the product of ice concentration in a pixel times pixel area.
Average concentration is total area/total extent.
Area is by definition always less than or equal to extent.
Note that the satellite data provides ice concentration in each pixel, not area or extent which are derived quantities.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#289),
That’s a bit strange, because when you look on the comparison graph, this year looks a lot healthier than last year for concentrated ice coverage, lots of reds intruding on the main ice pack in 2008. So you would naturally think the numbers wouldn’t be that close.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=08&fd=16&fy=2008&sm=08&sd=17&sy=2009
Someone correct me if I am wrong but on the Cryosphere site, the darker the color, the thicker the ice, is that correct? If that is true, this year there is much more thick ice than any time in the last 4 years over a much larger area.
Re: Michael Jennings (#290),
The color scale on the false color image represents concentration (fraction of pixel covered with ice) not thickness. It does look like the Arctic Basin has a higher average concentration than at this time last year. However, you can’t measure thickness by passive microwave emission. Multi-year ice, which is expected to be thicker and harder to melt because of lower occluded salt water, can be distinguished from first year ice.
That should read at this date than any other year on this date in the last 4.
All I can remember about ice thickness from the last winter was that the Caitlin adventurer who drilled holes found thinner ice, and someone else who flew over with a sonar thing found thicker ice?
Re: Michael Hauber (#297),
As so much has been said recently about the NWP, I have often googled and read a lot of anecdotal reports from people with first-hand experience that the ice this year has been both thicker and higher in concentration that in recent years. The CAS study that showed ice over a wide area being generally twice as thick as expected undoubtedly influenced my perception. The Caitlin survey was discounted as their path took them over what was the thinnest portion of the ice cover and was portrayed as being some sort of proxy for the entire ice cap.
Re: crosspatch (#304),
Any references to that study?
Re: Phil. (#307),
Sorry, it was the PAM-ARCMIP study.
More here.
Dewitt, why is Uni-Breman your go-to source on the NWP? Check out the real source of information, eh?
Still closed for business.
Re: hengav (#300),
Except of course for the two boats that sailed through there yesterday and today Fleur Australe and Bagan
Re: Phil. (#301),
Puhleez, the Bagan got towards Gjoa Haven today by skirting and clinging and fluking their way down the Ross Straight.
A quote from the Bagan today:
“I cannot say that the past three days have been my favorite. We finally put the “Braving” part into our trip.
After reading ice charts and making our way fairly smoothly down Peel Sound for the past few weeks, three days ago Mother Nature decided to shake things up a bit. Not only did we have to push, plow, and break our way through ice, we also had fog and zero breeze (which didn’t help move the ice). Our radar was one big green blob, and we could only find leads heading the opposite direction we wanted to go!
Sprague on the helm, Clinton on top telling Sprague what direction he should go, Sefton directing Sprague through the breaks (and sometimes breaking) in the ice, Chauncey pushing ice from either side of the bow, Greg and I on the stern clearing the ice from the beam and making sure nothing went under towards the prop when we went into reverse. We all yelled and cursed (at each other AND the ice). But we persevered. We spent the last two nights with the anchor on a piece of ice drifting with the wind. Finally this morning the ice, the clouds and the fog broke and we have a clear shot down Ross Strait to Gjoa Haven!”
Now from their website their chosen route was:
http://northwestpassagefilm.com/the_northwest_passage.php
The traditional routes are:
http://www.athropolis.com/map9.htm
Re: hengav (#300),
I believe the Uni-Bremen maps are reliable because there is supporting evidence from independent sources. Why do you still believe the CIS maps are up to date? As pointed out above, Silent Sound passed through an area the CIS map (posted the same day) showed as 75% ice covered. Silent Sound reported no more than 10 to 30% ice cover. The MODIS visual images support the AMSR-E images. Now there have been two more boats passing through an area that should have been impassable if the CIS maps were correct.
The boats followed icebreakers through the passage.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#302),
No they didn’t, why do you have to continually make stuff up.
Re: Phil. (#306),
Make stuff up?
I have been correct the last two years while the consensus of science has been wrong.
Part of the NW got blocked by ice being blown into it, that was a circulation pattern effect more than thick ice. That has now cleared. The CIS internet maps are out of date or wrong as indicated in posts above. When 3 sources all show one thing and one shows another you have to go with the 3.
There is a very good piece on NSIDC now on why August has been slow and patterns in 2007 and 2009
update
Note that they say the NW passages are more likely to get blocked when the ice is thin 😉
Regards
Andy
So here we go…
8/18/2009 6047188 -65937 -56540 -67234
8/17/2008 5840938 -68750 -71852 -80463
8/18/2007 5166250 -28438 -43192 -73234
8/18/2006 6238594 -64531 -42522 -54546
8/18/2005 6023594 -20625 -49910 -69286
8/17/2004 6536094 -75156 -74531 -77849
8/18/2003 6617656 -15938 -38482 -66818
8/18/2002 6281406 -67188 -57209 /
2009 is now about to cross 2005 again. The next week will be primordial in the 05/09 contest since 2005 had a major slowdown. Imagine that by Aug. 27, the 7-day averaged daily rate dropped to -18000 in 2005! IMO, the real “fight” is with 2008.
Re: Flanagan (#310),
2008 is the race? I’m not sure that will be even close. Its already 200,000 sq km behind and ’08 had such a huge melt late in the season. This will probably finish between ’05 and ’08 but a bit closer to 2005.
Re: NEwxIce (#330),
Not according to VG (#312), he thinks it’s neck and neck between 09 and 08.
Re: Phil. (#332),
Since 99% of people use JAXA, that is what I am going on. 2008 is running away now and its doubtful that 2009 will match the late August and early September melt that 2008 had. 200,000 sq km will be extremely tough to make up against 2008’s melt rate.
Flanagan 309
Agreed.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6734#comment-352624
I still think DMI is the real story
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Its between 2008 and 2005 a slight uptick in the last two days….
Logically in an ongoing return to normal this is what happens
Re: VG (#312),
I’m not sure where you see a ‘return to normal’ there they show 2009 closely tracking 2008 with 2005 way behind?
No icebreakers?
http://www.fiona2009northwestpassage.blogspot.com/
Okay, so I am confused! Were they waiting for the Ice Breaker to clear a path or just to party? 🙂
NSIDC throws in the towel. 2009 “unlikely” to see new low.
Yes, your statement that Fleur Australe and Bagan required ice breakers to get through the passage over the last few days is false.
Re: Phil. (#301),
Re: Shawn Whelan (#302),
An unsubstantiated boast you’ve made before, but you don’t even know what the consensus of science is. This year you’ve made statements about the NW Passage not being passable by yachts this year, that there would be an early end to this year’s melt etc.
Re: Phil. (#317),
You have no idea how those boats made their way through the ice. The icebreakers travel up and down the passage. Even the consensus of science might be able to figure out you should follow the icebreaker.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#320),
Actually I do and it didn’t include following an icebreaker, that’s something you came up with about a week ago and repeated in response to my post above.
Re: Phil. (#317),
An unsubstantiated boast you’ve made before
Nope. It is all written down here in black and white.
Very well substantiated.
The consensus of science was wrong about the polar ice, wrong about the hurricanes, wrong about Great Lake levels and more. And ultimately wrong about AGW.
More serious is the consensus of economist that are wrong about the economy.
“…throws in the towel”
That’s a really good way of putting it.
Such a shame – this year no chance to be the dessimators of another riveting press release and to be in the headlines and front pages – darn it! Maybe next year.
5.5 million is starting to look plausible now. But I’m still sticking to a tick above last year.
Phil:
Here is a description of the fleur Astraly. It seems that it was designed to break through the ice by itself. Read away. Shawn was correct if you can read.
Re: Mike Davis (#319),
Correct about what? Fleur Australe is a steel hulled yacht as opposed to fiberglass, ice breaker it ain’t, a wise precaution sailing in the Arctic with your wife and four young children aboard. However they didn’t follow an icebreaker neither did Bagan.
Larsen, Amundsen, Nordenskjold, Collinson et al. carried explosives to blast their boats out of the ice, and their boats were reinforced against the ice, do you think that somehow invalidates their journeys? Does it only count if it’s a fiberglass boat? How will you rationalize it if the two Royal Marines make it through in an open boat, will it be cheating because they rowed some of the way?
Re: Phil. (#325),
Correct about what?
Most everything so far.
Re: Phil. (#325),
However they didn’t follow an icebreaker neither did Bagan.
You don’t know that. It is common procedure to follow the icebreakers down the Passage. And the icebreakers are going up and down the Passage breaking paths through the ice.
I don’t see how the fact that after a hundred plus years of AGW that a couple boats can make it down the Passage that was navigated over a hundred years ago, proves that AGW is melting the Arctic?
I forgot the link and misspelled the boat:
http://aroundtheamericas.org/story/Crew+Log+65+-+Cambridge+Bay,+Nunavut
Fleur Astrale
Phil. #323… If you know, source and/or links, please…and what about Fiona?? [see WUWT also, probably]
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#324),
There’s a couple below, hope your french is good. As for Shawn there’s no point in responding to him further, he just makes things up to fit his preconceptions!
Fleur Australe is now in Cambridge Bay, Bagan is in Gjoa Havn.
Fiona picked the wrong lead and it closed on them, they also got into trouble in Resolute Bay earlier, they’re not having much luck.
Of the eastbound boats Baloum Gwen and Ocean Watch are on the way to Gjoa Havn, Silent Sound is doing some repairs in CB after they ran aground and the Marines are becalmed in Coronation Gulf.
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#324),
I tried to post the links but they haven’t shown up, possibly Spam filter problems?
In the Winnipeg Free press today. We are all wrong – the cool summer is a fluke.
So where are the temperatures warmer than usual?
Well, it looks like Fiona isn’t going to make it.
Re: crosspatch (#329),
But Bagan and Fleur Australe have.
Re: Phil. (#331),
Yeah, but I wouldn’t consider the NWP “usable” in a routine way by commercial shipping. It is a novelty. Sometimes it opens and a few vessels make a grand show of “making” it through the passage but any notion that somehow the NWP has become a reliable shipping route is inaccurate. Unfortunately many have published widely circulated (in the broadcast and print media) stories that would lead the average uninformed citizen to believe that the ice is decreasing year on year in the Arctic when that simply isn’t the case.
There is absolutely no evidence that the ice today is any “thinner” than it has been at other times in the fairly recent (the past century or two) past. It is basically a media marketing effort to hoodwink people.
Re: Phil. (#331), don’t wind em up Phil, you shouldn’t do that, regular visitors treat you with respect because you know what you are talking about.
Re: UK John (#340),
Huh?
[snip]
RomanM: Ease off on the sniping, please.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#343),
It seems like certain people are allowed to snipe and others are reprimanded.
Playing favourites?
The NW passage being open does not depend on the type of boat, just that it was transited. I think we all can agree it was not easily sailed this year, I think the Marines will run out of time, but that is also due to lack of wind. They put Kevlar in their boat, that and steel hulls will have an advantage of course safety wise. My friends boat is steel hulled by the way and that sits on the Thames and as long as the lack of sunspots doesn’t cause a little ice age he won’t need that steel hull for breaking ice.
The Beaufort sea is finally losing some ice now, rather late in the day.
Regards
Andy
jaxa is going 2005 way… definitely
DMI may appear to be different (closer to 2008). It’s probably the way its presented (30% ice versus 15%)?
Anyway according to the AGW theory, it’s all meant to disappear and it ain’t going that way….
Re: VG (#341),
Using JAXA data and calculating year to date summer (July, August and September) average Arctic extent, the trend for 2002 through 20009 is -122,000 km2/year. That’s not as bad as the 2002-2008 trend of -192,000 km2/year. But it will take a few years of 2005 level summer average extent to significantly flatten that trend and levels higher than 2004 to reverse it. The 1979 to 2008 trend of NSIDC summer average extent is -68,000 km2/year.
CT had a small uptick in area today so the minimum could still be well above 2007 and 2008. If you look at the area and extent anomaly plots, 2007 had a wide and deep negative excursion during the summer, 2008 was somewhat shallower and narrower. It’s looking like 2009 will be even closer to flat than 2008.
Re: VG (#341),
Well if you think ‘DMI is the real story’ it isn’t going 2005 way. 😉
On a serious note the difference between the two data sets makes an interesting point, basically the difference between 09 and 08 is 15% to 30% ice so rather vulnerable to a week or so of good melting conditions. The last two days have lost ~123000 sq km which is probably indicative or that vulnerability.
Re: NEwxIce (#339),
With the above in mind why do you think:
2009 has similar ice to last year, less multiyear ice if anything so why do you think it couldn’t match last year?
Also 2005 showed a very late surge after apparently reached an early minimum, why is that not possible this year?
Re: VG (#341),
Have other people noticed just how incredibly closely 2009 has been tracking 2005? Since the end of June, the sea ice extent figures for 2009 have usually matched 2005 to two digits, and sometimes to three digits.
Of course, past performance is no guarantee of results. I doubt that 2009 will follow 2005’s peculiar “late surge”, mentioned in Phil. (#352).
VG: of course if you think AGW redicted the end of life on earth in 2012, then you’re right, it’s not going the right way. The long-term models actually predict the Arctic to be ice-free in September by about 2050, not before that. The extents we’re seeing rightnow are way below the most pessimistic predictions. So the right way to put it is “we’re going back to the most pessimistic boundary”. Simple fact.
Re: Flanagan (#342),
None of the models have ever been correct.
They have absolutely no idea what is going to happen in 2050.
Oops, semantically loaded words again. Change that to: That’s less negative than the 2002-2008 trend…
Adjustment for the 18th actually increases the melt 10,000 and the total was a very healthy 75,937!
Arcus has lowered the highest estimate to 3.0
Looks like they could all be underestimating the ice.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2009_outlook/report_august.php
Re: Shawn Whelan (#348),
Should be 5.0.
based on this
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi
it could be that the melt is ceasing compare 18/08/09 to 19/08/09
big time trouble for AGW’ers LOL…
The Bagan, not a sailboat, reached Gjoa Haven today. Despite being snipped last night, I think it would be prudent to note that they have not appeared to have used an icebreaker for their journey. They have relied heavily on the Canadian charts, saw an opportunity, took a chance and made it through, hugging the coast of the Ross Strait.
Read the cover of their website.
http://northwestpassagefilm.com/arctic/
Phil (352):
2009 has similar ice to last year, less multiyear ice if anything so why do you think it couldn’t match last year?
Also 2005 showed a very late surge after apparently reached an early minimum, why is that not possible this year?
Phil – Wishing and praying will not get you there. I see a lot of false hope in your statement above. If you didn’t have such blinders on, you might notice the trend is not your friend.
Re: Tucker (#354),
I have no preference either way, so no wishing or praying on my part, nor blinders. It wasn’t a statement but a question why the poster thought that what happened last year couldn’t happen again. The current trend is rather strong decrease so I wouldn’t be writing off the 2009 season just yet.
Re: Phil. (#355)
You suggested in a previous post that people should not use ambiguous language, which is a valid point. However, your post is rather ambiguous and so would be appreciated if you would clarify it. Specifically, you stated,
Exactly which trend are you speaking of? The trend of the past few weeks where the 2009 melt has slowed down and the extent has stayed with the pre-2007 pack rather than keep up with 2008, or the trend since 2007, in which 2008 had a greater minimum and 2009 appears to be on track to have an even greater minimum, or the warmist trend that anticipates an ice free arctic?
You state that you have “no preference either way”, but your views come across as “warmist”, so it’s not at all clear what would constitute a write off for you. Would that be 2009 having a greater minimum than 2008 or a lower minimum than 2008?
Re: Daryl M (#356),
I didn’t know anyone had noticed, it was completely ignored!
Sorry about the ambiguity, my dictionary says: ‘belonging to the present time, happening now’ so I would have thought that was fairly clear. If you look at the last few days of change they correspond to the minimum in Fig 1. I would have used different, specific descriptions had I been referring to the other periods you mention.
‘Write off’ is used in the context of the other posters such as VG who have already determined that the result of this year’s melt is a forgone conclusion. From my point of view it doesn’t matter, my views presumably come across as ‘warmist’ because I’m interested in getting the facts straight so if someone exaggerates in an ‘anti-warmist’ way and I correct them you wrongly interpret that as an expression of my views. I have seen similar assumptions made about Lief, because he corrects exaggerations about the role of the sun in present climate change he has been assumed by some as ‘pro-CO2’ when in fact that’s far from the truth.
The circumnavigation possibilities are non-existent this year, the NE passage looks like it may not be open at all.
2005 had a poor couple of weeks then the late season dip, it is still too early to tell what 2009 will do so I admire the brave souls being so firm on the matter. I’m still badly wavering.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW (#357),
The RXII appears to have made it past all the ice bottlenecks (and bureaucratic ones), they also had to find their way through leads in a couple of places.
Re: AndyW (#357),
Interestingly the RXII has cleared all the ice off Russia and estimates arrival at Barrow in 9-10 days.
Was noticing the weather for Qaanaaq, Greenland and they apparently had a bit of a storm yesterday (18 Aug). Wind was NE at 20 to 25 mph for nearly the entire day with gusts over 35mph.
Hi there,
8/19/2009 5970156 -67032 -57901 -66625
8/18/2008 5763594 -77344 -75424 -80151
8/19/2007 5121563 -44687 -42790 -71651
8/19/2006 6185156 -53438 -44509 -53833
8/19/2005 5980469 -43125 -49084 -67015
8/19/2004 6430469 -39687 -67834 -75567
8/19/2003 6572656 -45000 -41272 -65223
8/19/2002 6230156 -51250 -55111 /
2009 had the second highest daily melt, just after 2008. Nevertheless, these figures should be taken with care as we’ve been observing rater strong corrections the last days. For the rest I would tend to think 2009 is more similar to 2008, again. Sea ice thickness is quite comparable. So no impressive recovery in view, imo.
Thanks Phil, for that info.
