Mr Sleet
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Posts posted by Mr Sleet
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You make some good points but let yourself down at the start and towards the end and try to teach a lesson in civility, which is a pity.
I haven't got time for this, oh btw I am not an amateur, thanks.
So now you have to tell us what your profession is - I'm all ears
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Thanks for the update Carinthian.
I am somewhat optimistic that a delay to the melt will be seen this year and a shortened summer (based on little more than dubious signals from down south and some hopecasting). This may allow the recovery of some multi-year ice, though not as much was lost last year. Let's see shall we. Things are not good but Mother Nature has a habit of ironing out the spikes (being 2007).
Gray Wolf is correct to worry. The longer trend, even if we do get a couple of cool years now is one of warming and reduction of ice. Sceptics should not take signals of a superficial recovery as justification for their position.
It's not a superficial recovery it's a natural recovery. Lets wait and see if 2007 was a freak event or not.
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Hi Jethro. Yes, something else to consider. Also, we have just gone past the full moon, so tidal action combined with stormy seas may be the culprit. Or it could be global warming.
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the graphical display from CT is here..
Where would Watkins be GW? i dont know if it would be viewed as sea ice or not.. difficult to tell due to the increase in sea ice around the coasts.. i may be wrong but i guess we would be looking for an area of 100% concentration coming into the sea from Watkins?
The Watkins ice shelf has definitely not collapsed. Now the Wilkins ice shelf is another matter, it's on the western side of the peninsula ( I would suggest that possibly very stormy weather has more to do with a small piece breaking off than GW).
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Beat me to it!!
Soooo, lets see we have BAS reporting a major calve from Pine in mid southern winter and now,as everyone gets giddy about the 200,000sqkm increase in sea ice this year, we get Wilkins letting go another huge chunk of the bits of shelf left before the Pine island complex. I wonder if it was their new toy planes that did the spotting?
As I've repeated it is all about the volume of ice and not the extent of ice that matters. Even more so in Antarctica where its 'multiyear ice' ,in the form of shelves fringing the continent, holds back vast areas of ice which rapidly spill out into the oceans when the 'girdle' of shelf ice is lost.
Well these things happen all the time as you point out, and are pinpricks in the bigger scheme of things, which is increasing ice area, well above the long term average.
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worrying times all in all... i shall be watching the melt with great interest..
mind you the global situation might not be as dire because of the sea ice growing down under..
Thats right, globally things are neutral.
As for the north, will be very interesting to see what happens. suspect some humble pie will be offered to but rejected by certain posters who have nailed their colours very firmly to the mast (mention no names ) but here's an anagram as a clue - Wary Flog
I'm cautiously optimistic that the polar bears will be ok. -
From Cryosphere Today website.
No comment needed I think.
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Arctic ice blanket at record low
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
'Tough as nails' ice which covers the Arctic sea all year round melted to a record low last year. An area more than five times the size of Britain was lost and last summer's level was a quarter lower than ever before.
Despite gains in winter, the ice was very thin and only six months old.
It would be prone to heavy melting come summer, warned Walter Meier of the US Snow and Ice Data Centre.
Compared with the 1980s, three-quarters of the 'tough as nails' sea ice has disappeared, Mr Meier added.
If that is not bad enough, what is left of it is being swept out of the Arctic, where it will melt, by atmospheric pressure.
Summer Arctic sea ice is intricately connected to weather conditions the world over.
It affects wind patterns and temperatures as far south as the Gulf Stream in Mexico – acting as a sort of fridge for the globe by cooling sea water. Last winter, 15million sq km of ice formed over the Arctic – a four per cent rise and the most since 2003.
But instead of thick ice which can withstand summer, the thin layer will melt as much – if not more – as last year. And, without it, we could be in trouble.
'We're in for a world of hurt this summer,' said ice scientist Mark Serreze.
'What happens there matters here,' said Waleed Abdalati, a Nasa ice scientist.
You may be right Gray Wolf, but I wait with interest to see what actually happens, rather than rely on emotional statements from ice scientists
and EU commissioners.NHemisphere Ice extent now plateauing a good month later than last year.
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?
If we had been monitoring ocean temps since 1850 you would probably have not mooted such an queer statement as you'd find the temps steadily increasing over the period. There may be some moral need to not be seen as responsible for all of the deaths so far (human and all other species) but mainly to squeal out of all the deaths yet to come but alas! t'was us (though you'll probably demand 100% proof which will only arise when we are well into the catastrophe to come).
Gray Wolf- you are barking mad !
