Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Enter a term in the search box to find its definition.

Settings

Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off).

Term Lookup

Settings


All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Home Arguments Software Resources Comments The Consensus Project Translations About Support

Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Mastodon MeWe

Twitter YouTube RSS Posts RSS Comments Email Subscribe


Climate's changed before
It's the sun
It's not bad
There is no consensus
It's cooling
Models are unreliable
Temp record is unreliable
Animals and plants can adapt
It hasn't warmed since 1998
Antarctica is gaining ice
View All Arguments...



Username
Password
New? Register here
Forgot your password?

Latest Posts

Archives

Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt

Posted on 8 June 2011 by michael sweet

The Arctic Sea Ice collapse is one of the most obvious changes caused by Global Warming.  Last winter's minimum was the third-lowest ever recorded.  The rapid melt of the sea ice has led to scientific predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer as early as 2013 (though most mainstream predictions range from 2030 to 2050). Every northern hemisphere summer, some bloggers watch the ice melt and try to guess what will happen.  Others claim it is like watching paint dry.  I think the situation is similar to watching a season of sport.  The individual games are interesting to watch, and difficult to predict, but the final season record is what really matters.  This article will give some web sites to check if you want to be informed about what is happening this season, but do not want to follow the day to day action.  I posted a similar thread with links to more websites last year on Skeptical Science.

My favorite place to find out what is really happening in the Arctic is the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) web site.  This site has a sea ice extent graph that is updated daily.

 

It compares the ice to 2007 (the record low year) and also to the average from 1979 through 2000.  The sea ice extent is defined as the area of ocean that is covered by at least 15% sea ice.  In addition they have a very nice FAQ section that answers many sea ice questions.  This FAQ section is a good place to find out the basics in one place that you can trust.  NSIDC has a monthly commentary on the sea ice conditions.  It is usually issued around the fifth of the month.  This commentary discusses current sea ice conditions, relevant weather and whatever else the scientists at NSIDC think fits the situation.  If you read only the NSIDC summary every month you will be well informed about the sea ice this summer.  NSIDC also issues reports when something special happens, like if a new record low is set.  These comments happen less often.  Hopefully they will expand their commentary this summer.

Cryosphere Today is a good site to look at data.  They offer no commentary on the data.  They have a daily graph of the sea ice (from the University of Bremen) to follow the daily action. 

 They have a graph of the sea ice area from the past two years that gives you an idea of what has been happening for the entire melt season. 

The sea ice area is defined as the total area of the ocean covered by ice.  They take the sea ice extent and subtract the open ocean portions.  There is a little more error in the sea ice area than the sea ice extent; that is why NSIDC and IJIS use the sea ice extent.  In general, it is best to compare one site's graphs with their own graphs.  Cryosphere Today has about 10 local area maps that are interesting. 

They also have a comparison app that allows you to compare any two days of ice in the satellite record. 

test

Notice above how much more ice there was in 1980.  The snow data is only present for the past few years.

Cryosphere Today also has data from the Antarctic.

IJIS has a good site to check on the sea ice extent on a daily basis.  Their graph is similar to the NSIDC graph, but they include all the years from 2002 to the present (they do not show the long term average).  You can quickly compare the current extent to previous years.  

AMSR-E Sea Ice Extent

Lately 2011 has been running near the record low.

If you check these sites occasionally and read Skeptical Science posts on sea ice during the summer, you will be able to keep up with what is going on.  If you are interested in learning more about sea ice, Nevin’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog is a good place to read.  Amateurs test their predictive powers against the ice.  Nevin has a very complete daily graphs page which includes much more data than I have described here.  If you want to watch the daily struggle of the ice against warming, this is the place to go.  Nevin has links to all of the arctic web sites that I visit.  Please attach links in the comments to other interesting sites. 

If you want to keep up with the "skeptics", WUWT and Steve Goddard have a lot of commentaries on sea ice.   Somehow they can look are a new record low and tell you the ice is recovering.

Any discussion of skeptics and sea ice would be incomplete without this graph from Denial Depot:

DD

This graph is a little dated, but great skeptic data can be reused forever.

Have a good time following the Arctic Ice this summer.


Addendum

Regular Skeptical Science contributor Sphaerica has kindly made available the following graphics, which add clarity to the discussion:

NHSeaIce

Note that the areas of increased melt indicated by the yellow boxes are all at lower latitudes around the edges (warmer temps, warmer water).