On another topic
I am having a difficult time on another blog trying to point out that a larger value this year in minima is not a sign the Arctic will start a grand refreeze over many years but might actually just be rebounding for an abnormal year in 2007 back to the general trend. As always more years observation are needed to know. Some people seem as determined for it to go one way as some the other way and throw out all other possibles depending on what they wish to happen.
Regards
Andy
I don’t think anyone doubts that in any given year a few boats can make it through the passage. What I believe that people doubt is that “Global Warming” will ever allow us to use that path reliably to greatly reduce energy consumption and our carbon footprint in shipping goods globally. If it did, it would reduce costs and improve the standard of living of people around the world by making the cost of goods lower and reducing the energy required to get those goods to them. We are pretty much stuck with having to take the long way round and using more energy as long as things stay as cold as they have.
Maybe if the globe would warm a little, we could cut back on our energy usage … at least in summer.
in the long run, if this multi-century warming brings us back to the temperatures of the MEP maximum, we may see an ice free arctic in summer, though it would still be just a natural cycle.
Re: Manfred (#364),
I don’t think we are in any danger of seeing a return of MWP temperatures. The way I see things, we have been in a fairly consistent cooling trend for the past several thousand years. Yes, there have been warm periods in this interglacial but it seems that every warm period has been a bit cooler than the ones before over the past few thousand years. Temperatures seem to have peaked about 5K years ago and have been generally falling since.
OT but the sun seems to be extraordinarily quiet.
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
one wonders in Cycle 23 minimun has even occurred yet…
re back to subject (but I believe related very long term to solar activity)
I would expect the NH ice to slowly climb back to normal ranges after the 1998 Nino effect. I believe we are beginning to see this now.. so basically 2010>2009>2008>2007 ect. So theoretically if 2010 is less than 2009 I would be surprised and concede to Phil and his pals (just joking)that indeed AGW is causing the melt
Re: VG (#366),
VG,
I don’t know if one can say that NH ice was influenced by the 1998 El Nino. Rather, there is some general belief (yet unproven) that the PDO influences jet patterns, which of course affects the wind patterns themselves. To me, it seems general wind flows over the course of a couple decades causes the 30 year trends we see in ice increase/decrease in the NH.
Of course, the PDO likely influences Nino as well, so there is “some” correlation probably between frequency of Nino and ice coverage in the north.
Tom
Re: Tucker (#367),
When the PDO turned cold in the Forties the Hudson Bay Company abandoned some of their stations since they could not be supplied due to the rapidly increasing ice. History repeats.
Re: Tucker (#367),
El Nino was a factor in 1998 for the Western Arctic:
As for historical ice coverage for this date Aug 20th in the Western Arctic, we are back at near normal levels:
As for navigating through the NWP, not a single vessel has completed the journey as some here have suggested. There are perils heading north and west of Gjoa Haven. The link I noted above to the Blog of the Bagan should put the ease of travel in horrifying perspective.
Re: hengav (#374),
Actually they’ve met Shawn’s criterion in that two vessels travelling from East and West (i.e. Nascopie) have met.
Shawn is the only one who posts here who describes journeys through the NW Passage as ‘easy’. Progress north of GH was similarly difficult at this time last year, Berrimilla pushed through to the north on the 16th last year as I recall after waiting for an opening.
From Aug 15th last year:
“The Berri is just below the tip of the Tasmania Islands. Ice all around, “it’s a wall” but they can see one small opening to the NW. That is consistent with the ice charts and so that is where he will be heading.
Last night, Alex steered to”what seemed sensible” and is still underway.The Amodino is not so lucky.
The Berri crew has all been up all night dodging/fighting ice. They have not had time to do anything but handle the boat. (And I would hope to think- a quick bite) The call was short as Alex had to return to deck at once. He sounded tired and stressed. A long, long few miles and they will be out of it.
Fingers still crossed, just knocked on wood. If I thought throwing salt over my shoulder would help, I would go home and do it.
The Amodino is stuck in the ice. They are much larger and can hopefully push their way around. Good luck to them. The Berri is too small and under powered to help, if there was a prayer to get close enough to help. “
Re: Phil. (#377),
Cut the BS.
That is not my criteria.
Here is how it is.
The consensus of science and Phill were wrong.
Now cut the whining.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#391),
*plonk*
Of course it’s a mental file which means I’ll probably forget I did it, but it’s the thought that counts.
Re: VG (#366),
What is this 1998 effect you refer to? NH sea ice has shown a steady decline since satellite images were available and 1998 doesn’t show anything out of the ordinary.
NH ice
I don’t know with reasonable certainty where this year will end up but think it likely it will be ahead of 2008 by close to 100,000. As for an ice free Arctic by 2050, that is nothing more than another case of the SS at work (Sensationalist Science) and has virtually no chance of happening barring an axis shift of the earth IMO. It will be fascinating to see which side starts claiming definite trends when this years winter, which looks (to me) warmer than normal in the Arctic but colder than normal in the continental US and Canada.
Re: Michael Jennings (#369),
What do you mean by ‘ahead’, more ice or less ice? What do you mean by ‘end up’, Dec 31st or ice minimum?
Re: Phil. (#371),
W
Fair questions. I mean more ice in 2009 than 2008 and at the ice minimum, whenever that occurs. I also don’t think the accumulation of ice will be as much this winter than the winter of 2008-09
Re: Michael Jennings (#369),
(Bolds are mine)
That’s a very interesting posibility, according to Dr. Felix W. Landerer, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Don’t miss these news:
Global warming could change Earth’s tilt
From the article: “The changing climate has long been known to move Earth’s axis“. LOL. I had always thought that it was the opposite way…
I think they mean this.
More ice in 2009 than 2008 and more ice in 2008 than 2007. It is not complicated.
The ice trend is upwards just like in the 1940’s.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#372),
Here’s the 365 day moving average of the JAXA Arctic Extent data. When the moving average gets back above 10,800,000 km2 and the trend line goes positive you can say Arctic ice is increasing. I’m not holding my breath as it will take several years at minimum and quite possibly not until this interglacial period ends.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#378),
Of course trend lines depend an awful lot on where you take the endpoints. Since mid-2007 the trend has been up, but that’s only 2 years, and in fact it’s flattened off. But if one wants to believe that global cooling is happening and will happen for a few years, then the recent upward ice trend is consistent with that. But if CC policy was going to be decided just on the basis of that graph, a politician could easily take it to be a sign of continuing warming on average.
We sit and wait for events to unfold. Isn’t it annoying how slow climate change in either direction is?
Rich.
Excuse me Shawn, but I think there’s really no point in concluding from 3 years that there’s been a major shift in the pattern. If you look at CT data
you’ll see that several consecutive years of sea ice increase has been observed several times over the 79-07 period, which did not prevent the fact that sea ice has been declining during this period. Look for example at 81-83 (4 years), 84-86 (3 years), 2002-2004, etc.
Re: Flanagan (#373),
The point is the consensus of science was proclaiming the end of the ice and that the ice would quickly disappear. Now it is increasing and if you look at the 1940’s the ice greatly increased when the PDO changed to cool. The same thing is happening again.
The AGW crowd attempts to explain the whole temperature history of the Earth starting around 1979 and fudge’s the rest of the older temperatures while conveniently ignoring the actual factual evidence.
Arctic area decreased by 0.083 Mm2 today. Average ice concentration is now down to 62.8%, about the same as in 2008 at the same DOY. The smoothed area rate is about 0.020 Mm2/day more negative than average, also about the same as 2008. Concentration normally starts to increase about now because extent starts dropping faster than area and there is a lot of area with low concentration ice that is currently vulnerable. I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose the quatloo I bet over at The Blackboard. My guess is that the area loss rate will begin to decrease soon and the extent loss rate will stay flat rather than decreasing. That will cause the extent anomaly to go negative, similar to 2008 but about a week or two later.
So we have the Bagan arrived Gjoa Haven. The Fiona, on the same E-W route as the Bagan has been pushed towards the shore well north of Gjoa Haven and has put a call out for an ice breaker. On the W-E route the Ocean Watch heading east from Cambridge bay and halfway to Gjoa Haven. The Baloum Gwen and Silent Sound are still in Cambridge Bay. The Fleur Australe is the first vessel to meet head to head with the W-E boats in Cambridge bay. That’s 6 boats in the NWP. None are through. Is that an accurate statement Phil. ? Am I missing anything?
Re: hengav (#379),
Fiona has made Gjoa Havn, presumably got freed from the shore, Bagan is about 1/4 way between GH and CB, Fleur Australe is well on her way but fighting bad visibility and ice in Dolphin & Union with some rough seas.
Baloum Gwen and Silent Sound (repairs completed) are en route to Gjoa Havn, Ocean Watch is close to meeting Bagan. The marines are still fighting the adverse weather in Coronation gulf, their only motor being muscle power.
If I may mix metaphors, if the boat gets stuck, move the goalposts.
So how much carbon is going to be put into the air rescuing these trapped vessels?
Shawn: the consensus about Arcti sea ice is that we’re supposed to see possibly ice-free arctic in September after 2050. The extents observed today are much lower than predicted – so there’s a good chance we should be coming back to the (negative) trend we had before 2007… But sill decreasing on the long time.
Re: Flanagan (#381),
A consensus may be 2050. However, we have every year predicted starting with 2008. From WUWT:
Then we had a Prof Barber from the University of Manitoba who was on a project research vessel last year also indicating the it was also imminent.
So do we have a consensus? They have their butts covered.
The Bagan is motoring today at a very good clip south and then west through the channel into the Queen Maud. They provide hour by hour charting.
http://northwestpassagefilm.com/arctic/
With the Ocean Watch heading their way, they should meet in around 4 hours.
Calvin, only one trapped – Fiona, one badly damaged – Silent Sound, and the Bagan going hell-bent with a badly damaged hull to Cambridge Bay.
Today’s ice charts from Canukistan looks like clear sailing for both vessels.
Re: hengav (#383),
I wouldn’t call broken motor mounts badly damaged. The mount(s) were probably broken before they ran aground in Cambridge Bay. IIRC, they were reporting vibration before the incident and thought it was a bent propellor, or screw for the nautically inclined. They’re supposed to set sail again tomorrow after replacing/repairing the motor mounts.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#388),
Usually when a ship runs aground and breaks motor mounts, it’s a pretty serious issue. Usually it would require a dry dock inspection of the keel. Her draft is 5’6″ and weights in at 17 tonnes. Apparently she will be for sail in Halifax upon arrival, void warranty and all.
Re: hengav (#390),
I went back and checked their blog. They reported engine vibration on the 8/12 posting two days before they ran aground in Cambridge Bay. So the mounts had at least been badly damaged already, probably by collisions with ice floes. I don’t think I’d buy it, but it’s somewhat of a moot point since I couldn’t afford it anyway.
Wow, hard to argue with that. I guess that’s the key to getting a “consensus”. Be so vague that nobody can figure out what the heck they’re supposed to disagree with. Of course, I could possibly be overstating the case…maybe.
From their positioning device the Fiona has just arrived in Gjoa Haven. No word on how.
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0DjUAlZJFegMqAtQZ9PN7Ibet1q0yYuMM
A seventh vessel attempting to circumnavigate the pole through the NEP first, then the NWP from Point Barrow has been snagged.
The RX II is still suffering through the New Siberian Islands:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0sh4D6qB4SbUlL8PQTx67P76naNiL79ys
Good business for the local repair shipyards. 🙂
One has to commend the courage of those pressing into Queen Maud. Looks pretty volatile in there. Tell you what: If I had a chance to go I would in an instant!
I wish them good luck.
Just because a couple boats can manage the same thing that Admunsen accomplished over one hundred years ago does not prove there has been over a hundred years of AGW. And none of them have any chance of following the route of the St. Roch in 1944. Explain that.
Let me know when they cross the Northern Route of the Northwest Passage.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#392),
2 made it e-w through the Ross Strait, a third may have needed assistance. Their timing was calculated and fortunate. In the opposite direction the Amundsen Gulf and encroaching ice in the Beaufort may be problematic, but that is a safer bet.
Bagan has just reached M’Clintoch Bay with Ocean Watch roughly 20 km away from a rendezvous.
Party at the DEW line!
Do you want to see an ambitious trip by Canadian Geographic?
Check: http://www.adventurecanada.com/Out-of-the-Northwest-Passage-2009
They want to go west from Cambridge, then between Banks and Victoria Island, past Melville Island, Bathurst Island, past Resolute, to Beechy Island, and eastward. Sept 1-16, 2009. Any chance of making it?
Shawn: here’s what the model averages look like:
So, any sign the ice is “much higher than expected”?
Re: Flanagan (#398),
Considering all the hype earlier this year about an “expected” collapse of the ice cap this season, I would say even having as much as 2008 is “much higher than expected”. NCDC has now backed off their earlier “expectation” in a public way.
Re: Flanagan (#398),
Just curious… What is the source for that image?
Thanks.
Re: Flanagan (#398),
I could be wrong Flanagan, but I think Shawn was referring to the graph Steve showed at the top of this thread with the predictions of models and statistical probabilities for the comparisons to the ice totals to 2007, 2008, and the mean.
I don’t get it.
After all this AGW if a boat can navigate the Southern Route of the NW Passage following the routes of the icebreakers there is a celebration by the warmest.
What is the point to the that argument?
As I see it, it is only to push the argument away from the fact that the ice is increasing.
Many boats in the past centuries have run the Northern route of the NW Passage. This year a few steel boats aided by ice breakers have managed to fight through the ice and run the Southern route.
Why does this show the ice is decreasing?
Fact is the ice is increasing and will increase again next year.
I told you the the last two years the ice would increase and was proven true.
Next year I expect the ice to increase again. A short melt season and an early freeze and a cold Winter. It goes with the cooling PDO. Look at history. The 40’s are just repeating.
And unfortunately if you look at history our economy will crumble.
Much more serious than AGW, although the amount of people that will readily belive in AGW reflects why an economy will crumble.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#404),
I don’t get it.
After all this AGW if a boat can navigate the Southern Route of the NW Passage following the routes of the icebreakers there is a celebration by the warmest.
What is the point to the that argument?
I don’t get it either, what is the point of your coming on here every day [snip -no personal slurs]!
No indication that they are following the routes of icebreakers here, you just made up this story without any support
Perhaps you could email some of the skippers and tell them it’s not much of an achievement to just follow an icebreaker through the passage?
Re: Phil. (#409),
Of course the icebreakers are going up and down the passage.
Of that there is no doubt.
Maybe we will be able to get a hold of the icebreaker logs and put this to rest.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#421),
Maybe you should have done that instead of making it up?
Shoreline leads are not exactly where icebreakers go, also the 9/10 floes being blown into the leads would rapidly close any track left by an icebreaker, the onus is on you to produce the gps logs of the icebreakers and show that the boats are following the same track within a very short time. Following one in the fog would have been tricky too. Frankly you should have done that before you made your unwarranted assertion, [snip – snipe].
Until you produce such evidence you should shut up about it.
Re: Phil. (#426),
I didn’t make it up. The icebreakers commonly rendevous with the sailboats. And I have read where the sailboats follow the icebreakers. Only a very foolish captain wouldn’t take advantage of the icebreakers.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#435),
I read a story a couple of years ago about the Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers. They have something like 5 or 6 of them that are constantly on patrol this time of year through the entire length of the NWP. Ah, here it is.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#435),
I didn’t make it up. The icebreakers commonly rendevous with the sailboats.
Really, so you say, care to substantiate that claim?
And I have read where the sailboats follow the icebreakers.
Where, care to give us a reference? On the basis of your reading somewhere that this happens you asserted that Fleur Australe and Bagan had done so, you said: Shawn Whelan (#303) “The boats followed icebreakers through the passage”, that’s making it up!
Only a very foolish captain wouldn’t take advantage of the icebreakers.
What would be the point, you might as well ride on one?
Re: Phil. (#438),
This should be self evident.
They call them icebreakers because they break ice.
They go up and down the passage breaking ice this time of year.
Not so complicated.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#449),
So you have no intention of supporting any of your statements. I would point out that those icebreakers have a much larger area to cover than the southern arm of the NW passage, thanks for confirming that you did make it all up.
45,000 melt off…at least as of now. not too high…but not very low either. hopefully it is now slowing down to some really slow days. as of now it still has more than 2005, but a couple of more days (or even just one like the past 2) will change that in a hurry. still….another day off the calendar and now we are just weeks away from a minimum.
i still see a fairly easy path for another 400,000 more ice over last year’s minimum. which would be 800,000 off of the 2007 low. to only reach 5.1 million this year we need to not lose any more than 800,000 square kilometer from here to the end. if the end stretches out a full month, but we only average 27,000 per day (which is possible when you add in the very low melt offs we will have towards the end), we could make it. i am actually guessing we will. particularly if there is any truth about an early fall….in which case we may see 500k more than last year.
thoughts?
Re: markinaustin (#406),
Sounds reasonable Mark. I’ve given up making estimates for this year and will just sit and watch. Ideally I’d like some huge late “event” to happen, either way I am not bothered, just for interests sake.
2009 finally got some ground back on 2008 but of course the extent is a lot more at this point than last year.
Regards
Andy
Dewitt and anyone else interested. I’ve modified my R script to download and process the Bremen arctic data. I e-mailed the contact at Bremen and they were nice enough to respond. You were right about the variable cell area, they say that’s the right file to use. They’re first assumption is that it’s differences in algorithm or cell size that’s causing the discrepancies I’m still seeing. I still get a seasonal variation between the bremen data and the Spreen and Kaleshke’s results. I get a much better fit against the JAXA extent. Since both my results and JAXA are higher than the S&K results I’m thinking that they’re not including the “hole”.
The script is located here and it requires two supporting files
for landmask and area. Landmask doesn’t seem to do much but I included it anyway.