Answer the question sensibly- why is multiyear ice still decreasing during the winter, when vast amounts of single year ice are being created at the same time ? -
Yes it is fairly obvious but only you have grasped that!
Further to what Grey Wolf added regarding models catching up with actuality -
"Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that satellite and other observations show the Arctic ice cover is retreating more rapidly than estimated by any of the eighteen computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in preparing its 2007 assessments."
source http://nsidc.org/news/press/20070430_StroeveGRL.html
Note in particular -
"Although the loss of ice for March is far less dramatic than the September loss, the models underestimate it by a wide margin, as well. "The actual rate of sea ice loss in March, about –1.8 percent per decade in the 1953 to 2006 period, was three times larger than the mean from the computer models," said Stroeve. March is typically the month when Arctic sea ice is at its most extensive"
Thus don't read too much into March ice extent now as it's fairly irrelevant. Its decline is only small though even this is down much more than predicted.
Hi. Could we please keep this sort of talk to the Enviro thread please - "Polar Ice sets new minimum". This seems to be developing into another of those AGW arguments. Thanks
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does it really matter?
The fact that there is an ever increasing percentage of young ice over old is surely the point is it not?
Are we made aware of how the ice age is measured? is it that which survives until sept that is assessed as 1 year old or does it's age start once it has survived a summer melt?
The point is that the remaining 6+ yr ice is reducing drastically when taken as a percentage of the whole pack at ice max. In summer the reduced mass of multiyear must surely present more surface area (as a percentage of it's total mass) as it shrinks thus allowing a greater area for air/water temps to work on.......or am I wrong?
The fact that we are where we are today would also raise the spectre of a more mobile 'multiyear pack' as it is now not cemented securely in the anchorage that provided it with the conditions that enabled it to endure the summer melts in the past and putting it increasingly at the mercy of wind and current (and we know that the influx from Bearing is a real 'ice eater') further speeding it's demise.
If the multiyear ice has continued to diminish desite the very cold conditions up there during the winter, this would suggest a mechanism other than AGW, or any sort of atmospheric warming - wouldn't it ?
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N Hemisphere ice doing very well. Looks like the peak is going to be at least a month later than 2007. This could bode well for a much increased minimum in 2008. I'm not a betting man, but if I was I would reckon on a good 2M sq km up on 2007's minimum. This would of course lay the foundations for a recovery in multiyear ice.
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... during the coolest year, globally, for goodness knows how long.
So, how does that work then? It gets cooler, and de-glaciation accelerates? or it get warming and glaciation increases, or it gets cooler and glaciation increases, or it gets warmer and de-glaciation increase.
I know I'm simple, but, for the love of God, I can't see how this works.
No doubting things warmed up a bit up to 98/2000, what we are seeing is the thermal inertia in the system, probably. The subsequent plateauing and possible cooling off may reverse/slow down the shrinkage in the next 10 years or so.
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Hi, I actually joined before you, but thanks.
Sorry to be picky, but by some quirk of fate , you and AFT joined on the same date :o
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Sleet i am missing something? the gloal chart only has the anomoly line at roughly + .5, whereas 1979 started at + 1.. 2003 was the last year with a global psoitive anomoly more than this year so far....
I dont know if we will get a further increase in NH sea ice.. the CT chart only shows levels up to what looks like the 1st of March, so in fact this time last year the sea ice levels where starting to drop off slightly.. i would expect the same or perhaps a levelling off.
NSIDC claims that for Feb sea ice extent hit 15 million sq kms...
the only area with a major difference is Barents not suprising as the only bit of sustained cold weather to hit this area has happened in the last few weeks really..
wonder what the difference is therefore between CT and NSIDC? as CT had a value of 13.5 million...
Alright OSN, the current global sea ice area anomaly is greater than at the start of 1980 - ok ? :lol:
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I think it is probably misleading and the early build is a result of La Nina. La nina changes the synoptic pattern such that both the Hadley and Ferrel cells strengths are changed along with the Rossby Wave train. This results in what is known as the Antarctic Dipole with cold air being brought north in the southern Pacific to form early sea ice .
How can it be misleading when it is the result of natural phenonemon ? Rhetorical question.
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Not a good time for GW then? :o
BFTP
No, ice area going up remarkably rapidly.
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Looking at the CT site , NH ice still increasing , remarkably. SH ice increasing rapidly. Global sea ice area looking set to break through highest level since 1979.
Gray Wolf has gone very very quiet I notice. :o
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N Hemisphere ice doing extraordinarily well, still increasing. Total global sea ice area now back to 1979 levels.