0 0

Printable Version  |  Link to this page

Comments

1  2  3  Next

Comments 1 to 50 out of 106:

  1. Another site of interest is the Danish Meterological Institute http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
    0 0
  2. Was the figure at the bottom actually ever presented that way? Please tell me that is a (quite funny) joke....
    0 0
  3. Please tell me that is a (quite funny) joke....
    I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Get it? :) :) )
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] Keeping up with the Groanses?  This one's for you...

  4. Here's pretty much everything you'd ever want on one page.
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] That's Neven's Arctic Sea Ice graph page.  Good bringing it up, though.

  5. I often wonder if Arctic Sea Ice is going to be the canary in the coal mine that will really start to wake the general public to what is actually going on with the climate.
    0 0
  6. You forgot a great one, for literally watching the ice melt... the North Pole Web Cam. On camera two, you can notice what looks like a melt pool already forming (it seems to have started 5/31 or so). You can also see, on both cameras, the current temperature in the upper left corner. There's loads of other info to be found there, including cool "stop motion" movies from years past.
    0 0
  7. I also look at the DMI Center for Ocean and Ice graph. This one is good because it uses 30% sea ice instead of 15%, like most of the others. I think this is more representative of what is really melting, versus just floating around and re-compacting or dispersing and melting.
    0 0
  8. Arctic ROOS is also useful, because it offers a graph of area as well as (and separate from) extent.
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed tag.

  9. @ Sphaerica (6) We've been discussing that over at Neven's. We're pretty sure it's a lead. Given the melt season yet ahead and the proximity to the lead, the cameras & gear deployed there may be at risk before they are eventually exported out the Fram.
    0 0
  10. Mods -- I goofed, and left out the closing quotation in my link, so it's messing up the page and mucking up the comment that followed mine. Please fix.
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] Way ahead of ya.

  11. "That's Neven's Arctic Sea Ice graph page. " Yes, it is, I didn't realize there was no attribution on the page itself, otherwise would've attributed it directly in my tag.
    0 0
  12. I would lastly make a purely personal and unscientific observation... I've said it before, that predicting ice is a worthless and tricky game, because things change dramatically over night (see last years fast, early rate of melt, which suddenly put on the brakes in July). But with that said, if you look at the ice for 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011, side by side for the same day, you will see noticeable differences (with the most similarities, surprisingly, in 2008). [Cryosphere today is a good place to do this, but rather than use their "compare" link, go to the archived images with the link in the upper right, and you can pull up larger, more detailed images for past years... FYI, 2010 isn't there, and the links for 2009 don't work, but you can get a 2010 image by clicking the 2009 link, then changing 2009 to 2010 in the url and getting that.] But the key things are that, extent aside, the ice is sparse at all lower latitudes, all the way around. Ice is already gone from places that it never has vanished from this early before, and not just here or there, but all around ... Alaska, and Greenland, and Hudson Bay, and Scandinavia, and Iceland, and... And at the same time, there are patches of not-100% ice in the center of the Arctic, too. It does not look good.
    0 0
  13. Sphaerica, Thanks for mentioning that site. There wasn't space to mention everything in the main post. The ice flow in camera two has fractured. If you watch for a few days the other side moves. The ice in camera one also seems to have fractured but it is still stuck together. What does it say about the ice at the pole when the thickest ice the researchers could find fractures right next to both cameras? The temperature in the upper corner is the camera temperature, not the outside temperature. Nicholas: Denial Depot is a joke site. I am not sure who posts it. He has some very clever stuff. This is my favorite graph. Some of the posters think he is serious.
    0 0
  14. The ice is thinner this year, too:
    "The Polar 5 towed the sensor on an 80 metre long rope at a height of 15 metres above the ice surface for the surveys. A preliminary evaluation of the measurement results shows that one-year-old sea ice in the Beaufort Sea (north of Canada/Alaska) is about 20-30 centimetres thinner this year than in the two previous years. In 2009 the ice thickness was 1.7 metres on average, in 2010 1.6 metres and in 2011 around 1.4 metres. "I expect that this thin one-year-old sea ice will not survive the melting period in summer," Dr. Stefan Hendricks assesses the situation. In several weeks his colleagues from the sea ice group at the Alfred Wegener Institute will present their model calculations for the sea ice minimum in 2011, which will also include the data now collected."
    Emphasis added. Given that a typical melt season sees 1.6 to 1.7 meters thickness of melt (FY ice), doesn't bode well at all. Polar bear soup, anyone? ;)
    0 0
  15. "I would lastly make a purely personal and unscientific observation... I've said it before, that predicting ice is a worthless and tricky game" Scientifically worthless but ... it's an entertaining game, and from the point of view, not worthless at all.
    0 0
  16. Gosh what synced meme timing: http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/?p=2500 "There’s something compelling about declaring allegiance to one of the weighted random number generators (sports teams, stock picks, etc), selecting which of the narratives to believe based on that allegiance, and then hoping for (and perhaps betting on) which numbers it will produce. Sometimes the numbers turn out the way you’d hoped, and sometimes they don’t, but either way people prefer to believe in the narratives, rather than acknowledge the randomness. There’s a thrill to the process, but at the same time, a strong sense that everyone else’s narratives are delusional."
    0 0
  17. rpauli, *snerk* Not only that... I love the magical thinking that takes place, where your team was winning before you turned the game on, and then things go down hill after you start watching... and somehow it's your fault, and you feel you have to stop watching so they will play better. Maybe if we all just don't notice the ice, and we're very, very quiet and just pretend we're not even here, it will stop melting... [Oh, wait, the best way to be quiet and pretend we're not here is to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and by coincidence, that would in fact (eventually) stop the melting. So maybe I should turn the TV off when my team starts to lose...]
    0 0
  18. I think the mere existence of sea ice and the ice caps demonstrates the globe is in a cool period. Also, we can verify this by checking the historic GAT versus today's average GAT. We find that earth is below average temperatures. Furthermore, the ice caps are an anomaly and have not existed for much of the history of the earth. Because they have completely melted before, it is nearly impossible to connect today's melting with global warming. To do so would be arguing that "Even though the ice caps have melted before, this time it is different somehow."
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] Jay, you're going to have to support your assertions with links to reputable sources if you want your comments here at SkS to remain.  If you continue to make baseless assertions about topics you obviously know little about, then those comments will be simply deleted.