Re: BarryW (#407),
IIRC, the hole is marked NaN so it can’t be counted unless you add it in later. Maybe we need to restrict the range of the data further rather than use all the data in the .hdf file. The land mask is supposed to fix contamination from pixels that contain land as well as ocean/ice.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#451),
Dewitt, I’ve started a thread in the forums to discuss some of these details if you’re interested (or anyone else). Mainly because I can post some things that are not going to be of general interest and I think I can show some graphs there.
One thing I will mention is that the K&S data assumes constant cell size from what I’ve found out. Bremen doesn’t. I’ve also plotted the K&S extent data against JAXA for 2008 with some interesting results.
Wow, I’m still amazed there was no correction yesterday for JAXA. Anyway, here are the figures:
8/20/2009 5925469 -44687 -56272 -64171
8/19/2008 5683906 -79688 -76942 -79776
8/20/2007 5075000 -46563 -43459 -69755
8/20/2006 6116563 -68593 -48616 -54307
8/20/2005 5922500 -57969 -53169 -64458
8/19/2004 6430469 -39687 -67834 -75567
8/20/2003 6535156 -37500 -38482 -62937
8/20/2002 6177813 -52343 -53102 -75255
So, an average day for 2009 (a least before correction). Next week will decide whether we go for a 2005 or a 2008-like year. As I mentioned earlier, 2005 had a sudden slowdown: here is what the melt looked like from Aug 21 till 25
-15156
-5781
-17813
-30625
-625
Re: Flanagan (#410),
2007 loss is slowing at this time while 2008 is loss rate is going to be above average for awhile. 2005 is going flat for awhile and will take a dip in about a month. 2008 is still tracking close to the average loss rate right now and separating itself from 2008.
ice is increasing along the land NH as expected…
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi
Re: VG (#411),
Yes, if I “rock” between the latest and the 18th, I can see the ice becoming “brighter”. In addition, the temperatures are now declining rapidly above 80N. I believe the sun sets tomorrow at Qaanaaq, Greenland (I use that location as a sort of benchmark. When the sun sets there, the ice generally starts to pick up).
Excuse me VG, where do you see increasing ice exactly?
It’s quite warm over almost all of northern Siberia. Northern Canada will be above normal temperature for the next 10 days as well. We can pretty much eliminate 2009 having more sea ice than 2005.
Crosspatch
That doesn’t effect sea ice below 80°N very much. There, you have to wait another 2 or 3 weeks.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#415),
Air temps have been shown repeatedly to be a poor indicator of ice melt. Sea temps and wind patterns are much more likely to affect near term ice melt than what you suggest.
Temps are dropping but there is still a lot of residual melt to go,too early to talk about the refreeze yet in my opinion.
Perhaps Shawn and Phil can buy the boat off the Royal Marines and attempt the NW passage next year. I would sponsor them. No cuddling though … just singing under the starry starry night and a firm manly handshake at the end, pals for life. 🙂
Regards
Andy
Flanagan (#412)… Perhaps he’s referring to the ice edge N of NE Alaska…But remember, JAXA concentration limit is 15%…AND the
“Great Danes” “bark”: 30%…Tomorrow could be 14% equalling to NADA…
#414 AndyW… Nothing smaller than “SS Manhattan” for me please LOL
…………..Phil. Apologies for not responding earlier and being thankful for the links of Amundsen-NWP boats…Talking of “SS Manhattan”, she
cut 20 feet thick ice floes like a butter knife … Do you know if
she’s still around? The S Koreans bought her in 1987 I think…
#415 … PS. I could even take 2! barrels of oil in Prudhoe Bay…DS.
AndyW ~414
Excellent suggestion. I will sponsor Phil and Shawn’s attempt on the NW passage as well. As it seems to be so easy no rescues will be allowed…
Tony Brown
Flanagan: Excuse me VG, where do you see increasing ice exactly? Answer = #414 good luck in your endeavours to melt ice
So has anyone else but me noticed that each and every website and blog from these expedition includes large, healthy, dare I say FAT polar bears?
See this article:
http://www.thepoles.com/news.php?id=18606
Recovering seal populations, even if you believed the hype about declining ice, seem to be the dominant driver.
And this in from Winterpeg:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/130775/group/Nation%20and%20World/
Suggests that observed colder temperatures has helped the population to hunt for a longer period on the ice.
Relating seal population to ice conditions and then indirectly to areal extent measurements:
Click to access Stirling_et_al_Arctic.pdf
Apparently in the Beaufort from 2003 to 2006 there was significant evidence of ringed seals getting a leg up on the Polar bear due to the lack of open leads and rafted ice. Rather than being able to dig into a snow drift, the bears were forced to attempt to dig through solid ice to get at their prey. This would suggest, in part, that the Seal population has been buoyed by the compression of springtime ice during calving, at least in the Beaufort. That’s compression, not melting.
Since I just saw the Lion King last night, I would call this year’s apparent Polar bear baby boom a circle of life thing.
Revised extent to 5,930,000. Jumps back above 2005 in extent, but as some already said, that is to be short lived with 2005 having such a slow melt the next week. 2008 now has nearly 250,000 sq km less than 2009 so it seems all but sure that 2009 will finish between the two, likely hedging toward 2005. But we’ve seen how crazy this ice thing can be, so nothing is set in stone.
Re: NEwxIce (#428),
A very good summation at this current time. I’m sure there may be more than one twist and turn to go yet though, it has been a very interesting year up north!
Regards
Andy
Barry W,
Different years have different conditions, thus different behaviour and trends.
No. 422
You’re absolutely right. I agree.
The adjusted value is out and it is 5,930,000 km2 which makes the 20th melt 40,156.
Weather models for next week seem to suggest the warmest air in the Arctic over the NW passage, and Fram Straight. I would guess that overall this will make for slow melt as the warm air is hitting harder to melt multi year ice, and the thinner first year ice will mostly be under the colder air. The circulation pattern would also reduce exit of ice through Fram Straight. Seems to be a semi persistent pattern now of warmer air in the NW passage area, so with nearly a month still to go until the end of the melt season I think there is still plenty of scope for the NW passage to open right up.
Re: Michael Hauber (#433),
Air don’t melt the ice.
You can be sure that ice melt has ceased when Phil and Flanagan don’t post for a while (Just joking). So this is a good way to predict NH ice. You could say same about me in opposite side….
27,000…..pretty small day actually. still tracking well with 2005 in spite of most of us assuming it will soon break free and melt more towards 2008 (without catching it).
we will see….
Re: markinaustin (#439),
No way it catches 2008, if there was any doubt a week ago, its gone now unless someone sets off a nuke up there to break the ice apart. 2005 is catchable if this year can hold its own and stay within shouting distance during this slow melt period from ’05. But I think we’ll end up seeing a minimum below 2005 by maybe 100,000 to 200,000
So I wonder. If you get a year with more Atlantic hurricanes that track up along the gulf stream, could that reduce the temperature of the gulf stream enough to have an impact on Arctic weather? That is in comparison to a year where storms track mainly into the Gulf of Mexico where I would expect there to be much less impact on the gulf stream. It is well documented that these storms leave a trail of cooler water in their wake. Just wondering about the impact of a storm that tracks more or less along the stream on arctic water temperatures and therefore weather.
Or more accurately, the impact of several storms that might track along the gulf stream over the course of a hurricane season.
#437 crosspatch The icebreaker article is about “Louis S St Laurent”
and one of her first missions in September-October 1969 was to escort my beloved “SS Manhattan” The RCGC apparently didn’t give a… about the Canadian-US territorial controversy on Arctic waters,
correct me if I’m wrong…I still think SS Manhattan escorted Louis
S St Laurent more than vice versa…?? [see my post #437] These vessels were far too big to use the southern/Amundsen route so they
used the Parry Channel mid-late October 1969…HOAYOAI
#442 CORRECTION …”RCCG” is better… [Royal Canadian Coast Guard]
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#443)
Still wrong, it’s just the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG). The Canadian Navy (called Maritime Command (MARCOM) was called the Royal Canadian Navy from 1911 to 1968 but I don’t think the CCG was ever royal.
Just jumping forward in time for the moment I’d rather like to see a low maxima in Mar/April next year, not for any reason to show the trends in the world climate but simply because we have had 2 years on the JAXA graph which have had relatively high maxima and I’d like to see what happens in 2010 summer when the starting point is a lot lower, say somewhere around the maxima of 2005 and 2006.
Coming back to the present 2009 still seems to be looking more 2005 than 2009 as mentioned above.
Regards
Andy
Another significant uptick of Arctic area today, according to CT, +0.039 Mm2. 2008 lost a further 0.665 Mm2 from the same DOY to the minimum which would put the 2009 minimum at 3.224 Mm2, well above 2008, but well below 2005 and 2006. OTOH, if the rate tracks 2006 for the next month, we’ve already seen the minimum area, or very close to it.
Silent Sound is approaching a critical strait. If they can negotiate it safely, then it looks like reasonably clear sailing for the rest of the journey. Westward, it looks like the ice in the Beaufort Sea is drifting towards Alaska, which would close the western end of the NWP.
well…..as the days tick by we are ever closer to our minimum. any guesses when that will come? as in….September 20? or maybe as early as the 10th?
oh…and the morning correction took an extra 8,000 more ice off the melt. so now the melt was more like 30 something.
I don’t know if the intrepid Arctic travellers are following icebreakers or not but it seems there are icebreakers navigating the various passages.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/icebreakers-to-map-uncharted-waters/article1234218/
yeah…i am with you NEwxIce….i think we go lower than 2005’s minimum, but stay far above 2008…..so 2 good years of regaining ice. if we get 3 years, we will definitely have something to talk about….particularly if it is as dramatic and begins passing years 2002-2006
Phil,
I agree that Shawn apparently uses his logical reasoning sometimes more than research. However, I do think it it possible that you are underplaying the role of icebreakers. We do know that Canada added seven MORE icebreakers in 2007 to patrol the NW Passage. One can conjecture that the passage of these icebreakers may indeed help other ships, but that would be conjecture only without information on the travels of icebreakers relative to other ships.
Re: An Inquirer (#456),
And why does this argument all of a sudden show up now, after weeks of claiming that the NW passage wouldn’t be navigable this year? Couldn’t Shawn have said this beforehand and save all of us a lot of time reading and writing?
Good question about the hurricanes, crosspatch. I just saw hurricane Bill’s trajectory on the local news and wondered if it will have any effect on the Arctic sea ice.
Re: An Inquirer (#456),
They certainly didn’t add 7 more icebreakers to patrol the NW Passage since according to their own website:
“Summer (June to early November): six icebreakers operate in the Arctic, assisting shipping, delivering cargo to some isolated communities, maintaining a sovereign presence and conducting essential science missions.”
That’s 6 for the whole Canadian arctic, service in the southern route of the NW Passage is provided from 12/08 to 13/10.
Some of this year’s yachts did meet a Canadian ice-breaker, Sir Wilfred Laurier I believe, in Gjoa Havn and went aboard and talked about ice conditions etc. Apparently they weren’t too happy about having burned about $25,000 worth of fuel answering Fiona’s distress call only to meet them free of ice and in no trouble, can’t say I blame them, very inconsiderate not to have notified the CCGS that they’d got clear.
Re: Phil. (#643),
There are also several supply ships and cruise ships that have followed the icebreakers path.
Really Phil, what do you think the icebreakers do?
Apparently, there are regular Northwest Passage cruises on Russian icebreakers that go through the Amundsen Route.
http://www.articleinsider.com/travel/cruises/northwest-passage-cruises
http://www.amazing-tours.com/Arctic_2_NorthwestPassage.html
This article from 2007 shows that seven Russian icebreakers go through the Passage to keep it open for commercial shipping.
Try and tell me that the captains of these vessels trying to make their way through the passage will not follow the trail of softened up ice made by an icebreaker. IMO, it’s nothing but a publicity stunt.
Re: Daryl M (#458),
There is no way to avoid going to ice “softened up” by the ice breakers as the breakers start working early and continue working all season. It would be an interesting experiment for the breakers to not go through there at all one year and see how long it takes for the passage to open, if it does at all. By this time of year the ice has been well broken up from multiple breaker passes and the navigability of the passage is more a function of how the wind compacts or disperses it. I would speculate that conditions would be completely different if the ice breakers weren’t constantly breaking the ice up.
In my opinion, the conditions of the NWP are more a function of constant “conditioning” by ice breakers and resulting actions of the winds than any indication of “climate change”.
Re: crosspatch (#461),
How do you square your opinion with the published operating periods of the CCGS? The breakers don’t “start working early and continue working all season”, as you assert above.
Re: Phil. (#644),
The reading I have done implied that the breakers do, in fact, work all season. For example:
In 2007 concerning the purchase of new armed icebreakers for the Navy (not Coast Guard):
The article I linked to earlier in this thread clearly implied that at any given time there were several ice breakers patrolling the passage during the summer season. The way I understand it, it is an issue of sovereignty for Canada. Nations which to declare it an international passage but Canada claims it as a national waterway. So they must patrol it in order to reinforce that claim.
And the quote above shows a transfer of that responsibility from the Coast Guard to armed Navy ships along with the construction of a deep water Arctic port.
Ah, here is the part from the earlier link:
Clearly, Canada keeps an icebreaker presence in the passage during the season. I do not believe they are sitting still.
A normal boat will follow an icebreaker but I very much doubt the sailors attempting the NW passage will follow one unless they are stuck and there is a danger to the boat and crew because it defeats the whole purpose of the trip. Certainly the Royal Marines would not be doing that I can tell you that straight off. They’d rather yomp than do that.
The remaining ice in the NW passage is down to mainly 2/10’s and a small percentage of 3/10 so it is highly likely to be open this year and hengav spectacularily wrong. Not that I will take any pleasure in that of course 😀
Regards
Andy
That brings up something that could fuel a study – just how has the NWP fared against the increased passage of the icebreakers?
Where would one go to see just how many icebreaker passages there have been, and whether they have increased over time?
Crosspatch and Henry,
You do not need a study about icebreakers traversing the NWP. It is a well known fact that all modern icebreakers eject liquid nitrogen from the stern to refreeze any ice they have broken up. They did this so the exotic sport of “look at me I sail the NWP” can maintain its integrity.
Re: Jon P (#463),
LOL. Good trolling!
Jon P
liquid N would make next to no difference at all. If true, it would have to be a sop to all the eco nuts out there. If you break through metre thick ice for example you would need to be pumping liqN for quite some time in order to reestablish the same strength and structure in the ice you have just broken and whilst icebreakers travel fairly slowly they do not stand still for very long to pump LiqN into the ocean. Just logical thinking on my part.
However, I find Phils whole argument a childish diversion. He thinks he has found a week point in Shawn’s argument and out of pique has decided to attack it with more speculation of his own. Just totally childish and irrelevant.
#457 Keith W … The Russian icebreaker “Kapitan Khlebnikov” has a draft of 8,50 m and the Victoria Strait is 9-10 m in some places and
not very well charted…Why Churchill Manitoba to Murmansk ships would go
West and use NWP is beyond my horizon…instead of just crossing the
North North Atlantic {much better in Swedish: “Norra Nordatlanten”}
#453 Daryl M You’re right but the logo has a crown on top…!!?? (wiki)
But what about SS Manhattan??????? Nice piece of boat, eh ???
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#465),
The good ship Kapitan plies the tourist trade. That means it sells passages to all the people wanting to see the dangers and wonders of the Arctic, without having to leave the comfort of their warm cabins or hot meals every evening. Since that second link in my earlier posts shows that for the 19 day cruise they charge between $16,000 and $27,000, the reason is good old honest capitalism. If they get fifty passengers, they make around a million dollars. Not too shabby.
I can summarise crosspatches icebreaker theory as pure speculative wishful thinking. If crosspatch wishes to argue against this then it is time for some cold hard facts. Maybe Shawn can lend him some. It’s this sort of baloney that riles up Phil and I can see why now.
Put up or shut up with this silly grasping at straws theory. For a start list the routes and dates of icebreakers through the passage and we can then compare to CIS maps from that time period before and after. If you are not prepared to do that simple first step then stop squawking about it and lets get back to the real topic matter which is ice extent/areas.
Regards
Andy
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#466),
Andy, I did label it as speculation. But the icebreakers do regularly patrol those passages. That is known and documented fact that Canada is quite proud of. I find the notion that they would have little impact to be more farfetched than the notion that they have a significant impact. That is why they are there … to have a significant impact on the ice pack (i.e. break it up). The rest is up to the wind. Wind can either pack that ice together or disperse it out into open water. But it isn’t going to freeze back together until winter. If they didn’t have an impact, Canada wouldn’t waste the money having them travel through the passage all summer.
I didn’t realize AndyW35 was a moderator who could tell people when to shut up and what to talk about. Interesting!
Michael, even a moderator can’t do that, they can just act as the garbage man 😉 So your sniping post is wrong to start off with and goes downhill from there.
Regards
Andy
Final figure is -29688, which is actually more than last year… Let’s all wait till the end of August, right?
Neven, the issue of icebreakers has not all of a sudden come up. For several years, a number of posters on different blogs have wondered about the role of icebreakers. I do not know what impact they have and I am not aware of any study; however, this blog seems to be bringing together more relevant information on the subject than I have seen elsewhere.
Phil’s challenge to get the logs of various icebreakers is quite unreasonable. Although some folks may have incredible skill in gathering intelligence, I suspect that the logs of “military” patrol ships are not going to be publicly available.
I believe that Jon P’s 8/22 post is a spoof to see how gullible readers are.
I suspect that if these yachts followed icebreakers, we would be reading more about it in their blogs. However, the issue of icebreakers softening up passages seems to be a reasonable questionl
Re: An Inquirer (#470),
The CCGS is not a military service but a civil one, their operational seasons are published.
wrt Jon P:
That sort of thing used to be great sport on USENET. You’d throw out some outrageous comment and see if anyone actually took it seriously. Then everybody would laugh at the victim. Usually it was a n00b, but sometimes you could even catch an old timer.
Common sense would tell one that the boats will follow the icebreakers.
