Interitus

Interesting, but largely inaccurate. Deep oceans won't cool any further than they are already because of the stratification of water as it cools due to its varying density. 90% of ocean water is below the depth of the thermocline - the layers affected by temperature differences - and is already between 0 - 3 degC. And in the arctic this is even more irrelevant because there is little or no thermocline and the ocean is equally cold throughout its depth. edited to remove image repost

I think the article is probably insinuating that the change is suspected to be due to AGW. However a critical contribution has been the flushing of older ice from the Arctic basin past the east coast of Greenland. It may be that it took only marginally warmer temperatures to allow the break up of the ice enough to facilitate this, but I suspect will need significantly lower temperatures to re-establish. It's a little like a dam or levee breaking - once it starts to go it's quickly gone.

Whatever http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7417123.stm

Grantham has cone north of Ness...

It was Drummond I think I meant, he's at the one near Ness City.

Aren't they different cells? Sherrod is near Dighton and Thunderstorm Team near Quinter. edit: ignore that it is the same - I've got windows open all over the screen !

The David Drummond cam has a nice rotating wall cloud near Dighton that looks like it's trying...

Matt Grantham has got a large tornado on the ground right now.

CNN have been showing this all day, there is video on their site - http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/05/22/color...iew#cnnSTCVideo

Really? "Although there is more ice than this time last year, the average decline rate through the month of April was 6,000 square kilometers per day (2,300 thousand square miles per day) faster than last April. Estimating September extent based on past conditions As discussed in our April analysis, the ice cover this spring shows an unusually large proportion of young, thin first-year ice; about 30% of first-year ice typically survives the summer melt season, while 75% of the older ice survives. For a simple estimate of the likelihood of breaking last year's September record, we can apply survival rates from past years to this year's April ice cover. This gives us 25 different estimates, one for each year that we have reliable ice-age data (see Figure 2). To avoid beating the September 2007 record low, more than 50% of this year’s first-year ice would have to survive; this has only happened once in the last 25 years, in 1996. If we apply the survival rates averaged over all years to current conditions, the end-of-summer extent would be 3.59 million square kilometers (1.39 million square miles). With survival rates similar to those in 2007, the minimum for the 2008 season would be only 2.22 million square kilometers (0.86 million square miles). By comparison the record low extent, set last September, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles). Forecasting September extent with climate predictors Sheldon Drobot at the Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and colleagues have developed a sophisticated forecasting technique. The forecast considers sea ice extent, ice age, summer and winter temperatures, cloudiness, the phase of the Atlantic Oscillation, and climate trends as predictors (see the papers cited below for details; visit the Arctic Oscillation Index). As reported last month, the Arctic Oscillation was in its positive phase through the winter season, associated with a wind pattern helping to flush thick ice out of the Arctic, leaving thinner ice. This is one of the factors helping to set the stage for pronounced ice losses this summer. Drobot predicts a 59% chance of a new record minimum this year; read the press release. Todd Arbetter of the U.S. National Ice Center tells us that his group is working to implement a version of Drobot's analysis scheme for operational forecasting. Ronald Lindsay of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and collaborators recently published results from their own ice prediction system, based on a retrospective analysis of the modeled state of the ice and ocean system (see the paper cited below for details). The model is successful in explaining around 75% of the year-to-year variations for the past few decades; for 2008, the model implies a very low, but not extreme, sea ice minimum. Lindsay cautions that sea ice conditions are now changing so rapidly that predictions based on relationships developed from the past 50 years of data may no longer apply." source: http://www.nsidc.com/arcticseaicenews/ A record minima or thereabouts looks to be very much in the balance. Even if it doesn't fall quite as low as last year it would be absurd to claim a recovery based on one year's ice extent.

I didn't say it had. BFTP selectively quoted from the article and I restated the explanation given. Though if more ice is released from land then the ice extent is bound to increase temporarily (-for temporarily this may be in the order of a few, tens or hundreds of years or more). Once again this will just go round and round pointlessly so I will butt out again.

It hasn't been neatly ignored, it's accounted for by ozone depletion.

I sometimes wonder about the legitmacy of places such as Heathrow also - a weather site surrounded by a couple of hundred acres of dark grey tarmac...

Couple of hours light-moderate snowfall here in North Cheshire. Looked to be covering at one point but now melted from road and pavements, possibly only 1-2 cms on suitable surfaces eg. cars. Will be better elsewhere as in town here at only 20M asl. Only good for drunken post-pub frolics - it's wet and thawing slowly then will probably freeze later to be crunchy first thing in the morning before turning rapidly melting before breakfast, haha.

I was responding directly to removing CO2, cheers.

Farm the oceans. Fertilise the mid-ocean areas to produce algal blooms, they would take millions of tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere as well as encouraging new food chains leading ultimately to more fish to eat.

Interesting, but unfortunately completely off message in this instance - the earthquake is over 2500 miles away from the ice shelf. Moreover, the current collapse of Wilkins predates the earthquake - "Satellite images processed at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center revealed that the retreat began on February 28" http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_re...ease.php?id=376

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.

Er, these "pinpricks" help increase ice area. I'll contact the British Antarctic Survey and tell them not to worry.

Of course though, oceanic circulation and global temperature are inextricably linked. Increased Antarctic sea ice extent is not incompatible with warming, and with the collapse of ice shelves indeed it may be expected as glacial flow rates increase. Apparent positive ice extent anomalies are not necessarily a good sign. Again, the total volume of ice is more significant than area.

Unsuprising as Spaniards are not used to temperatures that low!

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.

Ad hominem, nice.

The source does not suggest anything of the sort - "But he added that it's too soon to say what impact this winter will have on the Arctic summer sea ice, which reached its lowest coverage ever recorded in the summer of 2007. That was because the thick multi-year ice pack that survives a summer melt has been decreasing in recent years, as well as moving further south. Langis said the ice pack is currently located about 130 kilometres from the Mackenzie Delta, about half the distance from where it was last year." Exactly like I said, we have to wait and see before proclaiming that the ice has recovered.

Hi, I actually joined before you, but thanks. I read the source posted, the author did mention some caveats though. There are a multitude of sources if one cares to look, but one that will suffice is the latest from wunderground which gives a quick precis of the current situation - http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMaste...p;tstamp=200803