    This is a forum in which the participants discuss the science of climate change.  Opinions are welcome, but they need to be backed up with supportive links to peer-reviewed publications.  Otherwise your comments will be construed as trolling and will be treated as such.

  19. Dr. Cadbury--can you offer any coherent argument as to why the melting ice caps now and in the past must be from a common cause? Can you provide an alternative explanation, with supporting data, that suggests the current melting is not a result of the current warming trend?
    0 0
  20. #18 ... we need a "best of skeptical science" irony award or the like ... that is a comment that deserves not only preservation, but highlighting. Are we sure Dr. PhD isn't a poe?
    0 0
  21. @18, You are going to have to do much, much better than that, especially as someone who allegedly has a PhD. Yours is an empty comment really, and to be frank, given the swaths of information out there, and the fact that you have been frequenting this site for months now, you ought to know better-- so in short your post amounts to nothing more than trolling and a fine example of logorrhea. Yes, this time is different, we are increasing atmospheric CO2 up to 10 times faster than during the PETM, you know run of the mill stuff ;) Apparently you also are of the belief that because there were wild fires before humans roamed the planet, that there is no way that we can be responsible for causing fires now. Anyways, I'm done feeding the troll.
    0 0
  22. "I think the mere existence of sea ice and the ice caps demonstrates the globe is in a cool period." Compared to the entire history of the Earth, perhaps. Compared to the history of human civilization, not so much. "Furthermore, the ice caps are an anomaly and have not existed for much of the history of the earth." We've been around for a lot less time. "Because they have completely melted before, it is nearly impossible to connect today's melting with global warming." It's impossible not to. What besides warming would melt the ice? "To do so would be arguing that "Even though the ice caps have melted before, this time it is different somehow."" No, it's still caused by warming, as always. Your argument makes absolutely no sense.
    0 0
  23. For anyone who is reading the latest Cadbury, please note: 1) The reason we have had ice ages and ice at the poles in the recent past (as opposed to "much of the history of the earth") has to do with a number of interwoven factors, the primary of which is the location and orientation of the continents (which, as any educated person knows, have been moving over time, on the order of tens/hundreds of millions of years). This affects both the globe's ability to accumulate snow on land, and more importantly the flow of ocean currents and heat transport to the poles. While we argue feverishly about climate factors that affect the earth on the order of centuries or millenia, in reality, the real driver is the earth's continents, but they operate on the time scale of millions of years. 2) The fact that the poles have been frozen for thousands of years, and are now melting in summer, is a clear sign that while the earth has been in a "cool period" for the past X thousands of years, today we are clearly moving into a warm period. Thank you, to Cadbury, for so eloquently pointing this out. 3) When the ice caps have melted in the past, it is known to have been caused by specific conditions. This is not random guesswork. Cadbury creates a strawman by saying "because...before... this time it is different somehow." No one is saying that. What we are saying is "we know what caused it before, and that doesn't apply now, and we know what would cause it today, and we expected it, and look, our logic and expectations are validated, because it is happening as expected and as was predicted by climate theory." So once again, thank you to Cadbury for so eloquently pointing out, in his ignorance and refutation, that the current melting of summer ice in the Arctic (and elsewhere) is supporting evidence of current climate theory, rather than an argument to ignore it.
    0 0
  24. Of course, to the extent that we can measure them by independent proxies, temperature and CO2 track well for millions of years back. The warmth of the Jurassic was enabled by CO2 concentrations around 4-5 times those currently prevailing. So dumping as much CO2 as we want into the atmosphere is fine, so long as we don't mind mass extinctions of current life, in favor of the re-development of life forms suited for the climate of the Jurassic. BTW Dr. Jay, you don't have to just think the Earth is in a cool period. It is - specifically the Quaternary Ice Age. Within the QIA, we are in the Holocene Interglacial, so it's not as cool as it would be in a glacial period, but nonetheless cool compared with much of the Earth's distant past. The trouble is that all of human civilization developed in, and is rather dependent upon, the climate of the Holocene. The CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere is highly likely to take us well outside that narrow range of "good for humans". Not a problem for life itself, over geological time periods, but a serious problem for humans.
    0 0
  25. I think Dr. PhD is a most successful troll ...
    0 0
  26. The post is missing one important site, particularly given that it is now clear that 2008 was a short upward 'blip' in line with the overall trend of decline. For being right in the money, I recommend this post from 2008.
    0 0
  27. @dhogaza at 08:22 AM on 8 June, 2011 I think Dr. PhD is a most successful troll ...
    Indeed. It is past time for the mod's magic plonker to strike.
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] Let's just say the bullpen is ready should the starter falter...back to the good stuff:  watching ice cubes melt.