Common sense is very uncommon in todays science community.
Phil is just on about the boats since he doesn’t want to admit that the ice is going to increase again this year.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#473),
I’ve been an innocent bystander most of the time not posting too much, but it appears this whole NW Passage debate flared up once it became likely that this year would have a higher extent than 2008 or 20009. Whether that is coincidence or not, I don’t know. But the timing seemed interesting.
I really don’t get the fascination with the NW Passage as it has been open many times in the past. I guess if you are really into sailing or yachting in the arctic, then its a good topic of discussion.
Re: NEwxIce (#476),
Yup, and navigated before there was such a thing as icebreakers. 5000 years ago the entire pole might have been ice free in summer. Polar summers without ice might have been the norm in the last interglacial, too.
I am not seeing anything particularly scary in the fact that a boat can navigate the NWP.
Phil and Shawn
Your spats are becoming legendary.Very entertaining.
http://www.theoceans.net/news.php?id=15155
Abstract
“2006- Last year, the northeast passage north of Russia was free of ice. On the other side, the Northwest passage, north of Canada, the ice did not disappear. Kendall; a solo sailor with Astral Express – and Skip Novak; with Pelagic Australis coming from east had to return. 4 yachts coming from the west; Fine Tolerance, Jotun Arctic, Cloud Nine and the Idlewild were helped by the two Canadian icebreakers Sir Wilfred Laurier and Louis St Laurent
http://benmuse.typepad.com/arctic_economics/2008/07/northwest-passage-transits.html
this lists transits through the passage
http://www.bruceroberts.com.au/northwest/060210.htm
Clearly describes yachts following ice breakers-but clearly you don’t want to get too close!
“By 4.00 pm we had reached Fine Tolerance and I and Ben, one of the Laurier’s crew, boarded Fine Tolerance to maneuver her in behind the icebreaker. It was no easy task. As you can see from the photo below the ice was quite heavy and maneuvering was difficult to say the least. However, with ice poles and engine we finally tucked in behind the transom of the Sir Wilfred Laurier. Following an icebreaker breaking through ice can best be described as a nightmare”
There seems to be a lot of activity in the arctic, what with military, cruise ships, private boats, ice breakers etc. That will have an effect on the ice being broken and moved, which may then be easier to melt and transit through. That some yachts have followed ice breakers through the North West Passage seems factual-whether that is done as a matter of course is another matter. Whether they all would have made it if the ice hadn’t been broken is a matter of conjecture.
Best regards to you both
Tony Brown
That’s why Phil and Flanagan are reliable predictors of NH ice extent. Not here or boats etc = means it’s (NH ice) getting greater, here = its really melting like crazy LOL. As you can see its virtually stopped melting (that’s why I’m here now).
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
On a more serious note there is one significant difference with previous years. Note the consistent rise since July
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.5.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.6.html
and the higher baseline for the main ice
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html
bets are that NH ice will reach normal 1979-2000 means this winter.
Of course cherry picking above but others ice regions are less significant area etc…
wow….an 80,000 loss day! even with a significant correction, that will be a big day. just when i thought it was going to start slowing down on us…..oh well, 2009 has some curves yet eh?
still…i guess 2008 has another 80,000 coming and a 120,000 coming….there is still a great opportunity for 2009 to end way on top of 2008. i am hoping for at least 400,000 extra.
if it averages 21,000 per day….it will still be above 2008 by 400,000. not sure if that will happen, but that’s going all the way until september 21st, which may be late for this year. perhaps we have an earlier mininum.
With such a huge day yesterday, it is goiong to be very hard now for 2009 to stay with 2005 and the next 3-4 days is likely to see their paths diverging considerably.
Re: Michael Jennings (#484),
Yeah, unless 2009 has a couple of very slow days in a row here, I think it will be tough for it to hold on close enough to jump back above 2005 when we get to mid-September and 2005 had that late melt. The melt yesterday was revised down to around 72000 from 80000 last night, still a very large melt though for this time of year.
Look at his image of the comparison between Aug. 15th and Aug. 22nd and note the rather large increase in the sea ice concentration for the week. Somewhat surprising (to me anyway)
[Ed: you linked the page not the image :)…fixed]
Re: Michael Jennings (#485),
We’ve now had two upticks in CT ice area in a row for a total of +0.084 Mm2. As a result, the concentration has gone from 63% to 66% and the area is now closer to 2005 and 2006 than 2007 and 2008. The smoothed area rate is now slightly less negative than the 1979-2000 rate. The 1979-2000 average remaining loss in area is 0.427 Mm2. If 2009 loses the same fraction of its area as the average then the minimum would be 3.6 Mm2 compared to 3.004 Mm2 in 2008. We’re less than three weeks from the expected minimum area date.
but it still has a chance to greatly increase over last year as this coming week was a huge loss week for 2008
re-freeze has started along northern Canada and Greenland. Toogle between 21 and 22 august
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi
Much of this is in the eye of the beholder…
Re: markinaustin (#487),
Please clarify how what happened last year at this time has an effect on the present.
Mike Jennings 484
Good prediction!
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6734#comment-352624
Don’t mean to boast.
VG
True, but that refreeze may be a slow one as surface temp anomalies for the Canadian Arctic are expected be well on the plus side for the coming week:
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
Interestingly the above modellers average an outlook of BELOW 2008 in their latest August guesstimates. But it claims to be based on July data, which had a very rapid melt rate.
It was a joke !!!! OMG…
To clarify, I read this site everyday for my own benefit and a guess that I have no “expertise” in climate would be accurate. However, the back and forth on icebreakers was humorous and then downright silly, so I attempted a joke. Since quite a few here are wound rather tight I shall refrain from “joke-making” in the future and will revert to my lurker status.
But then again, you never know..
Two boats of Beluga Shipping GmbH will make the first commercial trip without ice breaker through the Northeastern passage… So I guess it’s open.
Difficult to see any sign of the predicted “slowing down” of 2009 with a 70,000+ loss!
Re: Flanagan (#493),
Flanagan. We have been recently talking about the NW passage then you throw this one in. Are you trying to start another bun fight betwen Phil and Shawn about the North East passage? This was the fitrst Non Russian trip not the first ever commercial trip.
“Due to global warming, the passage is now nearly ice free for a few short weeks in the summer. Two of these three Beluga vessels will be the first non-Russian commercial vessels to transit the entire passage.
The three ice-class 12,744 deadweight-ton ships are carrying Russian ice pilots to assist the ships’ masters and relying on data from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg and ice reports from the University of Bremen, which is the city where Beluga Shipping is headquartered.”
Jon
Nice joke!
Tony Brown
They had a significant rain event at the “pole” cam site. Looks like it rained for at least two days and you can now see obvious ponding again where the ponds had frozen over before. So it looks like some stormy weather in the area the past day or so.
Tony: that’s not what Reuters says
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLL657934
Jon P
You got me and I thought I had a good nose for jokes. The problem I guess is that in this mad, mad world of ecoism anything is possible and therefore even a joke becomes a strong possibility. Sorry I missed it now could have said something really funny like yeh and they need a second icebreaker to tow them out of their own ice. ??
That Reuters article is bunk. Russian commercial shipping has been using the Northeast Passage (The Northern Sea Route Северного Морского Пути) regularly since the early thirties. Even a part of the prisoners for the Kolyma Labour Camps were sent “northabout”. In 1942 the destroyers Razyaryonny and Razumny went through east to west, which is remarkable since these were Type 7 destroyers, of italian construction and quite fragile.
These aren’t even the first german ships to go through the passage. In 1940, during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the german hilfskreuzer Komet went through eastwards 14.7-4.9, though they did need icebreaker assistance for two short stretches. A hilfskreuzer was a merchantman with concealed armament for commerce raiding, so while it was a warship, from a practical navigational point of view it was an ordinary freighter of 3827 BRT.
The captain later wrote a book about the cruise: Eyssen, R. 1960: Hilfskreuzer Komet, Kaperfahrt auf allen Meeren, Köhlers Verlagsgeschaft, Herford.
tty
thanks for putting things into a historical perspective.
Flanagan I’m sure you posted in good faith .Will Phil or Shawn seize the bait?
Tony Brown
Re: Tony Brown (#501),
OK
I will.
I am used to the rough and tumble world of the auto assembly plants.
This science stuff is quite feminine.
Not the first time commercial boats have crossed the NE Passage.
And Amundsen although not commercial did it with a small wooden boat. Desapite getting chewed up by a polar bear
1937
*Across the Pole is the Northeast Passage to China along the top of Norway & Russia. Sebastian Cabot initiated its search in 1553. Henry Hudson twice attempted a passage but it was not until 1879 that the route was navigated. Now Russia currently operates 160 freighters on summer schedules in the Northeast Passage’s more open but colder waters.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,770864-2,00.html
And today?
Even though we thought about waiting for better weather, we realised that we were forced to sail off. Becoming trapped by the ice against land is the last thing we want to happen!
When we attempted to find another safe harbour, we realised that the ice was on its way in everywhere. The only thing that remained was to try and continue northwards. Up towards Cape Chelyuskin.
We’ve had some very hectic hours. From the beginning, we thought that our journey through the ice would be smooth sailing. Of course, with quite a bit of ice, but always with the possibility to navigate through. On one occasion, it felt as if we were very close to entering ice-free water up towards Severnaya Zemlya. It was only about 200 metres ice between ice-free water and us. The ice map we had downloaded clearly shows that the northern sections are more ice-free. But 200 metres proved to be 200 metres too much. We were forced to turn back.
http://www.skinnarmo.com/
Cannot wait for the re-bound this year. based on last years 2008 Prediction: NH ABOVE anomaly for the first half year 2009-2010 re-bound.
see here
I hope they leave “The tale of the tape” on cryosphere but I bet they will remove it next year because it wont fit the story anymore. I’m amazed they haven’t removed the global ice graph one yet because it shows absolutely straight line!
BTW WUWT has some good news for the warmistas again. B Tisdale reckons ice melt will be closer to 2008 than 2005 due to winds etc.
Re: VG (#506), should be Jeff ID video (not B Tisdale sorry)
Two relatively high melt days on the run, wonder if it can keep it up like 2008?
Regards
Andy
Average ice loss for last 7 days is 60,468. Just barely ahead of 2008 at 58,504 and ahead of 2007 at 47,566 and ahead of all other years except 2004 at 73,281.
30 day average is 56,395 which is well behind 2008 at 72,635 and 2007 at 64,989, and only ahead of 2003 at 56,312 and 2006 at 51,880.
Weather forecasts seem to suggest a an influx of warm air particularly over the NW passage and also the Fram Straight all next week, with the colder conditions forming a dumbell bulging over Greenland and towards Siberia. Judging by MODIS it looks like melt on Greenland ice sheet is slowing down dramatically, with many of the melt ponds around the edge disappearing, and there may be more snow around the far northeast corner of Ellesmere Island. So I think the freeze is starting, in the coldest corners of the Arctic, but it still has a way to progress before it reaches the edge of the sea ice where it is still melting.
Today’s numbers are
8/23/2009 5737344 -85937 -60469 -56396
8/22/2008 5555156 -56250 -61138 -73906
8/23/2007 4908438 -40000 -47567 -64990
8/23/2006 6041563 -19687 -42522 -51880
8/23/2005 5883750 -17813 -30915 -57641
8/22/2004 6208594 -67031 -69174 -77818
8/23/2003 6482188 -37968 -22589 -56312
8/23/2002 6109688 -20468 -40201
So it looks like the “relatively high” melt actually has been the largest for the day – before correction at least. Remember the extents on Friday 21 (20 for 2008)
2009 5895781
2008 5656563
2007 5009531
2005 5907344
So the difference with 2008 went from 240k to 180k, with 2007 from 886 k to 828k and with 2005 from -11k to – 146k in just 3 days? In my sense this cannot be sign as a sign of slowing down, at any rate. As some have noticed, 2008 had a pretty strong week last year, with a 120k melt on Aug. 25 (!!!) What will determine the place of 2009 wrt to 2008 is, in my opinion, the date of minimum. Last year, it was pretty early (almost 15 days in advance) so if 2009 melts more slowly, but on a longer time scale…
I believe that since NASA has said that the 2007 low was due to winds, and also since we all here have seen JeffID’s fine video about wind and sea ice, it only makes sense that we drop the term, “Melt Day” since wind speed and direction is the proximate cause of the changes in sea ice.
Mike Bryant
Re: Mike Bryant (#512),
Not just winds, 2007 had an unusual number of clear sunny days and warmer temps.
NSIDC
” This summer’s weather did not provide the “perfect storm” for ice loss seen in 2007: temperatures were lower than 2007, although still higher than average (Figure 5); cloudier skies protected the ice from some melt; a different wind pattern spread the ice pack out, leading to higher extent numbers. ”
Regards
Andy
It is what it is. You can’t lobby Mother Nature with blog postings or influence her with “vibrations” positive or negative. 2009 is looking like another recovery year from an anomalous 2007.
crosspatch: two questions, then:
– I agree 2007 has an exceptional wind pattern. But then, what explains the decreasing ice trend between 1979 and 2006?
– Such wind patterns took place before, in the 80ies and 90ies. Than why didn’t we observe such large dips then?
Re: Flanagan (#514),
According to this graph there is no “trend” in global ice area until about 2004. We then see a fairly steady drop with what looks like a recovery starting in 2008 but not enough time on the line yet to tell. On the NH graph I don’t see much of a trend until a step down in 1997. That continues fairly flat until 2004 where it begins a general drop into 2007 and then what appears to be a recovery.
1997 corresponds with an exceptionally strong el nino event. The period of significant drop also corresponds with a period where both the PDO and NAO are positive. So I really don’t see anything to associate what is happening currently with anything scary. It looks to me like natural variation. And considering the reports from early in the 20th century when people were speculating that the entire ice cap might soon be gone in summer, it appears to have happened in the fairly recent past and indications are (though anecdotal in the older information) consistent with the notion of a 60-ish year cyclic bust of NH ice.
Oh, and I would favor “dispersal” over “melt” as I believe that better describes what is going on. It does certainly melt but once it reaches a certain state of weakness, the process gets accelerated by wind/wave action where it is broken up and blown to areas of warmer water. That process has been pretty well observed, particularly in 2007 when a huge amount of ice was blown out into the warmer Atlantic ocean. Had the ice stayed in the Arctic, I don’t believe we would have seen such a dramatic loss that year.
Has everyone here seen the video? Just wondering…
Here is the video that shows the entire satellite record… except the last few months:
@Flanagan: warmer ocean and warmer air caused the downtrend
ice vs AMO index: http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/195013/arcticamo.jpg
arctic HadCRUT temperatures: http://climate4you.com/images/MAAT%2070-90N%20HadCRUT3%20Since1900.gif
arctic satellite temperatures: http://climate4you.com/images/MSU%20UAH%20ArcticAndAntarctic%20MonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
Since AMO goes negative again, we will inevitably see ice recovery and return to climate of 60ties (at least).
Err, Juraj it is very courageous of you to go against all models, but I sincerely think they took such things into account you know. For the moment, a linear trend of the last 30 years would give a minimum extent of 5.6 million km2. We’re already so close I think we can safely say this year will confirm/augment the decreasing trend line.
Flanagan its time you gave up soon it will look quite silly. 2009-2010 ice re-build will devastate you. We will probably never hear from you (or “Phil”) again. Good luck and get a life
Sorry Flanagan I probably need to get a life too re ice goings on etc.
Point is we live too short a life too see “climate”,… its measured in 1000’s of years. Especially ice changes…My personal view is that the sun thing (dead sun) will start to kick in a major way in the next 3-5 years and we may see a mini ice age….
i am doing a project for ecology..
& i chose sea ice..
can someone tell me what a salary would be for them?
& the edcational backround they need..
please help me.
google isnt telling anything.
😦
Re: katie holmes (#522),
Hi Katie,
Good luck with your project. I think that your questions may need a little clarification.
can someone tell me what a salary would be for them?
To whom does them refer?
And the edcational backround they need..
Educational background to do what?
Sea Ice has attracted interest from a large number of scientific disciplines.
Today 2009 extent is now below the minimum’s for 2003, 4, and 6 but still above the minimums for 5, 7, 8 and the average. So we’re not going to see it any better than 4th lowest. Still looks like it may be in third.
Re: Mike Bryant (#512),
Which is why I’ve been using the terms “extent loss/gain” since it’s partly melt, compaction, or spreading.
Re: BarryW (#523),…Hmmm… We ICE
EXPERTS…cough…usually use “dispersion” instead of “spreading”…
but tnx, you lead me to this…what t..snip…well just google “ice
dispersion” page 1 result no 6 from physorg: “A new insight…” So
folks, “everything” is revolving some 10% faster now than 30 years ago,
not only in the Arctic and in the oceans…probably…?? So has IPCC
compiled any research of duration of periods of no wind, anybody??
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#527), the
second “link” is of course no real link…GWS…
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#528),
Maybe you should do something about your punctuation? Makes it easier to follow what you say too (although that could be just me finding it hard to follow).
Re: Neven (#529),
You are totally missing the joy of reading Staffan’s posts.
Until you realize he is drunk posting from an Acer webpad sitting in some Swedish bar surrounded by beautiful six foot pouting blondes, complaining that he won’t pay any attention to them, it will seem a bit incoherent.
Re: Neven (#529), neven, I’m awaitening
new research, another (syntetic) brain is to be delivered by…2021 or so…for
ME, not YOU!? Until then, “Finnegan’s Wake”…
Re: Staffan Lindstroem (#527),
Couldn’t think of the “ten dollar” word. Maybe I should use “aggregation” instead of compaction? [g]
Ice area increased for the third day in a row, total increase 0.157 Mm2. According to the CT regional graphs, the increase is in the Arctic Basin with the surrounding areas not changing much at all. That would appear to make at least some and possibly most of the loss of extent due to compaction rather than melting. According to Jeff Id’s video, the wind pattern has shifted, so perhaps ice that had been blown apart is now blowing back together. That would also imply that the extent reduction rate should slow soon.
