Sea ice again

Just a quick note prompted by the comments: we've slipped below 2008 and are heading below 2006. A long way short of 2007 at the moment. Still all to play for.

[Update: as PH points out, 2009 is now not exciting at all, having rejoined "the pack", albeit at the bottom edge. 2007 still looks very much like an outlier. Meanwhile, the July ARCUS report is out. Nothing very exciting there I think. I notice that they still persist in nonsense like "All estimates are well below the 1979-2007 September climatological mean value of 6.7 million square kilometers" - this is nonsense not because it is wrong, but because it is the bleedin' obvious. No-one believes a return to the long-term average is going to happen. The correct "null hypothesis" is a return to the 1979-2007 (or 6) *trend* -W]

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The troops are getting restive. What wil happen to this year's sea ice? Rumours abound. Let's look at some pictures. Probably the least interesting is this one from NSIDC. But it looks exciting, doesn't it. Woo-hoo, look, the sea ice now is lower than it was in 2007, that means it will be at…
Someone refererred be to As Effects of Warming Grow, U.N. Report is Quickly Dated . It's yet another piece of the std.nonsense that one swallow does a summer make, and anyone who feels like quoting the odd warming factoid can throw away the IPCC, whilst of course sneering at the people who say it…
Because Kevin Anderson says that it is "improbable" that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm). Which blows Hansens target 350 out of the water. Not that it requires a luminary of KA standing to do that. Quite why the grauniad is using breathless climate-snuff-porn prose to…
This year's story so far: in May, I accepted some bets but was still trying to come to terms with Rob Dekker. In the comments there we came to agreement on the following: If both NSIDC and IARC-JAXA September 2016 monthly average sea ice extent report are above 4.80 million km^2, RD pays WMC US$ 10…

There's a difference worth noting this year that may not show up in the extent/area/percentage:

Hat tips to to H.E. Taylor:
http://members.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/enviro/gwnews.html#AWOGN20090816_Arc…

Who led me to:
http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/?p=10058

Which features:

http://www.canada.com/technology/choking+Northwest+Passage+officials/18…

"In the central part of the passage where the northern and southern routes merge amid narrowings around Prince of Wales Island, the CIS has observed "greater than normal concentrations of thicker, multi-year ice. This is the result of an increased flow of older ice from the Beaufort Sea into the Canadian Arctic archipelago last year."

The result, the agency said, is that ice conditions "are delaying any potential navigability of the Northwest Passage this year. This is opposite to what Environment Canada observed in the last week of July in 2007 and 2008."

While Canada's trans-Arctic sea route remains clogged with ice, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center is predicting another near-record meltdown by the end of this year's summer thaw...."

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 16 Aug 2009 #permalink

I still think we're going to repeat 2008 (or maybe not quite that low) but it's definitely all to play for, all in the weather. 2007 is less than a week ahead, and there's a whole lot of frappuccino in the central arctic ocean. Have you seen this?

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 23 Jul 2009 #permalink

We slipped below 2008 on 5th July and 2006 yesterday. Only 2007 to beat now, and if the current 7 day trend holds this will happen within 4 weeks, well before the minimum.

Cheers, Alastair.

By Alastair McDonald (not verified) on 24 Jul 2009 #permalink

Hank, take a look at the SEARCH forecasts - the full reports include some analysis of current conditions, comparisons with previous years etc: here.

Also a reminder, my guess was "closer to 2008 than to 2007 or 2005". I make that to be 4.67 million km^2 (+/- 0.2 km^2). That's lower than the two guesses above, but likely will also turn out too high.

Hi, again, Rebecca, I'm so glad to read not only this blog entry, but the article in Slate. I was appalled when this gene patenting began with .

Interesting to note that 2009 and 2005 are back to tied:

8420096772188
8420056776719

Almost tied, if you prefer, but I doubt if the measurement of sea ice extent is accurate to more than three decimal places.

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 04 Aug 2009 #permalink

Nobody can predict what the ice will do any better than they can predict the wind and currents more than a week or so out - can't be done. Unless I am mistaken, the sea ice is largely driven by wind and currents, as this is not a solid icecube from which to relate temp and cloud cover to ice melting. >15% ice cover per unit area is considered solid!

Please review this daily update of the last 8 years http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png

Additonally, please review the arctic temps for the last 50 years or so
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

Oh, can someone please direct me to the sattelite records for the last 100 years or so? I am really anxious to see the sea ice extent and view how the arctic ice never melted at all in the summer as the AGW affecionados would have us believe. What? no satellite record? Well, I guess I will just take everyones word for it that the arctic ice was fine until 1979 and a 20 year average is gospel.

Oh, can someone please direct me to the sattelite records for the last 100 years or so?

What is a sattelite?

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 10 Aug 2009 #permalink

> affectionado

They're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel for new kamikaze material.

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 11 Aug 2009 #permalink

#13 John,

Your first link is the same one we've been looking at to compare 2009 to previous years. Right now, 2009 looks to be tracking 2005, which will make my guess (and, yes, it was a guess) too low.

The second link appears to show that recent winters were significantly warmer than average, while summers vary much less from the average, at least in that particular data set.

AFAIK, that's perfectly in accord with AGW. So I'm not clear what point you were trying to make with that link.

The post of August 14, 2009 4:26pm is either a linkspammer or a bot. The URL behind the signature was on Google's list of sites dangerous to click (virus/trojan installers) in the past.

[Should be gone now. Dunno if WP can be setup to reject such -W]

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 14 Aug 2009 #permalink

hmmm -- a bit different output:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_2009.png

Anyone seen a chart that splits out first-year vs. multi-year ice in the same way?

If you look at their page they have a slideshow comparing first- and multi-year ice from 2001-2008 that gave me pause.
Caption is:

"The above animation shows the ice extent in the middle of February for the period 2000-2008. Grey areas indicate the extent of the relative thin winter ice, and white area indicate the extent of the thicker multi year ice. The animation is based on QuikSCAT satellite data."

The loss in multi-year ice really stands out in that presentation.

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 21 Aug 2009 #permalink

Yes, that second link is what I was thinking of; have you seen that information on an annual chart -- like the ones we see for each year's total, but showing how much 1-year ice there is year over year; how much 2-year ice there is year over year?

Just thinking, what's really stunning is the loss of old ice.

But the amount of fog and dazzle just keeps going up, e.g.
climateaudit.org/?p=3229

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 22 Aug 2009 #permalink