  28. When he makes claims like 'it is nearly impossible to connect today's melting with global warming', then perhaps his real name is Dr Inferno.
    0 0
  29. @26, Les: "The post is missing one important site, particularly given that it is now clear that 2008 was a short upward 'blip' in line with the overall trend of decline. For being right in the money, I recommend this post from 2008." Les, please take time to read some of our articles including my favorite one on the idiocy fallacy of Global Cooling in the past decade (yes, I wrote it): http://skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008.htm Also Les; instead of quoting from secondary sources like (gulp) WUWT, you might like to go to a primary source like Dr Roy Spencer's UAH satellite based temperature chart. Here is the latest chart: Here is a version of his chart with trend lines that reveal the incline: The brown line is the trend line. The green and pink lines highlight the jump in 1995/1998 of both El Ninos (those are the upper curves) and La Ninas (and those are the lower curves). Now please tell me how we're hiding the "decline"
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] Fixed link.

  30. @26&29: Oops! Sorry for the big blooper. I'm writing half asleep.
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] I believe les Poe'd you.

  31. 26/29 - villabolo in English we have an expression "wooosh" for when someone misses a point at great speed.
    0 0
  32. Back to Arctic ice (Cadbury's is my favourite brand of chocolate BTW, and one that tends to melt with warming, whatever the cause...). Some interesting measurements of Arctic ice loss showing how the average thickness of ice in April has been observed to decline from 1.7m in 2009, 1.6m in 2010, to 1.4m in 2011. This obviously means that the ice which looked perilously thin by the end of last year's melt will be even more perilously thin this year. That rate of thinning, alongside all the other observational evidence, leaves little to the imagination about the fate of Arctic ice within the next decade. It still makes curiously fascinating watching, observing the daily updates from IJIS or whatever other source, largely because you know a car crash is on its way, and it is simply a case of 'when', not 'if'.
    0 0
  33. Two additional sites of interest: SEARCH arctic ice predictions - This site collects and displays various estimates of what the September average extent will be. Estimates are posted in June, July, and August to incorporate weather impacts as the season progresses. They are finishing up the June estimates now and will likely be posting the first projection estimates in the next few weeks. PIOMAS ice volume model results - Currently the best available estimate of total arctic sea ice volume. I'm hoping we will start seeing Cryosat-2 data some time soon to double check the PIOMAS calculations. As to the accuracy of predictions... weather plays a huge role and thus getting an accurate result in any given year is mostly luck. However, there have been clearly declining trends in ice extent and volume. What I find interesting is that the volume trend is declining at a much greater rate than the extent trend has thus far. Indeed, if the volume trend continued we'd be looking at 0% arctic sea ice at the end of the melt season some time between 2012 and 2020 (depending on how far back we go in computing the trendline)... while the extent trend doesn't hit zero for a couple more decades at least. Logically this disparity cannot continue much longer: the volume trend will either level off or the extent trend will start plummeting.
    0 0
  34. CBD: Both of your sites are excellent and update once a month. SEARCH is supposed to come out with their first projections around June 10-12 and PIOMAS has been updating around the 15-18 recently. The disparity between volume and area are very interesting. We should see one of your two options start to take effect this year. Which one do you guess? The volume trend looks strong to me.
    0 0