“But then, what explains the decreasing ice trend between 1979 and 2006?”
Not sure but it seems to be a natural cycle. If that is the case, I would expect to see the ice starting a 30-ish year recovery soon, if we aren’t already. We don’t have the same observations from, say, 1945 to 1975 so I can’t say for certain.
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3420
Ocean temperatures uncorrelated with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. No warming in pipeline.
Re: Scott Lurndal (#532),
I was inclined to think this was another study that would just sink without trace, until I saw the authors.
“These shifts happened relatively abruptly,” says David Douglass, professor of physics at the University of Rochester, and co-author of the paper. “One, for example, happened between 1976 and 1977, right when a number of other climate-related phenomenona were happening, such as significant changes in U. S. precipitation.”
Douglass has written a number of sensible papers so this one might get some traction. We shall see.
Tony Brown
Hello crosspatch,
actually the decline began in the 50ies, which is not apparent in the graph you gave. “Eyeballing” is not enough – a linear regression would settle things for good
In the meantime the extent was revised and the loss is “only” -82656 km2.
See you all tomorrow!
Re: Flanagan (#534),
Possible it did begin its decline in the 1950’s. I just don’t have access to the same kind of data that I have from 1979 onwards to make an apples to apples comparison. But to give an example, there was more ice in the NH in 1986, 1987, and 1988 than there was in 1984 or 1985 if you look at the year overall. 1986 and 1987 were above the mean for practically the entire year. I don’t see any evidence of any steady decline. Fast forward to 1994 and we see another year where ice was above the mean for nearly all of the year. But in 1997 we see the step change where it goes to being below the mean for most of the year. But even that behavior stays pretty much flat until about 2004 when you see a very visible steady down trend that ends in 2007 and now appears to be recovering.
And while you are correct in that you can not rely on eyeball, you also should trend the entire block from 1979 go present, either. Trend from 1979 to 1997. Then trend from 1997 to 2004. Then trend from 2004 to 2007. If you attempt to make a trend line across the entire duration of the data, sure, you are going to get a “trend” line that goes down across the entire span of time. That doesn’t ice was declining across the entire span of time. Just means that the trend from start to finish was a decline.
I believe something very interesting is going to happen, though. I believe the 1979 to 2000 mean is actually low. That mean was formed during the climate step change that happened in 1976. I believe we stepped down from that sometime around 2006. It looked like ice was trying to make a recovery in 2006 if you notice that the ice area in the first half of the year spent more time above the -1 million km*km anomaly line than it did in 2006. And arctic temperatures were cooler in 2007 than they were in 2006. But the wind kicked in unusually strong from just the right direction to flush out a lot of ice.
It would be unsurprising to see ice well above the “average” in a couple of years if in fact we did step back down from whatever stepped up in 1976 and if the wind cooperates. There hasn’t been enough time elapsed since 2006, though, for me to place a wager on it, but I am leaning in that direction.
Re: Flanagan (#534),
Flanagan, just in case you do not realize it, that graph is not universely accepted as an accurate record of NH sea ice in the 20th century. In fact, the data source acknowledges the problems and that it may not be reliable. Furthermore, although the authors of the database did research a variety of sources, still ancedotal information does not confirm this estimate of historical ice.
“you also should trend the entire block from 1979 go present”
Meant should NOT trend the entire block. Because I see 4 different “trends” in there. Flat around mean, step down, decline, and recovery.
Slightly less loss in extent before correction than yesterday:
date extent(km2) difference EWMA rate(km2/day)
8/24/2002 6117188 7500 -46422.715
8/24/2003 6448125 -34063 -41811.87908
8/23/2004 6135313 -73281 -73275.03216
8/24/2005 5853125 -30625 -44515.62865
8/24/2006 6043438 1875 -44323.46047
8/24/2007 4875625 -32813 -54315.58311
8/23/2008 5500156 -55000 -66393.57016
8/24/2009 5672031 -68594 -59654.89882
The current extent is already below the minimum for 2003, 2004 and 2006 and will almost certainly be below 2002 in a day or two. Extent for 2008 dropped 270,000 km2 on 8/24-26 so unless 2009 does the same thing, the difference between 2009 and 2008 should increase sufficiently that it will be very unlikely that 2009 minimum extent will be lower than 2008. 2008 would have to have a below average loss to minimum to exceed the 2005 minimum.
Well Dewitt you got me on this one :0) You’re right: the next few days will be very interesting! Rightnow 2009 has come closer to 2008 (from 240k to 170k in 4 days) but 2008 had this incredible series of losses you mentioned.
Crosspatch: “Steady” decline does not mean that the extent each year n+1 is smaller than at year n. What you have to consider is the long-term tendency – this is why I find it strange to state after actually 1 year of “recovery” (2008 compared to 2007) that there is a robust trend behind.
Re: Flanagan (#541),
“Crosspatch: “Steady” decline does not mean that the extent each year n+1 is smaller than at year n. What you have to consider is the long-term tendency – this is why I find it strange to state after actually 1 year of “recovery” (2008 compared to 2007) that there is a robust trend behind.”
Hmm, I thought I was pretty careful to use the words “appears to” when I said “begins a general drop into 2007 and then what appears to be a recovery.” I didn’t mean to imply that I had any kind of “robust” anything. We are going to have to wait and see how it plays out but so far it “appears” that we might be seeing a recovery. 2007 was pretty low. 2008 was higher. So far this year is higher than 2008. Those are what I would consider an indication of a recovery, I am not going to predict the future, I am talking about the tape the way it looks right now.
I also said that if the drop was part of a natural cycle, that I would expect to see such a recovery. One would expect any “cycle” by the nature of “cycles” to exhibit cyclical behavior which means things will go generally in one direction for a time and then change and go generally in the other direction for a time. The most worrisome thing I have seen recently is a -0.86F degree/decade temperature change in the continental US over the past 10 years. Keep that up for 20 or 30 more years and you have some problems feeding people.
2007 probably wouldn’t have been so low without the wind conditions we saw that year but those things happen from time to time. Heck, it might even be fairly common, we don’t have enough data over a long enough period of time to know what “normal” really is. Oh, hey, check this out over at Anthony Watts’ blog.
Re: Flanagan (#540),
Same goes for 30 years, or 100 years…
Next 2-3 days will likely indicate the trend for the remainder of the 2009 ice shrinkage season. Should we remain at the 50,000+ p/day level, it means the possibility of a strong end to the season is likely. If it starts a steady decline then it is likely we are going to see a “normal” end game and 2009 will finish substantially ahead of 2007 and 2008. One more thing to consider when talking about Arctic Ice levels and the linear decline since the 70’s (when accurate measurements became possible)is that until very recently, we have had a simultaneous warm PDO and AMO. The PDO has turned and the AMO will shortly do so to a cool phase when it is likely to turn the Arctic ice decline into an increasing one based on what (admitedly) little we know of the years prior to the 70’s. Should those two things occur and we still continue a decline in Ice, then I will have to rethink my position on AGW some.
Re: Michael Jennings (#544),
“Should those two things occur [negative PDO & AMO] and we still continue a decline in Ice, then I will have to rethink my position on AGW some.”
Decline in ice is dependent upon cloud cover, wind direction, wind intensity, ocean currents, and soot. (Some would add underwater volcanic activity — but I am not convinced.) PDO & AMO could go negative and these attributes could continue, meaning a decline in ice. An increase in GMT by .5 degree (via AGW or otherwise) will not appreciably melt Arctic ice.
Well, I guess it’s time I request a good recipe for Crow… My “prediction” (AMSR-E, extent) of 5.8 to 6.0 was, as was pointed out to me at the time I made it, “in the clouds”! Someone had to take the high end though, and I took it. Oh well. Just playing the long odds. At least its just my shoddy reputation that has taken a hit. My wife has forbidden putting money on anything anymore… (One can imagine just how boring hockey is for me now)
I’ve been told that Crow is far easier to swallow beak first as the feathers won’t get stuck that way? Would a Stellar’s Jay do?
Cheers!
Re: INGSOC (#546),
If I might make a suggestion.
Actually, INGSOC, if you make that crow pie, I might share a slice with you. While not recalling posting anything publicly , I did mention to someone back in October of 2008 in private correspondence that “September 2009 ice extent may well rebound to above 2006 levels” which was based mainly on some persistent wind/pressure patterns that didn’t persist as long as expected and on the notion that we are now on an upswing of a cyclical pattern.
Re: crosspatch (#548),
I saw a Gordon Ramsey programme where he whipped up some “Rook pie” after blasting them out of a tree! As you are no doubt aware, rooks are crows. Still, I would find them a bit difficult to eat, as my mother mentioned just before passing that she wished to come back as a crow. (Probably because my father had hated them ever since they ate our whole summer’s supply of steaks while we were waiting on the Lund wharf for the water taxi to Savary Island. She found that quite amusing) But if I must, crow pie does sound tempting…
It is not, however, unreasonable to assume that there is a pattern of recovery beginning to take hold that time just might confirm. While my “prediction” was too high, I don’t believe I am wrong to expect an increase of ice for this years minimum. How much is now the question.
Cheers!
Back at the beginning of the melt season, I predicted 5.1 based on the idea of a partial recovery and fairly normal wind patterns. I’m still very hopeful that I’ll be close. I believe the prediction was on Lucia’s site. Most, if not all, of the other predictions were in the 4’s back then(if my memory is right).
Re: MikeP (#550),
That’s probably going to be a pretty good guess, as is my one of the NE and NW passages being open and so hengav having to eat crow pie 😀 My estimate for extent of 4.8 is likely to be too low by a ways though. There has been so many twist and turns this year who knows?
What does it tell us about AGW, not much, all it tells us is that we are regressing back to the downward trend from the outlier year of 2007. Until it regresses back to before 2000 then we can’t really conclude anything.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#553),
I agree that it tells little directly about AGW. There might be indirect links, but such have not been demonstrated and one is back to “who knows”. As far as regressing back to the trend, one has to be careful to say the trend since when. Clearly you’re talking about the trend since the beginning of the satellite record. Shorter term trends will, of course, give different answers. A “market technician” might say that we “broke through the falling tops line” back in 2008 thus establishing an uptrend. Such a market person would look for us to violate the “rising bottoms line” to call a reversal back to declining ice, which hasn’t happened yet.
IMHO trend lines, like market analysis, are not really appropriate ways of looking at a data set like this and are overused. One really does need to look for links to broader ocean/atmosphere variations and then follow those. What causes dispersive wind patterns to set up for protracted periods of time? What causes warmer or colder, fresher or saltier water to enter the Arctic? I hope that the interest in the Arctic over the coming decades will lead to much better understanding.
Re: MikeP (#548),
If I was going to predict it today, I’d pick 5.1M. I wish you the best of luck winning the cookies (or whatever the prize is this year).
I did a little back of the (R) envelope: 2008’s extent minimum was 4.707813 and it has -0.792343 left to go to that point. It’s right at the point where it takes a big drop. So if we say that 2009 will have the same loss we would see it end up at 4.879688. On the other hand, 2007 loses -0.621094 from now till its minimum of 4.254531, although it takes longer to reach. With that loss 2009 would wind up at 5.050937. Split the diff and you get 4.965312. 2008 has 17 days till its minimum so it’s averaging -0.04660841 a day. 2007 has 31 days till its minimum so it’s averaging -0.02003529 a day. Now if 2009 followed 2008’s average for the same time period as 2007 it would wind up at 4.22717.
So there’s a whopping big range of outcomes still to be had. I doubt if the loss is going to be any worse than those cases and I don’t think it will even be that bad, but still within the realm.
45,000 tonight….much more modest. is this the beginning of a slow down or just an anomalous entry?
Re: markinaustin (#556),
Magic Eightball says: Yes
At this point in the year odds are good it is a general slowdown.
Re: crosspatch (#557),
This pretty much cements 2009 as falling between 2005 and 2008 unless we all of the sudden see some massive melt days again. 2008 lost over 200,000 sq km in consecutive days this time last year. Given the ice concentration this year, its unlikely we’ll see a dramatic melt like that this year. Tonight alone already gives 75,000 sq km to 2008.
Re: NEwxIce (#558),
I wouldn’t be quick to reach that conclusion. There might be an evil wind brewing.
Re: markinaustin (#556),
for comparison I smoothed the average change in extent and got -0.01867 for yesterday so 2009 is still losing at a much higher rate.
The highest loss rate was -.05 for the average so we’re well past that point, and the smoothed average goes positive on day 261.
Re: BarryW (#565),
The extent anomaly from the 2003-2008 average is indeed becoming more negative.
The area anomaly took a big jump in the negative direction today, -0.18 Mm2 drop in area from the day before. That dropped the concentration right back to 2008 level.
The jet stream is doing some wacky things right now. Last years persistent cold air mass that hung over northern Canada is already taking shape for a run this year.
Re: INGSOC (#559),
The persistence of that air mass seems somewhat fickle, though. I had expected it to be a little more persistent than it turned out to be.
But everyone is so interested in ice minima yet ignores maxima. The past two years have seen maxima at about the same level as 2004. The lowest max in recent years was in 2006. Early 2006 is when I believe we “stepped down” from whatever it was we “stepped up” on in 1976 or so. Since then we have seen improvements in the ice max. 2009 looks like a year which will further validate my cycle notion but we still need to run a few years to see if it holds up.
That we can recover to such good maximum levels from such low levels implies to me that we are going to see some decent recovery in the minimum as the proportion of old ice increases again.
Re: crosspatch (#561),
I have always thought that if we were to see the effect of AGW we should look for Trends in the Winter Max ice extent, as “weather” and the “Sun” is not so much of a causal mechanism in the Winter.
I suggested this several times on this site and others, but received the usual put downs, after all what do I know! All the expert predictions about 09 summer ice extent seem to be inaccurate , so perhaps to be considered as “knowing something” I will have to make inaccurate predictions.
Re: UK John (#564)
Winter ice extent and area are not really a good measure of long term trends. Ice volume would tell us a lot more, but there is no direct measure of thickness over the whole area. The closest thing I can think of as a measure of the trend in volume would be the change in area of multi-year ice. Multi-year ice that is not near the edge of the pack should be thicker than first year ice. 2008 and now very likely 2009 have summer minima below the trend line because so much multi-year ice was swept out of the Arctic Basin in 2007.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#568),
Did you notice the extent line has been dropping steeply for this time of year in the last few days. The weather pattern of 2007 is strong right now.
Re: Jeff Id (#570),
Yes, but it hasn’t fallen off a cliff like 2008. In fact, the loss in extent today was less than the 2003-2008 average for this DOY. I’m hoping that Arctic ROOS is showing the correct area trend, as they are still a couple of days ahead of CT, and the big drop in area at CT yesterday will not be repeated.
Here we go!
8/25/2009 5627188 -44843 -58571 -53906
8/24/2008 5426875 -73281 -59151 -72703
8/25/2007 4847656 -27969 -45513 -61364
8/25/2005 5852500 -625 -24442 -54828
I only put those years which are of interest for us. 2008 is beginning its impressive series of large losses, which might annihilate the gain 2009 took over the last days. 2005 is drifting away…
Funny thing is, that several times it has been said “next week/next few days will be decisive” and after that, the result is just as unpredictable as before, so next week/several days will be decisive.. 🙂 my qualified bet is 5,000,001 km2.
An attempt to update the top chart: http://www.letka13.sk/~jurinko/jaxaice.gif
xls data for whoever, who can replicate smoothing instead of simple Excel trendline: http://www.letka13.sk/~jurinko/jaxaice.xls
Just a thanks to everyone for not referring to these late extent numbers (which are so dependent on wind speed/direction) as “Melt Days”.
That term is clearly incomplete and misleading.
Mike Bryant
Re: Mike Bryant (#567),
How about the word “ablation” instead of melt?
Similar to 2007 at moment, but in 2007 it was blowing from Siberia to Canada. Now it is blowing from Canada to Siberia. As the long term tendancy is from Siberia to Canada, I would guess that the current trend of blowing in the opposite direction may be less stable and likely to turn around, or at least weaken as it is opposite to the long term trend. Might make for some high melt/ablation/reduction of ice in the NW passage for the next few days though.
Re: Michael Hauber (#571),
If you don’t mind can you tell me where you get your wind direction info from?
Canada weather office analysis charts at http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/analysis/index_e.html
And north hemisphere GFS runs at http://wxmaps.org/pix/hemi.fcst.html
The GFS models do include a windstream product, but it seems to be fairly screwy near the pole and I ignore it. For wind direction I look at the synoptics and assume the wind flows along the isobars.
2009 5592500 -35156
2008 5305313 -121562
2007 4818438 -29218
2006 5993750 -37500
2005 5829688 -23437
hmm….that’s 3 days in a row with less melt than the day before. 35,000 isn’t tiny, but it is reasonably modest. putting it in the middle for the past 5 years.
thoughts?
Doesn’t look too bad from this angle.
Re: crosspatch (#577),
If that graph is correct, I would suggest a minima date of Sept 11. It is really hard at this time of year to judge whether any decrease is due to ice compacting, melting, or a combination of both and how much of each. Looking at the averages is all we can reasonably do but each year is an entity unto itself and not necessarily subject to what has happened before. (witness 2007)
Back when my wife was pregnant with our daughter, the Dr. told us that not all labor pains were real and some would be “false labor” and to drink a couple ounces of wine to help determine which it was. Since we have had a couple of periods where it has slowed and then sped up again like “false labor”, I plan on drinking several bottles of wine to help me determine which it is, real or false. After all it is Doctors orders.
Re: Michael Jennings (#584),
I was going to go with 11 September for the date of minimum but decided “what the heck” and pushed it three days earlier. This is just for fun.