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So last feb the ice was down to 1.9 msq km and this year it got to 2.1 msq km in the mean time it max'ed out at over 2 msq km above last years figures. So the 'record cold' being harped on about has resulted in a net gain of just 0.2 msq km........what happened to the other 1.8msq km?
As far as i can gauge the ice retention has been in wind jammed areas (Weddell sea pushed up against the peninsula) and has not been retained along the coastal strips who were down to the shelf ice by early Jan. Cold weather and a AGW modified circumpolar wind seem to be the driving forces here, along with the moderate La- Nina. If we look at southern hemisphere temps for this summer we'll find that nowhere did very well (NZ, Argentina/Peru) and Australia certainly responded to the La-Nina conditions with the first rains in some areas for over 10yrs.
Climate is still able to follow it's own flux's (AGW signal not swamping natural cycles) so to 'cock-adoodle-do' about a normal La-Nina event seems odd. Maybe if we took a comparable La-Nino period and compared the ice retention over that period we would have a useful measure.
In the same way as AGW deniers harp on about temps in 98' not being matched (last big el-Nino) so therefore we are cooling we wouldn't like to make the same silly error during an average La-Nina and call for a general 'cooling' as temps respond to the global synoptics.
That's a strange world you are inhabiting there GW.
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Laserguy, rewriting the future before it's happened gives off a feint whiff of desperation don't you think. I see no evidence anywhere of a potential cooldown. Sure, there are one or two on N-W who keep on pointing to 1998 and saying we haven't been warmer since, but I wouldn't put it past the same people to suggest the Lotto was rigged if any particular number wasn't drawn for more than seven weeks.
It's just like you SF to ignore a data point that doesn't fit your inutuition.
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Cheeky, I'm sorry but this is a classic example of the ignorant being led by the unknowing into areas where they know very little. Having worked with several of the UK's water companies I can assure you that you would much rather pay for a system that has excess capacity built in but which is leaky, than one which never leaks. There's a principle in most network asset operations of economic return, and it can be applied to almost any asset to determine the optimum range of operation of the asset, such that the cost of repair and maintenance does not go beyond a point at, on one end of the scale, service is inadequate, and on the other service is too expensive. I daresay you don't take your car to the garage for a check up every week do you, nor I bet do you turn the engine off when you're sat in a queue. Equally with water, FAR more is wasted by needless and wasteful use (e.g. washing cars, watering of gardens up and down the country, excess toilet flush, faulty overflows...) every year than is lost through uneconomic loss from leaky pipes.
Well with a leak rate close on 40 % for Thames Water , then by your reasoning say another 50% of water use is wasteful and unnecessary, we should be able to get by on 10% of the water that we actually use
Not everyone can have children, you know. I work and pay taxes. I also pay NI, even tho' I am opted out.I'm not entirely convinced that many of the 'future taxpayers' will in fact be paying tax, looking at the number of welfare families being encouraged to breed without constraint.
Sorry, but that sort of comment (above) gets my dander up. If people choose to have a family then they should be able to support them - and if they use more water (and all of its associated services) than others then they should pay a little extra for it.
If I go to B&Q and buy huge quantities of a particular product I would expect a discount for a bulk buy. The same should be true of water consumption for people with families. Like me.
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You might be playing with me, but I am sure you don't really mean that: there is not enough cash in research science, especially in unis, for people to do anything dodgy in order to get another crappy contract....Oh, the 6-12 month underpaid contract: I remember it well! And I am sure that you would agree that dodgy results will only mean some other so-and-so shredding you in the next edition of 'Journal of your subject part A, number 2 (April)'....?
And as for salaries, there is a reason why my emminent physics hubby is now in IT...........
Well, maybe I was a bit hasty
you win this one . Must dash, carbon to sequester -
Oh now I've heard it all.......
Edit: You will, of course, be able to tell me how much a scientist earns then?
Hi Roo, glad you took that well
As I am a research scientist ( Industry ( carbon sequestration) , not academia ) I could but I won't it might make you cry
Although I am playing with you a bit, one thing you can almost certainly guarantee is that at the end of a climate scientists paper, they will say " more research needed" which roughly translated means " I need another contract"
I'm cautiously optimistic that the polar bears will be ok. 
'Tough as nails' ice which covers the Arctic sea all year round melted to a record low last year. 
and EU commissioners.
Answer the question sensibly- why is multiyear ice still decreasing during the winter, when vast amounts of single year ice are being created at the same time ?
you win this one . Must dash, carbon to sequester
Latest Antarctic Ice Reports
in Spring Weather Discussion
Posted
Yes, but it is rather "off message"