  35. Hi Michael. Actually, I'm not sure that this year will be enough to give us a clear indicator. The volume decline has leveled off or even reversed slightly for a year or two in the recent past and thus if it were to do so this year it wouldn't be clear whether that indicated we had 'hit a bottom' in the volume decline or just be a brief pause before further drops. Like you, I think the volume trend is indicative, but we have to put caveats around that since it is based on modeled results which we haven't been able to validate for the past few years... during which the volume has dropped to new lows. The PIOMAS model is computed based on extrapolating actual area and thickness data over the entire Arctic and thus seems fairly robust, but it will be good to have Cryosat results to check it against. They launched Cryosat-2 over a year ago now, so I'm hoping we'll start seeing data soon. The other argument against continued volume declines is the view that it has been driven primarily by export of thick older ice. If true that would mean that the sharp declines should end when the supply of older ice runs out (as it nearly has) and then the Arctic sea ice would hang on for a few more decades along the declining extent curve. However, I question the accuracy of this 'export driven' view given that we have seen large chunks of thick ice melting out within the Arctic basin. Export certainly plays a role, but I think we are also seeing the impact of rising water temperatures melting the ice in situ... which would continue, and indeed accelerate, after the thicker ice is gone.
    0 0
  36. Villabolo @29. In all fairness to Les @26, he was referring to the JAXA Arctic Sea Ice Extent data. Like other Arctic Sea Ice data, it did show the increase in Extent between 2007 & 2008. So in that respect, “...2008 was a short upward 'blip' in line with the overall trend of decline.“ ie a decline in Sea Ice. As for Les @26 recommending a post from 2008 on WUWT, I myself would also recommend that particular website for anybody feeling down in the dumps. It's a website that never fails to make me laugh. I'm not too sure however why this recommended post or website would be considered “right in the money”. Perhaps Les @26 is alluding to some lucrative financial backing which that particular website receives.
    0 0
  37. If I could but add a bit to the discussion: volume loss trends in the Arctic Sea Ice are reflective of ongoing physical processes. To the extent of change we've witnessed in a variety of converging metrics (declines in area, extent, volume, the northward regression of the sea ice edge in all months of the year, increases in SSTs, etc) we can now add this: increases in heat transport from Pacific waters through the Bering Strait, driving bottom melt throughout the Arctic winter.
    "We suggest the Bering Strait inflow influences sea-ice by providing a trigger for the onset of solar-driven melt, a conduit for oceanic heat into the Arctic, and (due to long transit times) a subsurface heat source within the Arctic in winter."
    [Woodgate et al 2010] These trends are pretty much subsumed in this volume graphic based on PIOMAS: [Source] So the same physical processes that resulted in average winter sea ice thicknesses in the days of the Nautilus of 8-10 meters (with some MY ice 20+ meters thick) have now given us 1.4 meters thicknesses for FY ice (MY ice is about 2.8 meters thickness recently, IIRC). That trend continues to this day. Free fall or death spiral: Your choice...
    0 0
  38. Believe it or not, there are still climate deniers posting on comment threads who apparently believe that sea ice has only two dimensions.
    0 0
  39. It's not likely that Jay Cadbury is here for serious discussion. Below are excerpts from a comment posted at WUWT. Finding the full comment is an exercise left to the Googler. It's time to stop feeding the troll. "Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. says: February 18, 2011 at 1:12 pm ( -Snip- )
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] What Jay has posted on other sites is not germane.  What matters is his conduct here.  All posters will be judged by their conduct here (or lack thereof).  And Jay will be judged by his.