I think it won’t drop off the cliff like Dewitt accurately described 2008 did but there are still some melt days to come. It now seems the wind is blowing Russia -> Canada given the current location of High and Low pressures up there again, at least from the maps I just looked at. I still favour the 5.1-5.3 range at this point. That means I will be up to 0.5 out for the guess at the start of the year which is nothing to shout about.
I wonder whether we will have a late dip like some years or whether we will see an early freeze like Shawn estimates? Anyone fancy guessing the day minima will occur on? I think I will go for the 13th September.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW (#578),
Put me down for 08 September.
Re: AndyW (#578),
What the heck, I’ll go for September 16th, right between 2008 and 2007. I initially guesstimated that minimum extent would fall between 2007 and 2008 which will probably be wrong also.
Re: AndyW (#578),
I think the JAXA satellite is off in that it is missing the lower percentage ice.
I still believe there will be an early freeze since there was much less heat in the Artic this year.
But you can count on a sudden hard freeze, at least according to JAXA since they are only picking up the more solid ice. Their sensor is out of whack and it will show a sudden freeze.
Using the standard deviation of the mean extent for 2003 to 2008 and subtracting the average loss to the average minimum (on 9/16 if anyone cares), the three sigma lower bound for the calculated value is now greater than the 2008 minimum. The current value is 5.17 Mm2. At this point in 2008 using the same method, the calculated minimum was less than 0.2 Mm2 high (4.86 compared to 4.70 Mm2).
Re: DeWitt Payne (#580),
I love it when you talk dirty. Yeah baby!.
Regards
Austin
Agree, Andy… So nice to hear a clean phrase like ,”the average loss to the average minimum”, compared to the much less accurate, but more emotional, “melt days”. Thanks for the dispassionate comment.
Who here in this forum made a prediction in July?
C’mon, raise your hands.
All this predictioning of low points now here in late August is about as difficult as putting a hockey puck into am enpty net from inside the crease.
I’d like to know what everyone here predicted in July.
i am going to go with September 15th…..feels like we could be slowing way down now (with a few more surprises i am sure) and i think the minimum will be 5.15
still by 2 weeks from now, we should be seeing very small meltoffs….which to me means we are about 400,000 from our minimum roughly
VERY small correction to yesterdays total: 5,591,875 km2 is the new one.
Just for the record: 😉
8: crosspatch
11: Michael Jennings
13: AndyW
15: markinaustin
16: Neven
Neven,
I still think that the winds will be delivering some more surprises this season. Can you put me down for September 18th? I will see your `16′ and raise you `2′. 🙂
Roy
You guys are pathetic. Every time I look through a sea ice thread it always turns into some kind of bet. They should rename the thread Sea Ice Casino.
Put me down for September 5th. I got a hunch.
The 14th looks free, so I’ll grab that.
All,
Thank you so much for a lively ice thread. I’m a daily lurker and infrequent commenter. Thanks for keeping the discussion mostly on topic. The food fights become a distraction though, and the opinions and indignations are tiresome (I’m talking to you, not the other guy).
I’ve watched the 2009 NH ice extent appear to ride the slipstream of 2008 for the last eight months. 2009 has taken a few tentative steps away from the prior year’s trajectory but always came back in line. Is 2009 ready to take of on its own, or is the 2009 extent going to drop down to 2008 levels again?
I downloaded the JAXA data and looked at the daily changes. You can see pretty clearly that there is an inflection point around July 21. That’s when the slowdown started and it is very much in line with prior years.
Like most of you, I predicted the exact behavior we’re seeing. Okay, maybe I should specify a little bit more specific: the observed NH sea ice extent is not inconsistent with my never-announced prediction. In anticipation of some delicious crow pie, I’ll stick my neck out and put my prediction on record. I’m thinking that 2009 will remain above 2008 for the remainder of the ablation season (how’s that Mike Bryant? 🙂 The minimum will be on September 17 at 5,085,000 km2.
Put me down for two tanks of liquid nitrogen and the 9th of September for minimum day.
8: crosspatch
9: Jon P
11: Michael Jennings
13: AndyW
14: MikeP
15: markinaustin
16: Neven
17: Earle Williams
18: Roy1915
We haven’t discussed a prize yet… 😉
Re: Neven (#594),
How about an autographed picture of Steve?
adjective
1 ablated
removed or taken away by cutting or erosion or melting or evaporation; “my ablated appendix”
2 ablated
made smaller or less by melting or erosion or vaporization; “the rocket’s ablated head shield”
Ablation is pretty good. It leaves out the wind effects, but still much better than “melt”. I still like change in extent better since it could actually increase… But I think I’ve made my point. Thanks everyone from a plumber that likes precise language.
Mike
Sea ice minima guesses? Hmmm, I’ll go for the 10th.
Rats all the dates my taro cards say to use are taken. I’ll take the 12th.
To stay in character, I’ll take the 28th of August. At least I’ll have a few hours of hope…
(Again, I have used the rectal extraction method in choosing this date. All rights reserved)
Cheers!
22,000…..this is now the 4th day in a row with a lower meltoff than the day before. could this be coming to an end soon, or is that just a very small data sample? needless to say, it IS a small sample, but only time will tell if it also happens to be coming to an end for the year.
if i am right we have 19 days more of melt and then we reach our minimum. if that is true, and we are already seeing sub-30,000 melt days, then even if every day averaged 30,000 we will only see 570,000 more melting for a about 5.0 million…..but i think it will be higher than that.
They had snow in Labrador City, frost in New England yesterday. It looks like an early Winter in some parts of the world.
yeah…drudge had a link to frost in new hampshire (is that the same one?)….could get very interesting if we do have an early freeze and therefore a longer freeze….next year’s minimum could look very impressive if it keeps growing at the rate of 400,000 per year. that would put us at 5.5 million…which would bring it back to right below the “other” 5 years of the last 8.
Re: markinaustin (#606),
I got the frost info from here and saw the snow thing on Climate Depot, maybe, don’t remember.
Mike Bryant,
If we have to use ablation days for melt days what do we we use for freeze days?
I don’t consider melt emotive at all, just a simple and quick way of writing about the process up there, in similar fashion freeze up or freeze days is not emotive either. As long as people know what you mean and is accurate (melting is still occuring looking at the current temps).
Regards
Andy
“Melt” implies to many people something about temperature when in most cases “ablation” is more dependent on sunlight, winds, currents, and waves. “Melt” implies one variable while “ablation” encompasses many. So when you say you had a higher “melt”, most people would assume you had a higher average temperature, which may not be the case. 1960, for example, had higher arctic temperatures for the entire summer season than 2007 did. So did 1979. I don’t like using the word “melt” because the average person will assume that if you have higher melt, you must have had higher temperature or if you had less melt, you had lower temperatures and that just isn’t always the case.
I prefer ablation and accumulation because it gives a more accurate notion of what is really going on.
There’s no need for polysyllabic words. Loss and gain say exactly the same thing and use less bandwidth. I’m always annoyed when a call comes over the net at the race track that car number xx impacted the tire wall. Hit says the same thing and doesn’t bring wisdom teeth to mind.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#610),
I’m with you DeWitt. But whatever you do, don’t look up the word “impaction.”
so yesterday’s melt was just downsized to 14,000. this is getting interesting indeed.
so that is 5 days in a row with a smaller melt off than the day before. now i realize that this can’t continue, but i suspect it does indicate that the melting season is coming to a relatively quick end. i am liking september 15th more and more and it may even come earlier!
It would be very satisfying if every single one of the supposed “expert” forecasts in the July outlook report were low. Oh well, we’ll know soon enough.
Re: Daryl M (#613),
None of the models in the earlier June report predicted higher than 5.0 Mm2.
Click to access SIO_JuneReport_Chart.pdf
That was updated in July to the forecasts shown in the graphic at the top of this thread with the highest prediction 5.2 Mm2
I’ll take 9/10 and 5.29 Mm2. That’s the minimum date for the 1979-2000 NSIDC average extent and the loss in the same average from this DOY. That also puts the minimum above all the July predictions in the graphic in the original post.
CT area gained 0.026 Mm2 today. Area usually reaches minimum before extent so I’ll say 9/7 and 3.5 Mm2 for area according to CT.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#602),
You may be correct about satellites underestimating concentration below 50%, but it would be the same every year so the year to year comparisons should still be valid. Concentrations below 15% are ignored by convention.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#614),
Like everything I don’t think it is that simple.
Read the posts by kiwistonewal in this thread. He has tremendous knowledge on the subject.
http://solarcycle24com.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=346&page=96
Re: Shawn Whelan (#623),
Of course it’s not that simple. In reality, sea ice, which is a subset of climate / weather, is so complex, even if all of the variables and their interactions are ever understood (which I doubt they will be), it would take too much processing power to model them, even if it was possible to capture their initial state, which it is not. Even if the satellites gave perfectly accurate measurements, so what? There are so many other variables that are not captured. Interpolation, extrapolation, whatever. They are all guesses of one form or another.
Re: Daryl M (#625),
This is the subject.
You may be correct about satellites underestimating concentration below 50%, but it would be the same every year so the year to year comparisons should still be valid. Concentrations below 15% are ignored by convention.
Your rant has nothing to do with the subject of my post.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#633),
I’ve downloaded the pixel by pixel data processed by the ASI algorithm (Uni-Hamburg, Spreen and Kaleschke). There are in fact very few pixels with concentrations less than 40% or so. There’s also a problem with pixels that include land as well as water so those are either masked out or the concentration in the nearest water only pixel is adjusted. But again, so what? If the extent and corresponding area of concentration over 50% is shrinking or expanding do you not think that reflects what’s actually happening to the total ice area and extent if you had a perfect measure? And of course we don’t have a perfect measure for anything. We have to do the best we can with what we have. There’s a link on the Uni-Hamburg sea ice page to the paper by Spreen, et.al. describing the implementation and validation of the ASI algorithm. You might want to read that before so casually denigrating satellite ice data.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#636),
You might want to read that before so casually denigrating satellite ice data.
Actually I was being nice.
I did not casually denigrate satellite ice data.
Just pointed out that the JAXA sat data is likely very inacurate.
Just to be clear, I was predicting a 08 September minimum for area, not extent.
Re: crosspatch (#615),
Well, to be even clearer, I will take a win either way 🙂 but I was looking at area data when I made my decision. Are these daily numbers reported here area or extent?
Just to be clear, if minimum area OR extent is reached on the 9th than I WIN !!!!
Well to be the clearest, you all should concede now and pay me the $100.00 each that you will ultimately owe me anyway…
lol Thanks for the lol I needed that today….
Sea Ice Extent on 9/9/09 5.2785 km2 and that will be the minimum…
Back to my lurking status and off to store to buy me a Lotto ticket for the 9/9/09 drawing…
8: crosspatch
9: Jon P
10: Michael (+ DeWitt Payne)
11: Michael Jennings
12: BarryW
13: AndyW
14: MikeP
15: markinaustin
16: Neven
17: Earle Williams
18: Roy1915
We’ll know in a few days if INGSOC is the spectacular winner. 🙂
Re: Neven (#620),
If it is not too late, I will take September 7.
I based my wishcast on JAXA extent, and that is the metric upon which I will claim that my prdiction is right and true. Unless of course a different metric shows a minimum on 9/17. In that case that would clearly be the one true metric by which to judge the health of the NH sea ice.
Actually I’ll take as a win any minimum NH sea ice extent that exceeds my prediction. Not a win with respect to my predictive skill, but a win in the sense that it should put to rest any notion that the Arctic sea ice is in a “death spiral”.
This is extent Crosspatch but either way your 8th may end up being best guess of all, after all you are at the extremity which will nicely gather up anything before, Can I change to the 7th? 😀
Trust Dewitt to pop up with a nice way of describing it quantity wise with no qualitative subjection by putting forward loss and gain. That’s the same as higher and lower of course and no subjective spin. You may catch me saying freeze in the months ahead though I fear! You know, when the ice maxima is due to the wind blowing in a certain way rather than it being very cold in winter up there 😉
Regards
Andy
Andy,
You crack me up… I’m glad this stuff is not taken so seriously here… I think everyone here is pretty much on the same page… We know that the ice will do as it does, and no one really knows what that will be. Thanks to everyone who uses loss and gain as a more sensible approach to what is really happening. I always enjoy every comment, even the emotive ones. Of course you all know that as the ice increases, the only sensible description will be “unprecedented refreeze”.
Thanks to all,
Mike the plumber
21,000 day. a bit more than last night, but still very modest indeed. and the divergence from 2008 is starting to look quite sharp. if this continues it will look very dramatic indeed. is 1,000,0000 over 2007’s low possible? i think it may be. i guess that would be 5.3 million?
Re: markinaustin (#628),
2007 was 4.25 mil, so the loss will need to be about 300,000 sq km or less from here on out to end 1 million higher, which is definitely possible, but probably unlikely.
Re: NEwxIce (#629),
14 more days of 21,000 loss would put us pretty much exactly there. If 21,000 is the top end of the remaining daily loss this season, it is not only likely, but assured assuming a season ending around 11 September or so.
Re: NEwxIce (#629),
Things could fall apart tomorrow, but…. The 2002-2008 average loss for 18 days to minimum is 381,000 km2. But that was dragged down by 2007 and 2008. Removing those two years from the calculation reduces the average loss to 296,000 km2, so it’s not all that unlikely, especially considering that we may be less than 18 days from the minimum. Even if you include 2007 and 2008, 381,000 is still less than 1 standard deviation below the average. So based on those numbers, which of course may be completely unrelated to what happens in the next 3 weeks, the odds would be about even.
That should have been 300,000 is less than 1 standard deviation.
Not indicative of anything other than we may see one soon, the first positive days:
2005: 9/2/2005 +20938
2006: 8/24/2006 +1875
2007: 9/1/2007 +3907
2008: 9/4/2008 +2812
Then there is DMI… I know, they cut off at 30% concentration rather than 15%, but it is interesting that they are showing a flattening.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Beers!
Yesterdays total ended up 5,554,219 km2.
Is the northeast passage open yet?
Re: Michael (#639),
First American yacht to ever transit the Northwest Passage in the West to East direction is through.
http://www.aroundtheamericas.org/story/Crew+Log+76+-+Pond+Inlet%2C+Baffin+Island+
That said, if you read through the blog, the Northwest Passage being “open” might be an overstatement.
Re: Michael (#639),
Both of the yachts that have sailed through it this year made it through, RX II has had bureaucratic problems and have been diverted to a Russian port in the Bering strait to sort things out which has put the kibosh on their attempt to circumnavigate the Arctic in one season.
Re: Phil. (#652),
To say that “they made it through” is perhaps a little bit premature. “Explorer of Sweden” still has about 1500 km to go, and according to their blog the weather forecast is very bad.
Re: Phil. (#652),
The subject is Arctic ice.
There will be an increase in the minimum ice level in 2009 for the second year in a row. The consensus of science is wrong again.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#660),
“There will be an increase in the minimum ice level in 2009 for the second year in a row. The consensus of science is wrong again.”
Although “not very accurate” is probably a better description than wrong, I have to say Shawn makes a very good point if you look at the July report above. July was not very far away either. I originally chose 4.8 and then when the July report came out said 5.1+ yet they all seem to be a lot lower, even at that later stage. Now I am a big fan of Arctic scientists and think they get a lot of knocks which they don’t deserve (it’s not a big AGW conspiracy) but I will be very interested in reading their comments on why they, so it seems now, estimated so low.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#663),
One thing to remember, those predictions are based on the NSIDC September average data, not JAXA. It happens that the JAXA minimum was quite close to the NSIDC number, but that correlation may not continue.
15,000 kilometers today…..21,000 may turn out to be a high melt mark…..only time will tell. one things for certain, the melt has been quite modest the past 4 days!
this could be a fun finish!
For those that may be interested
http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/eng/CCG/Home
The Canadian Coast Guard is under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I am going to find out if they will share any pertinent info on NWP operations.
Cheers!
5.3 million seems too high to me, though remotely possible.
It has flattened out, but there’s another step down in the making, middle of the coming week. Then it will flatten out for good just above 5 million.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#650),
Not doubting you Pierre but where are you getting your information on a step down next week?
Welcome home Steve!
Re: Michael Jennings (#651),
Based on what has happened in previous years, it pretty much has to reduce a bit more before the minimum.
Re: Daryl M (#655),
Moderator, I messed up the block quote on my previous post. This is what I meant to say:
Re: Michael Jennings (#653),
Are there any cases of a minimum of extent occuring in August? Based on what has happened in previous years, it pretty much has to reduce a bit more before the minimum.
Re: Daryl M (#656),
Not recently. The minimum in 1980 was on 8/30, 8/31 for 1988 (NSIDC data).
Adjusted total adds 6,000 to the loss for yesterday and the new total is 5,533,906 km2.
Average temperatures above 80N latitude have taken quite a plunge recently and are at “average” for this time of year according to DMI.
Re: crosspatch (#659),
It is now at a temperature where salt water starts to freeze. This will be interesting. How much open water exists above 80N right now that could freeze and counter the melt at more southern latitudes?
Once again the JAXA graph has taken a swing towards the majority of the yearly traces and away from 2008, though looking at Bremen’s concentration images there seems a lot to go soon before the start of the reverse-ablation season gets underway. Mind you next day it goes purple again showing high concentrations, I can never quite work that out.
I still have no idea how this year will pan out, and considering we are now almost in September that is amazing. Got to say Steve and others estimates are looking better and better and even 5.1 looks ambitious now.
Also, at the start of the year I wondered about a circumnavigation possibilities and it does seem that to get through 1 seems ok, but then to get quickly across to the other whilst it is still open is pretty tricky, at least for a sailboat.
Regards
Andy
Shawn, Andy:
Before saying that the consensus was wrong, maybe you should say exactly to what you kind of consensus you are referring to. The ensemble mean of the different long-term models predicted for 2009 something around 7 million km2 for September. With 5.5 we would still be in the very low limit of model projections
Moreover, it’s already below the linear projection mentioned in the original post by Steve.
Those who might be wrong this time are more the “meteorologists” of Arctic sea ice, trying to make shorter-term predictions.
