A Few Things Ill Considered

From Neven: Arctic storm part 3: detachment – Arctic Sea Ice

Posted by coby on August 9, 2012
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More melt excitement in the arctic.  An unprecedented summer cyclone in the arctic has clobbered sea ice already tracking at record daily low area (58 days in a row now) and near record daily low extent measurements.  As always, the go-to place for sea ice watching and discussion is Neven’s:

Arctic storm part 3: detachment – Arctic Sea Ice.

Yes, the storm is weather, but it is unprecedented weather.  It is hitting the ice during a pronounced, long term and accelerating downward trend.  Though Wattsians will excuse any new records as the result of weather, what we are seeing is unquestionably the result of climate change.

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Comments

  1. #1 hinschelwood
    August 10, 2012

    Though Wattsians will excuse any new records as the result of weather

    Sure they’ll do that, but even then, some of them must be starting to have doubts. The list of extreme weather events is getting pretty long. Now we’ve got a big fuck-off storm, the like of which has never been seen before and it’s smashing the polar cap to bits.

    They might be able to cope with “The icecap isn’t melting!”, but having to ascribe absolutely everything to extreme weather events – while simultaneously denying climate change – gets too hard after a while. There comes a tipping point where evidence overrides cognitive dissonance.

  2. #2 mandas
    August 10, 2012

    I wish that what you say is true hinschelwood. Unfortunately, the thing about beliefs is that they are rarely influenced by evidence.

  3. #3 Vince Whirlwind
    August 13, 2012

    Being a sceptical kind of person, I am interested in this “list of extreme weather events”.

    Is the list getting long as an inevitable consequence of accumulation, or something else?
    Are we looking harder than we used to?
    Do we have technology giving us access to data we never used to have access to?
    In other words, exactly how unprecedented is this Arctic cyclone? How far back to we have to go in time before we have to admit we don’t know if such a cyclone may have occurred?

  4. #4 Wow
    August 13, 2012

    Something else
    yes, but accounted for
    Yes, but so what
    Completely
    Sixty years ish

  5. #5 Another Week of GW News, August 12, 2012 – A Few Things Ill Considered
    August 14, 2012

    [...] 2012/08/08: AFTIC: From Neven: Arctic storm part 3: detachment – Arctic Sea Ice [...]

  6. #6 Most Arctic Sea Ice Records already set with still 4 weeks to go – A Few Things Ill Considered
    August 27, 2012

    [...] as I warned about some weeks ago, almost all of the record lows are already broken in the arctic sea ice front.  Neven seems to [...]

  7. #7 September monthly arctic sea ice extent smashes previous record – A Few Things Ill Considered
    October 5, 2012

    [...] extreme arctic melt was all due to weather.  True that there was an unusual, strong and long-lived arctic cyclone in mid August, but melt rates before and after were still unusually high.  The main factor was the young age [...]