  40. JeffT @39 and moderators, Wow. Thanks for that. In light of these astounding revelations I motion that Cadbury (and any of his sock puppets) be banned from SkS. This is a site for serious scientific discussion, education and learning. Now back to the science.
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] I have been aware of Jay's comments, at WUWt and RC alike, for some time now.  His posting privileges here will be determined by his adherence to the Comments Policy of this site.  But I well understand the frustration...

  41. 39, JeffT, Hmph. Speaks volumes. And for whomever has been complaining about moderation at SkS, versus the "WUWT is an open forum!" declarations I've seen, note the comment shortly after his, where his comment wound up in moderation, and the mod talked about all of the outrageous posts that wind up getting deleted.
    0 0
  42. Cadbury here has denied that he is the same person as posting on those sites. If in fact he is the same person, then posting a downright lie should be reason for exclusion in my opinion.
    0 0
  43. As the Bering strait is shallow the warmer water on ocean surface has an access to the arctic that may only be countered with the river runoff to the Sea of Northern Lights (former Arctic Ocean), which itself is warming up (due Siberia warming up). But it's nice to have Woodgate & al. to provide some numbers. Some years back I found a site where a research group published the actual measurements of currents across the Bering strait, but I lost it, and maybe that project has been discontinued as satellite observations on ocean currents have become more reliable.
    0 0
  44. FWIW there are two trends that have strongly influenced the rate of sea ice melting in the NH, there is additional warm water moving into the area and the winds have been more in favour of exporting ice out of the arctic. A change in either of these may see the rate of decline slow or even briefly reverse the trend. Just so people keep in mind that the trend is not guarenteed.
    0 0
  45. Daily satellite updates from the Arctic on arctic.io/satellite
    0 0
  46. dorlomin, given that both warmer water and increased ice export have been driven by increased greenhouse warming, which will continue so long as we keep adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, I'd argue that continuation of the Arctic sea ice decline is "guaranteed". The only thing which might be able to stop it would be an immediate radical reduction in GHG emissions... but at this point it seems obvious that isn't going to happen, and it might be too late to prevent the Arctic ocean from melting out even if it did.
    0 0
  47. With regard to the UAH graph shown by villabolo, I remember one or two people posting on here back in April, saying that the anomaly showing for March 'proved' that temperatures hadn't risen since the readings began, or whatever cherry-picked date was relevant at the time; or that all the warming had now been 'wiped out'. Where are they now and what do they think at the moment ? I'm genuinely interested, if only to discover more about their thought-processes.
    0 0
  48. Hi all, The SEARCH predictions have now been published. Follow the link @33 if interested. @37 Daniel, looking at the PIOMAS graph, between September 2006 and Sep 2007, sea ice volume fell from 10,000 cubic km to 6,000, a fall of 4,000. In September 2010, ice volume was at 4,000 cubic km. If the melt this year is at the same rate as 2007, that leaves nothing: 4,000 - 4,000 = 0 Also, I have a hunch that the Woodgate paper is part of a broader trend that exaggerates the importance of Pacific waters in Arctic melt, for the following reasons: 1. More English language research is conducted in US and Canadian waters, for obvious reasons; 2. The new sexy topic of ENSO has a huge effect on US weather patterns, but actually, with the Bering Strait being so narrow, has much less effect than the boring old Atlantic currents such as the Gulf Stream; 3. A lot of attention has been paid to 2007; but 2007 was an anomaly, which was related to a strong El Nino. I personally hold that the Arctic is being melted primarily by the influx of consistently warmer water of Atlantic origin; and I suspect that research on the Atlantic side is less well funded, often published in languages that I don't understand and, in the case of Cyrillic texts at least, subject to strong political pressure.
    0 0
  49. Thanks for the heads up Idunno! Fairly narrow band of predictions; 4.0 to 5.6 million km^2. Two 'public' contributions this year - one of them from Watts.
    0 0
  50. Great sets of data. Many thanks. This also a useful one. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png Any chance you could do the same as WUWT and put all the links and graphs in one place for easy reference?
    0 0
    Response:

    [DB] I have been considering the feasability of such a thing for a while now.  Right now it comes down to time/manpower.

1  2  3  Next

You need to be logged in to post a comment. Login via the left margin or if you're new, register here.



The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


© Copyright 2024 John Cook
Home | Translations | About Us | Privacy | Contact Us