Anyway, here we go:
8/30/2009 5500938 -32968 -34241 -48484
8/29/2008 5116094 -47031 -62723 -71807
8/30/2007 4616094 -48750 -41763 -58640
8/30/2006 5953594 -3750 -12567 -39656
8/30/2005 5662344 -65781 -31629 -46119
8/29/2004 5951406 -20157 -36741 -68734
8/30/2003 6325938 -11875 -22321 -46864
The loss was a bit higher than the last days, but still not really impressive. Note that the gap with 2005 is now much less than it used to be! We’re really getting close to the minimum now – we’ll know for sure in about 2 weeks. Some years started having their first positive figures!
Re: Flanagan (#665),
I’m referring to the minima estimates Steve has put at the top of the page. Dewitt makes a good point in regard to this, however it still will be interesting what they say, also the soon to be released September update from NSIDC.
Regards
Andy
Re: Flanagan (#665),
The upside down Arctic ice hockey stick graph.
It’s a joke?
No, I was talking about Serraze predicting an ice free North Pole and all the other wrong predictions of low ice level that the consensus of science gleefully put forward.
Remember when the Polar ice was the leading indicator of AGW?
Re: Flanagan (#665),
I would expect the consensus to refer to people not models. The models are used as a crutch. Then you have experts like Serraze and Barber who ignore the “consensus” and the models and predict 2008 to 2013 for ice free, and we have that on paper.
http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html
for those interested listen to the second hour section about 21 minutes in. The lady concerned makes some interesting observations about the Arctic, El Nino, etc. If not interested do not listen.
regards
Re #665
An interesting aspect of the plot (see link in #665) is the drop, or possible break point, which occurred in the “observations” in the late 1970s. That was the time when measurement techniques changed from pre-satellite methods to satellite. I wonder how they made that splice of techniques.
Daryl M No. 656
I’m merely checking the Arctic weather maps. There’s a lot of potential melt in the western Canadian Arctic. But the Siberian Arctic (Laptev and Kara Seas) appear to be gaining ice now. So it’s possible that we may have already hit the bottom, or darn close to it.
Still I expect a few more 50-60K melt days later this week, and bottom out just above 2008, as predicted here, July 28.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6734#comment-352145
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#668),
You must be going for a pretty late minimum combined with a steep melt then if you are going for 5.0 million sq km min. We would need to lose more ice extent from here on out than 2008 did to reach 5.0.
Re: Pierre Gosselin (#668),
I compared the daily maps at Cryosphere Today for 8/29/2008 and the area minimum on 9/9/2008. The big loss in area was on the Russian side of the Arctic Basin north of the Kara and Barents Seas. The way that happens that fast is for a big slug of warm water to come up from the Atlantic. In 2008, that started in early August. I don’t think you can predict that happening based on air temperatures and wind directions. If the AMO is indeed declining into a negative phase, the probability of additional warm water incursion this year is lower than last year. We’ve already had less loss of area in that region this year compared to 2008.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#675),
Indeed a influx of warm Atlantic water seems unlikely just now. A friend of mine returned from a trip to Svalbard today. The last several nights had been frosty and the first snow was falling as he left Longyearbyen. Not exceptional for August 31 on Svalbard, but certainly not indicative of any incursion of warmth either.
Huge 13,000 adjustment for yesterday brings the loss to 45,000 which is a big day for this date (as compared to the average) and the new total is 5,487,656 km2
Hi there,
I prefer to refer to “consensus” in terms of models/scientific projections. Serreze just made some fancy headline that’s all and wasn’t representing the Arctic research community. Sensationalism should have nothing to do with science.
Listen fellas, there isn’t yet any reliable analytical method out there for predicting ice melt. The ice modelers mentioned above prove that, as their projections are way off. A lot of this is simply crystal ball and gut feeling. I’m sticking to my previous comment.
Flanagan:
“I prefer to refer to “consensus” in terms of models/scientific projections”
i think the “publicized consensus” of the death spiral was not less scientific, given the strong feedback mechanisms in the arctic.
the consensus you refer to is actually worse at it does neither include the strong actic feedback nor the opposite effect of the change of the ocean oscillation. just a double error, that cancels mostly for this year.
whoa! 47,000 melt day….that’s fairly significant…..just when i thought it was going to fade to nothing.
August 31, two thirds of the summer season. Summer to date averages:
2002 7660753
2003 7809650
2004 7858390
2005 7258833
2006 7231479
2007 6483390
2008 7175512
2009 7206573
OLS linear trend -125027 km2/year. This trend will become more negative by the end of the summer because 2008 and 2007 drop faster than 2002-2006. So even if 2009 is higher than 2008, it won’t fully compensate. The trend should end up less negative than 2002-2008 of -191886 km2/day. But 2010 and 2011 will have to continue to increase in extent and so on or a nearly open Arctic ocean in less than 50 years is still in the cards.
On the other hand if we take the trend for the last three years and extrapolate it we find that by 2040 the Arctic Ocean will be completely frozen over even in late summer….
well….last night’s melt was corrected up to only 40,000 so that’s something. still, i don’t want to see any 30,000 plus melt days this late. i am ready for a slowing down to nothing!
Re: markinaustin (#681),
Looks like you got another one tonight.
Re: Phil. (#692),
This race is over unless it somehow doesn’t melt off more than 100k to finish with higher extent than 2005, which is very unlikely.
2008 is nearly 400,000 sq km behind 2009 for extent now. Looks like almost a lock to finish between ’05 and ’08.
Re: markinaustin (#682),
Looks VERY likely after the adjustment, that it will be below 30,000 but we will see.
8/31/2009 5447188 -40468 -32120 -48786
8/30/2008 5090000 -26094 -58593 -70453
8/31/2007 4607031 -9063 -38370 -57234
8/31/2006 5974688 21094 -9821 -37307
8/31/2005 5650938 -11406 -28883 -43401
8/30/2004 5932188 -19218 -29017 -66343
8/31/2003 6282188 -43750 -23705 -44494
8/31/2002 5834844 -21406 -40334
So, to summarize: after correction, 2009 has the second largest loss of the day – but 2008 still has some strong days to come. 2009 kind of remains approx 350k over 2008. At this pace, 2009 would be at about 4.8 at its minimum. I really hope it will, because it would be in the range of predictions I proposed before :0)
Re: Flanagan (#682),
We’d have to see a late season melt greater than anything on the jaxa record to finish below 5.0
So I think thats probably out of the cards (though I guess anything is possible)
Flanagan,
“…predictions I proposed before”
Where? When?
D. Payne,
Since when is longterm sea ice trend linear? tty illustrates the very weakness of the linear bahaviour you propose.
Peculiarly, it appears climate “scientists” and sea ice modelers are drawing straight lines 50 and 100 years out as well.
Slightly off topic here and to do with Climate change rather than ice change, which is normally what I like to see written about here, so I hope you and Steve doesn’t mind but I thought this was a very good piece written from a person associated with the BBC who are very pro AGW on their reports (quantity wise at least)
BBC LINK
Good reading.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#683),
Excellent article, Andy. Thanks for that.
Whether climate change gets all or most of the attention of politicians and MSM or not, what really should be emphasized in my opinion is that all global problems today and in the near future have a common root cause: overpopulation combined with a predominant economic concept of endless growth within a finite system. If you solve that (firstly by making people conscious of this root cause) you solve most global problems. In that sense AGW is perhaps the best poster boy. But it’s a shame that politicians use it for propaganda without really addressing it. Not that they could disobey their masters’ (the ruling plutocracy as well as the junkie masses) orders.
Sorry about the off-topic.
Er…
2005, 2007 and 2008 all had their first positive accumulations in the coming 3 days. What will 2009 do? 😉
Re: AndyW35 (#684),
You’re kidding?! It’s just a usual junk post listing the usual litany of undersubstantiated environmentalist complaints. I’d say more but Steve wouldn’t allow it. I just don’t want the only voices concerning that post to be those saying it’s great.
Re: Dave Dardinger (#691), I’m with you Dave.
2nd graph he claims a thousand fold increase over the normal extinction rate. (What’s normal?) After a quick scan of what is left of my memory I can’t name one during my 60 odd years.
3rd graph he claims human population isn’t even currently sustainable. So why is population still rising?
He seems to spout whatever he thinks people will uncritically accept. Maximum hyperbole, minimum thought.
Re: Bob Koss (#694),
I argued the extinction rate thing on another site long ago. It’s bogus, but if anyone want’s to not be snipped, take it to unthreaded and maybe Steve will let it pass.
Re: Bob Koss (#695),
Re extinctions during the last 60 years. Your memory is indeed defective, I remember about 20 extinctions of birds alone during this period including one in the continental US (Bachmanns Warbler). Many more species have probably gone extinct during this period, but are not counted as extinct since they may possibly still exist, so the true total is certainly higher.
Of course this rate (for birds) may only be about 100 times normal rather than 1000.
Re: tty (#714), see my reply in unthreaded.
Ah, I just finished reading the whole article. I see now that it says exactly the same things I just did.
Like I said, a very good article! Confirmation bias, you gotta love it! 😉
The 3 standard deviation range for the calculated minimum of 5.18 Mm2 is 4.90 to 5.46 Mm2. The actual extent is already below the 3s. Looking at similar charts from previous years, when the actual extent drops below the upper limit, it’s only about 14 days to minimum.
Relatively on-topic is this piece on the Greenland ice sheet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/01/sermilik-fjord-greenland-global-warming
Every day I find myself hoping more and more that all of it is truly but a hoax, because if it isn’t…
Re: Neven (#689),
The article you link to says, among other things:
A gigaton is roughly 1 km3 of water; with the global ocean area of some 360 million km2, it should raise the sea level by some 2.8 micrometers. Thus the 300 – 400 GT/year correspond to 0.84 – 1.12 mm/year.
Re: Neven (#690),
Now I’ve read that article in The Guardian. It’s a real work of art. If you read it really carefully you will notice that all the hard data refers to 2005 or earlier, only the “local color” is from 2009. Could this possibly be somehow related to this:
“the velocity increase of other glaciers (Kangerlussuaq Gletscher and Helheimgletscher in eastern Greenland) seems to have been a short-lived event as the velocity and discharge have decreased since 2006”
(Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin 14, p. 10)
The glacier calving into Sermilik fjord is Helheim.
yeah…it was about 31,000, i guess it depends on the correction.
31K isn’t horrible and Arctic air temperatures are tracking about average. Seems like it is pretty much up to water temperatures and wind conditions at this point.
Can anyone point me to accurate monthly temperature readings of the water in the arctic at various levels (including under the ice).
I want to compare it with readings observed in the 1800’s.
Tonyb
Dave and Bob,
The article was good in my view because it was more a comparative on the amount of exposure these topics get rather than going through a list of issues which, granted you may not agree with.You’ve both got side tracked with the trees and missed the woods he was trying to show, AGW gets too much coverage for what it is and so the article is accurate in that even if all the claims are wrong!
Anyway, another 30K as Phil mentions, just!, and now the race is on between 2005 and 2008. 2005 was a very late 22nd which would actually, on our list for 2009 above meant nobody would be close.The value was roughly 5.32, so that is probably easily in reach.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#700),
So when chicken little’s claim “The sky is falling!” begins to look doubtful, it’s time to point out that “The boggieman is coming” and “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back”, etc. are still out there. This is supposed to be great writing??
Here’s an informative article on sea ice thickness.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/seaice_skinny.html
Isn’t all that a bit emotional Dave? You are falling into the same trap as them but from the other camp.
Blimey, I never thought I’d post up an anti AGW political spin post on here only to argue against someone who want’s it perfectly in agreement with their own mindset. The problem is you have got so riled up by it all you have lost a good perspective. Now EVERYTHING IS WRONG unless it agrees with you 100%.
Damn, I should not have gone off track. Me sucks. Steve, feel free to make another thread but lets get back to ice watching. My last comments on the matter.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#704),
There was nothing emotional about my response. I spent a fair amount of time coming up with a rebuttal which wouldn’t be an instant snip as opposed to a thoughtful snip which I suspect this will be. But you’re right. I’m done too.
bremen
Bit more to go yet but nothing like 2007 or even 2008 it seems.
Regards
Andy
Down to a 23,000 loss after the adjustment, new total of 5,423,750 km2
Another sea ice link for your favorites list?
http://www.seaice.de/
hmm….so if we can start getting the daily melts down to 15,000 very soon, then we could possibly still stay above 5,3. but my estimate of 5.15 is still looking possible.
Re: markinaustin (#709),
If those saying there are only 2 weeks of decreases left are right and it’s a linear decrease from 23,000 that’s a melt of 161,000 or 5,262,750 minimum.
Looks like all the arctic buoys that are still reporting temperature data show temps well below freezing. The “pole cam” (PMEL 7100, 83.819°N) is showing -5C currently but has been down as low as -10C over the past 24 hours. JAMSTEC POPS-10 (83.820N) is showing -4C also with temps near -10C over the past 24 hours. POPS-11 (88.621°N) -4C and that is the lowest it has recorded over the past 24 hours. IABP 83724 (85.764°N) shows -6C with -7C in the past 24 hours.
So with the temperatures we are seeing at those latitudes, any surface melt is done though there could be some continued thinning from the underside depending on the temperature of the water.
The melt for 9/2 is 28,750 leaving a new total of 5,395,000. The correction will follow…
Maybe we could do a “minimum prediction reminder” at this stage? Mine was around 4.8, but I feel like I might have been a bit pessimistic. Etienne was 5.5 and is now out of the game. Steve said “over 500 000 km2” compared to 2008, which would make 5.2-5.3, so we’ll know soon. The models predcited something between 4 and 5.2 (which is a pretty large range).
Now show me yours :0)
Re: Flanagan (#713),
I’d like to predict that the min will be significantly greater than the average value predicted by the “experts” in Steve’s chart at the top!
If we are dreaming up numbers, I’ll go for 5.12.
Re: PaulM (#717),
Although it looks like 2009 will beat most, if not all, of the predictions, If you look at the chart Steve posted it’s still going to be below the linear trend, so I don’t think anyone can claim “recovery” yet.
Re: Flanagan (#713),
Flanagan my atrociously bad prediction was 4.588 😦 and my “new” one would be 5.195
Re: Flanagan (#713),
The original “expert” predictions from June had a range from 3.2 to 5.0. It appears very likely that that entire range will be too low, with the average prediction being WAY too low.
5.5 was looking good until the last few days.
ok I was going to get in early with a winter max of 14.7 mill sq km.
So I will downgrade it to 13.9 🙂
Flanagan et al
Making predictions now is about as impressive as a fan predicting the team with a 30-point lead with a minute left to play will win the basketball game.
Most here made their predictions AFTER the rapid July melt had decelerated.
I predicted back on July 28, BEFORE the rapid July melt had decelerated, at a time when many were entertaining a possible new record low, that we’d finish a tick above 2008. Well maybe it’ll be 2 ticks.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6734#comment-352145
and
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6734#comment-352158
Adjustment is slightly up to 5,398,281 km2 which gives the days loss a final total of 25,000
More ice in 2008 than 2007.
More ice in 2009 than 2008.
More ice in 2010 than 2009.
If this continues I predict the Earth will be entirely covered by ice by the year 2050.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#722),
That is a blatant distortion of the data, cherry-picking the observations that suit your preferred conclusion. The long-term trend is clear and the relevance of this year’s numbers is well described by DWP in #345. Any prediction of a trend reversal requires insights far beyond what you have at your disposal.
Re: bender (#725),
You obviously use different scientific methods than me.
Note that my methods have accurately predicted the increasing ice two years in a row going on three.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#733),
Yes, I should hope so.
.
When 2009 is finished the downward trend statistics will have strengthened, not weakened. I told you so last year and it came to pass. And now I’m telling you again this year. It will come to pass.
Re: bender (#734),
Of course, an OLS fitting will show a linear trend downward in minimal ice. But that statistical technique is questionable in phenomena dominated by oscillations.
Re: An Inquirer (#735),
Dominated? You seem so certain. It should be easy for you to prove that the oscillations “dominate”, not just in the past but also in the future. Go ahead.
Re: bender (#754),
Oh, my! A challenge to prove that oscillations dominate in climate and weather phenomena! I wonder what would be considered proof? The return of the spring equinox about every 365 days? The cluster of 99% of hurricanes during hurricane season? Graphs of PDO, AMO, ENSO, and others? Day giving way to night on a regular basis? Do you object to the conclusion that earth has had a series of ice ages? Cycles of droughts and wet periods in numerous areas? Seems that telescopes have picked up a cycle on sunspots. The list goes on.
Some oscillations are quite precise in their repetition; others are much more blurry. Some have obvious effect on Arctic Ice. Others do not.
How they all interact with each other and with developments such as Asian soot to affect trends in summer minima? – that question will continue to be discussed for years. Perhaps you want to get picky about the word “dominate,” but it would be very unwise to define a linear trend over a few years – and assume it will continue — when we are only beginning to understand the character and impact of various oscillations.
Re: An Inquirer (#772),
A list is not a quantitative analysis. You know better than that.
Re: bender (#734),
You’re right bender, this year’s current value is already below the 30 year trend and will probably finish below the 20 year trend. Also the loss of multi year ice has continued.
Re: Phil. (#736),
It has? I haven’t seen anything at all on multi ice since the start of the year? Or do you mean up to the start of this year?
Weather patterns hint at some further ice loss. Temperatures across north Russia are quite warm. The ice appears rather thin on that side, and a low pressure system looks set to push southerlies through that area. The low is reasonably strong now, but forecast to weaken to almost nothing as it progresses through. Water temperatures seem mostly about freezing in that area though.
Re: Michael Hauber (#744),
I’ve posted on it several times, try here and here.
Re: Phil. (#736),
I second Michael Hauber’s request for the data to back up that assertion.
Re: bender (#734),
If you back 20,000 years to the last great glaciation you will notice that most of the ice has disappeared.
Todays consensus of of science looks back a few decades and somehow determine that that is the normal ice level for the entire history of the Earth.
snip -editorializing
Re: Shawn Whelan (#754),
How sadly ironic for you that #755 anticipated your junk thought.
Re: bender (#725),
snip – bickering
I have plotted the jaxa data as stacked profiles and then contoured them and generated a jpeg image of the contour map…can someone tell me how to show this jpeg image on a comment…???
bender
lighten-up
Re: Jon P (#724),
get bent
bender: yes, especially since our friend seems to already know what will happen in 2010 :0)
Well the Antarctic ice is on a downward trend the last couple of years. So combining this with the increasing NH ice, it is obvious the entire northern hemisphere will be covered in ice in the year 2050. The entire southern hemisphere will be ice free. The imbalance will send the Earth hurtling into a new orbit.
RE: 729
Get serious Michael. If these trends over the last few years continue the earth will end up like one of those weeble wobbles with a roll, pitch and yaw, making all on earth very sea sick. Oh the humanity!
I’m going to be away from computers for the weekend. Would somebody please post the Cryosphere Today current area and anomaly for both the Arctic and Antarctic for Saturday and Sunday? The links are:
Arctic
Antarctic
The current area is the light blue number and the anomaly is the red number. Either the area or the anomaly is sufficient since I already know the average, but both would be nice. The data are usually updated by 10 AM Eastern time, but not always. I’ll try to post Friday’s numbers before I leave so you can tell if they’ve changed on Saturday.
30 years is not long enough if there are natural cycles of longer periods than that. Saying that the trend is still declining is true depending on where your end points are, particularly the starting point. If you go back 7000 years or so, the trend is probably way up. We just don’t have the same kind of data for long enough to do an apples to apples comparison. I find talk of “trends” to be somewhat meaningless in the context of having only 30 years of satellite data.
When we get 75 years or so of data, we can talk about trends with a straight face.
Re: crosspatch (#737),
30 years beats the hell out of Shawn’s 2 years though!
Re: Phil. (#739),
You do not seem to understand Shawn’s witty sarcasm — he is pointing out the folly of using an excessively short time frame to make a linear prediction. Some examples that might help in this concept: Basing a prediction on October’s temperature based on trends from August & September will give you a better result than a nine-month linear trend from January through September. Or the future fortunes of the German army could be better understood by developments of May & June of 1944 than a linear trend of territorial gains over the previous 100 months. (Granted, the Arctic ice likely has been influenced by non-natural trends such as Asian soot, but anecdotal evidence leds me to believe that the Arctic ice goes through cycles.)
Re: An Inquirer (#762),
He isn’t the only one. Let’s leave “witty sarcasm” to the blog owner, shall we? Please?
35,000 initial estimate for the day….probably will be corrected again tomorrow. interesting to see how much it will rebound if at all.
still, looks like 5.3 is going to be broken….but 5.2 is still quite possible. even if the average decline was 15,000 over the next 10 days that would bring us to september 13th at 5.2 plus a little.
crosspatch: interesting you mention that. There’s a paper in Science this week suggesting that the Arctic has actually been cooling and growing for the last 2000 years (with a 10 year resolution). Yes, even during the medieval warm period!
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5945/1236
They seemingly could relate this to a declining solar input due to a slow drift in the earth rotation axis. The decrease of the solar input continued in the 20th century, but the temperatures started increasing since approx 1900, with an accelerating trend. They arrive to the conclusion that the last decade was the hottest one in 200 years.
Now, if we thrust these results there’s really no other realistic reason than an anthropogenic one for this increase of temperature. Unless a 100-long underground volcanic eruption took place?
Re: Flanagan (#740),
Flanagan, yeah, over the longer term it does seem that there is overall cooling from what papers I have been reading. I broke down and subscribed this year to Quaternary Research (with my own cash) so there has been a fresh batch of papers arriving in my mailbox every month with lots of interesting research, much of it related to paleoclimatology. One theme that has been coming out of many of these is that climate seemed to be more stable up until about 5,000 years ago when we begin to see these warming and cooling events. For about the past 2000 years, the cooling events seem to get progressively cooler with the LIA being possibly the coldest one since the Younger Dryas in the NH judging from glacial advance and pollen data in both Europe and North America. Even then you have to be careful with proxies such as glacial advance and tree rings because precipitation impacts both. It is looking like the MWP was, for example, dryer than the Roman. The current warming period seems to be closer to the RWP than the MWP when you take a combination of precipitation and temperature into account. Summer rains can melt a lot of ice and so a warm, wet period can result in faster glacier ablation than a warmer but dryer period, or a period when the precipitations falls more in winter as snow than in summer as rain. Those precipitation patterns can impact tree rings too. So the MWP shows by high altitude pollen samples in the Alps to be warmer than today as plants were growing there that can not grow there today but it is currently wetter than the MWP as evidenced by flood deposits from rivers that drain the Alps. The flood events of this period are similar to the flood events of the RWP in the Alps.
But overall we seem to be seeing that for the last 2000 years or so, these warm periods appear to peak at generally lower temperatures than earlier ones and the cold periods seem to get colder as you get closer to today. It is as if there are three signals at once. Imagine you have a declining DC signal, with a long period (several century) sine wave on it and superimposed on that is a higher frequency component of about 60 years. I am not convinced of any “regularity” in that longer period cycle so any attempts at prediction other than in very broad terms would have a good chance of failure. But for someone to say that the increase in temperatures from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century were recovery from the LIA and that the peaks in the early and late 20th century are a regular cyclical event would seem reasonable. What isn’t so assured is if the recovery from the LIA is yet “complete”. If the current warming is less than the 1930’s warming and if the next cooling is cooler than the 1960’s cooling, then I would tend to believe someone who said the recovery appeared to be complete. But even then events can override these things. A volcanic event on the scale of Krakatoa c.535, for example, would pretty much invalidate any forecasting.
If forced to guess on a longer term forecast, I would say that there is a better chance that temperatures 30 years from now will be cooler than that they will be warmer. If those temperatures are cooler than they were in the 1960s, then I would say there is a better chance that recovery from the LIA is “complete” and that temperatures 60 years from now will be as warm or cooler than they are now. If temperatures bottom out higher than the last cooling, then maybe recovery isn’t complete and we will see warmer temperatures in 60 years time than today.
A couple of interesting papers would be “Late Holocene glacial and periglacial evolution in the upper Orco Valley, northwestern Italian Alps” Carlo Giraudi (you can find that one in PDF form on the Internet) and “Tree-ring crossdates for a First Millennium AD advance of Tebenkof Glacier, southern Alaska” Barclay et al. It is particularly interesting to compare the timing of events described in these papers as they seem to show that events were happening at roughly the same time across the Northern Hemisphere.
But getting back to Arctic ice, I am just not seeing anything that would bring me to the conclusion that we are seeing anything that is unusual or unprecedented or particularly alarming in the context of what has apparently been happening over the past several thousand years. If anything I continue to be more concerned about longer term cooling than warming. The warming we are seeing now is consistent with warming we have seen in the relatively recent past (on a geological timescale). It is not unique in rate or amplitude as far as I can tell.
Re: Flanagan (#740),
Do you examine the studies you cite? Do you inquire about apparent biased picking of proxies? Do you wonder why a study does not reconcile itself to other evidences? Do you ask about proxy conflicts? Do you scratch your head as you see the upside-down use of data such as the Tiljander proxy?
I do not know what has been the ice coverage for the last 2000 years — even our satellite-based technology has had ocassional problems in the last 30 years — but that Science paper adds very little reliable information.
Re: Flanagan (#740),
Please read Steve’s latest post “Kaufman and Upside-down Mann”
Now, the daily numbers:
9/3/2009 5363594 -34687 -30580 -46895
9/2/2008 4924219 -33437 -42678 -66161
9/3/2007 4580000 -37031 -27700 -47375
9/3/2006 5958125 -19688 -1428 -30708
9/3/2005 5689375 18906 -15245 -36244
9/2/2004 5880000 -13594 -27232 -60458
9/3/2003 6198906 -18594 -23794 -38380
Again a 30+ day? We’ll see after correction. Satellite images tend to show there’s still room for compaction
Note that the wind is now blowing from Northern Siberia to Greenland, which explains the “form” of the remaining ice (and justifies possible further compaction).
It’s a bit cheeky to have a final minima guess now so close 🙂 having said that who could rule out yet another final last gasp twist? My original guess was just above 2008 so that would be around 4.8 which is very wide of the mark. I still think the Artic is recovering from 2007 though but it won’t continue going back but will start sinking again at a slower pace. If there is going to be an ice free Arctic I would say nearer to 2050 than the 2013 that was banded about.
In regards to peoples guesses on the minima day the recent trend has been quite constant compared to most years, no swings yet into positive as we “bump along the bottom” so does that mean it’s going to be nearer to the end of September rather than the start? From a quick eyeball 2003 is a pretty good fit and that ended up with minima latish on. Roy might be closest given that and still undershoot. Phil has not volunteered a guess and I think Shawn’s early freeze up prediction probably puts him around Crosspatch if he was having a bash.
Regards
Andy
Re: AndyW35 (#742),
“I still think the Artic is recovering from 2007 though but it won’t continue going back but will start sinking again at a slower pace. If there is going to be an ice free Arctic I would say nearer to 2050 than the 2013 that was banded about.”
I agree with this in a way, but it all depends on if and when the exceptional meteorological circumstances of 2007 hit again. Had they occurred during the 2008 melt season or this year another record would have been set for sure. It’s the same with global temperatures. If an El Niño identical in strength to the on 1998 were to occur all records would be smashed to pieces.
If the Arctic sea ice were to recover to pre-2005 levels it would withstand the 2007 perfect storm conditions, and then, yes, an ice free Arctic in summer would probably take a while to occur.
If we’re taking trends, haven’t most warming and cooling trends lasted about 30 years? And here we see a low after 30 years and then a turn? And while I’m talking about turns, isn’t the AMDO about to turn as well? That’s what makes observing facts more interesting than playing with computers.
Re: realist (#746),
What’s your evidence?
whoa! a 16,000 correction, so now last night’s rather steep drop of 35,000 turned into a rather modest drop of 19,000.
as realist told: relation between AMO and arctic ice is pretty visible (for those who want to look and see
Re: Juraj V. (#748),
How many effective degrees of freedom in that correlation?
interesting take nevin, but based upon the past 2 summer recovery, it is not at all out of the question that next summer we very well MAY have rebounded to 2005 levels. heck, we are only going to be about 250,000 below 2005 for this year anyways right?
however, we are in an el nino, so depending on what happens to that, we may be facing 2007 conditions next summer.
I will make a prediction (9-4-09), and a long shot at that, the Odden will return in 2010.
I’ve missed you bender. Breath of fresh air and all that.
CT area for Friday:
Arctic
area difference anomaly
3.641 0.046 -1.477
Antarctic
15.167 -0.035 0.261
That’s two up days in a row for the Arctic, btw.
This isn’t proof but provides some back up for my comment on recent temperature trends. BTW, it’s from Climate Audit.
Re: realist (#758),
You’re right: a time-series containing two, err, “oscillations” is not a proof that those oscillations have a particular frequency or that the oscillation frequency and amplitude is robust into the past and into the future.
.
It, Enquirer, is also not a proof that “oscillations dominate the trend”. Very far from it.
snip
Re: bender (#759),
RE #725
Are you saying that a 30 year trend shown by DWP in #345 is more significant than the 130 year oscillation? Puzzling.
Re: Gerald Machnee (#760),
No. I’m arguing that Shawn Whelan’s assertions based on 2 years are absurd. Read what’s written. Including the context.
Re: realist (#757),
Err, I believe that’s from one of my posts, and not from our host. Just to make it clear where it came from, I don’t want him blamed for my stuff.
Bender, true it’s only two “cycles”, but we appear to be on the downslope of a third if they temps keep on the trajectory we’re seeing. If nothing else that chart shows that the present touting of linear trends by the carbonistas is snake oil. Thirty years is supposed to be “climate” but that “climate” can change a lot in less than thirty years! So even if you don’t believe the ground temps, you’ve only got 30 years of satellite data to work with. That’s not going to tell you what’s going to happen in the next 30.
Top chart updated again (smoothed previous years vs raw 2009 data):
I myself am just happy to see the Earth cooling and the Arctic ice increasing.
Re: Shawn Whelan (#773),
Based on which time frame? A 2 year time frame sees an increase in sea ice and increase in global temperatures. An 8 year time frame sees a reduction in global temperatures, but increase in sea ice?
Re: Michael Hauber (#775),
I would say based on about the past 2000 years. If this warming period doesn’t exceed that of the early 20th century, then it pretty much holds the pattern of the past 2000 years. We have warm periods but later ones are not as warm as early ones.
This warm period has not exceeded either the MWP or the RWP. There has been no sea level rise since 2006, we had a wind event that blew most of the ice pack out into the Atlantic in 2007 that we have shown recovery from quite nicely over the past two years, nothing indicates any problems caused by unusual warming. We have no indication that the current sea ice condition in the Arctic is in any way unusual over long time spans.
Re: crosspatch (#777),
The question was on which timeframe do we base a claim of ‘I myself am just happy to see the Earth cooling and the Arctic ice increasing’
Is 2000 years really a sensible answer to such a question? Or is it just an excuse to confuse the issue?
Re: Michael Hauber (#786),
I was putting the current warming in context with other periods of similar warming over the fairly recent (in geological time) past.
There is nothing unusual, unprecedented or alarming about the current period of warming in that context as far as I can tell in that context. This period of warming looks like the recovery from past cold spells. The difference is that the most recent cold spell, the one we call the Little Ice Age, was the coldest in several thousand years and we have still not recovered fully to what temperatures were before the start of that event.
So if one wants to put blinders on and look only at the last 30 years, they might come to a conclusion that is not supported by taking a wider view. The problem is that we don’t have more than 30 years of apples to apples data to look at.
This post is an observation not a criticism or a snipe so please everybody don’t take this the wrong way.
The majority of scientists are very good at what they do in the fields they are in. But what does a scientist do? They make observations, record data and try to come to conclusions. My observation is that they are very good at the first 2 points but they are sadly lacking in the 3rd. Many scientists lack analytical skills i.e. They successfully make 1+1=3 and but make it look like 2.
Why is that? From what I can observe one reason is lack of data. They think they have enough data but in fact it is only a small sample. Another reason is that they are lockstepped in their field and fail to recognize factors outside of their field which may impact their data and results. A third reason is pride. If they and others consider them to be experts then all these people cannot seem to consider that they may have made a mistake.
To spend years collecting and collating data is exacting work and requires patience, dilligence and motivation to keep going. You need a certain personality to do this type of work. Analysis on the other hand requires a personality where you can ‘see’ what other miss and be able to connect the dots sometimes in a way that looks out of step. This is called perceiving.
An Example: Most people know the picture books of dinosours. What is striking is the similarity with the Sauropods (The big guys). Because someone finds bones of a Sauropod that is bigger (or smaller) then the ones already found they give it a different name. Brontesourous, Brachiosaurous etc etc. However why is this so? These guys started off life small and then over time grew up. Is it not possible that all these different sauropods could be the same species at a different age. teenager, young adult, mature, old age? These guys were reptiles and many reptiles don’t stop growing i.e. they don’t have a ‘stop grow’ mechanism. Just my idea of course and I could be completely wrong but it is another form of analysis.
Going back to the debate in the last days. Nature works in circles (cycles). Electrons spin around protons and neutrons, the earth spins around the sun, the moon spins around the earth. The sun has the 11 year sunspot cycle and 22 year magnetic cycle plus a few other cycles superimposed. The economy works in cycles. Since this is the case why do climate people suddenly assume climate is linear? If Nature is cyclic (circular) shouldn’t climate have the same qualities? Simple analysis will say, “yes it is”. The RWP MWP and LIA existed in the past. Simple analysis will tell you that there will be other cool cycles. Maybe we are heading that way now maybe not, only time will tell. And this is the important point – climate takes a lot of time.
Whats up with Jaxa tonight? Update seems late.
Anyone know whats with Jaxa? Still no update.
Re: NEwxIce (#777),
This happens more often during the refreeze season. Perhaps it’s a sign of the first positive day?
Re: NEwxIce (#778),
According to NOAA
“Some systems will be down for maintenance beginning at 1:00 PM Saturday September 5, 2009 and are expected to be unavailable until Sunday evening, September 6, 2009.”
No update around revision time either. I cannot take this excitement.
Waiting on the JAXA data is keeping me awake. I wont be able to sleep until I get to work.
snip – can we please stop the bickering and personal comments.
Re: See – owe to Rich (#784),
How about from everyone, including Bender. It’s all making this thread unreadable.
It’s finally up.
The graph just shows the 4th (5,365,781 for a melt of 14,063) but the csv file also has Sept 5th
(5,340,156, for a melt of 25,625).
daily[daily$dd==247,c(1:4,8:9)]
month day year ice dd diff
96 9 4 2002 5.701563 247 -0.034375
461 9 4 2003 6.148750 247 -0.050156
826 9 3 2004 5.887031 247 0.007031
1192 9 4 2005 5.682500 247 -0.006875
1557 9 4 2006 5.935313 247 -0.022812
1922 9 4 2007 4.528125 247 -0.051875
2287 9 3 2008 4.927031 247 0.002812
2653 9 4 2009 5.365781 247 -0.014063
> daily[daily$dd==248,c(1:4,8:9)]
month day year ice dd diff
97 9 5 2002 5.667188 248 -0.034375
462 9 5 2003 6.116406 248 -0.032344
827 9 4 2004 5.899531 248 0.012500
1193 9 5 2005 5.670625 248 -0.011875
1558 9 5 2006 5.934531 248 -0.000782
1923 9 5 2007 4.484531 248 -0.043594
2288 9 4 2008 4.868906 248 -0.058125
2654 9 5 2009 5.340156 248 -0.025625
Continued at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6975