Carinthians Latest Arctic Reports - (Summer 2007)

[carinthian]

things finally improving in the Arctic regions, the melting curve is starting to slow down, (maybe as there is no more ice to melt) some -10 850pha temps starting to appear as it looks like the polar vortex is establishing itself. We should see things improve futher as darkness starts to creap back.

With good concentrations of ice over on our side of the woods it will be interesting to see what impact that will have?

Hi,

Study of todays 12z atmospheric soundings in Ny Alesund now strongly indicate a deepening cold pool. Should be cold enough to produce some snow showers in the Northern reaches of the North Barent and Kara Sea tomorrow.

C

[parmenides3]

Heads up: this latest update from the CT site:

UPDATE: Thursday, August 16, 2007 - New historic sea ice minimum

One week after dipping below 4 million square kilometers Northern Hemisphere sea ice area and setting the new historic record NH sea ice minimum, there is currently 3.58 million sq. kilometers sea ice area. This new minimum is almost 11% lower than the previous historic minimum.

And still around three weeks to go until the melt season ends.

P

[Damien]

http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/amsre.html

My God I never realised things were this bad. It's almost difficult to look at that for the first time having been used to previous years ice concentration.

I've been trying to find the maps carinthian (and co.) posted a lot of last year - you know, the ones in a former thread of this name. But I can't find them. Can anyone help?

(They were the ones with the line graphs on where you could select your region of the Arctic - i.e.: Kara Sea and then see a graph for that.)

Cheers.

[parmenides3]

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ , I think this is what you are asking for, Damien. BTW: is there anyone who thinks that 11% (with more to come) lower than the historic record minimum is not significant?

:)P

[Damien]

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ , I think this is what you are asking for, Damien. BTW: is there anyone who thinks that 11% (with more to come) lower than the historic record minimum is not significant?

:)P

Yeah it's bad; but at least we got some record early(?) snow in the Alps to country this argument - at least for the "new ice age" people. (Hey, they may be right at that end of all this! ) Snow is more important for me than ice anyway; especially as I'm moving to France (and not the North Pole).

On a serious note though it's very serious and certainly a cause for concern. May even affect our winter this year - perhaps more than La Niña will? Bill Giles' and such predictions should come later when we have such a climate crisis IMHO fun as they all are (LRFs).

[Mr Sleet]

Heads up: this latest update from the CT site:

And still around three weeks to go until the melt season ends.

P

Earlier this week you were quoting 5.4 million sq km of sea ice area - are you saying now it's 3.5 !!?? I see that you are quoting values from two different websites- which is correct ?

Edited August 17, 2007 by Mr Sleet

[Mr Sleet]

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ , I think this is what you are asking for, Damien. BTW: is there anyone who thinks that 11% (with more to come) lower than the historic record minimum is not significant?

:)P

Yes it significant locally , but 90% of all the worlds ice is in Antarctica which according to the CT site is continuing it's well established 20 year increasing trend ( sea ice , which cannot be blamed on increased precipitation.) There is only so much cold and ice to go around, so while one loses some the other gains some.I doubt if either ice cap has done anything other than fluctuate considerably (even over short periods) in Earth history.

If Antarctica was losing it as well I would be worried. And I say this not as an intransigent AGW sceptic.

Edited August 17, 2007 by Mr Sleet

[trevw]

Earlier this week you were quoting 5.4 million sq km of sea ice area - are you saying now it's 3.5 !!??

sleet, as I understand it the higher number is extent, the lower is area (extent minus the holes)

record min extent = 5.36 ( we were at 5.4ish on the 14th not sure what we are at now)

record min area = 4.01 current as above..

area seems to me the more 'interesting' measure, it would be great to see graphs of both plotted against each other over time.

Anyone got any thoughts and where this is going to end? seems like we lost 0.4 (area) in 7 days from 9-16th, surely it must slow down soon!

low 3s?

find part of me willing it to pull up and the other half hoping that the melting will continue to the point where it can't be ignored by anyone..

Trev

[Mr Sleet]

sleet, as I understand it the higher number is extent, the lower is area (extent minus the holes)

record min extent = 5.36 ( we were at 5.4ish on the 14th not sure what we are at now)

record min area = 4.01 current as above..

area seems to me the more 'interesting' measure, it would be great to see graphs of both plotted against each other over time.

Anyone got any thoughts and where this is going to end? seems like we lost 0.4 (area) in 7 days from 9-16th, surely it must slow down soon!

low 3s?

find part of me willing it to pull up and the other half hoping that the melting will continue to the point where it can't be ignored by anyone..

Trev

Thanks Trev, I think you are right- I should read it more carefully I agree that area is the more interesting measure.

[mezzacyclone]

In regards to P3's link P3's Link- that looks one hell of a gap from the edge of the Ice sheet to Siberian coast! are the concentrations of Laptev, Chuckchi and east siberian seas really that low and far reaching into the arctic basin?

[parmenides3]

In regards to P3's link P3's Link- that looks one hell of a gap from the edge of the Ice sheet to Siberian coast! are the concentrations of Laptev, Chuckchi and east siberian seas really that low and far reaching into the arctic basin?

All the sites show pretty much the same thing, Mezza. This is the explanation from the NSIDC site:

Contributing to the loss: sea-level pressure and clear skies

Why have we seen such a rapid loss of sea ice in the summer of 2007? A major cause is unusually clear sky conditions in the months of June and July. Figure 3 is a contour map of sea-level pressure averaged for June and July. High pressure dominated the central Arctic Ocean during this period, promoting very sunny conditions just at the time the sun is highest in the sky over the far north. This led to an unusually high amount of solar energy being pumped onto the Arctic ice surface, accelerating the melting process. Satellite data show that skies over the Beaufort Sea were clear or mostly clear for 43 of the 55 days between June 1 and July 23.

The region over Siberia experienced fairly low pressure during the same time period. Winds blow clockwise around high-pressure areas and anticlockwise around low-pressure areas. The combination of high- and low-pressure areas thus fostered fairly strong winds over coastal Siberia that were partly from the south, pumping warm air into the region, also contributing to a warming Arctic. At the same time, these winds from the south acted to push ice away from the coast and into the central Arctic Ocean, further reducing ice extent in the coastal areas.

Which is better; area or extent? No idea. Each agency argues for its own version. One side note, though, CT updates its analysis every three days; the NSIDC metric is on a ten-day system, so CT is more 'immediate', though it does seem prone to glitches and uncorrected data, hence the odd 'blip' in the graphics sometimes.

:)P

[trevw]

Which is better; area or extent?

I'd have thought (which doesn't make it the case) they were each better for different things, i.e. perhaps that extent is more relevant to the refreeze - presumeably once the air/water temps dip then open water between ice floes (included in extent) quickly refreezes? Whereas area is more relevant to how close we are getting to 'ice free' in the arctic summer?

Trev

[jethro]

Contributing to the loss: sea-level pressure and clear skies

Why have we seen such a rapid loss of sea ice in the summer of 2007? A major cause is unusually clear sky conditions in the months of June and July. Figure 3 is a contour map of sea-level pressure averaged for June and July. High pressure dominated the central Arctic Ocean during this period, promoting very sunny conditions just at the time the sun is highest in the sky over the far north. This led to an unusually high amount of solar energy being pumped onto the Arctic ice surface, accelerating the melting process. Satellite data show that skies over the Beaufort Sea were clear or mostly clear for 43 of the 55 days between June 1 and July 23.

The region over Siberia experienced fairly low pressure during the same time period. Winds blow clockwise around high-pressure areas and anticlockwise around low-pressure areas. The combination of high- and low-pressure areas thus fostered fairly strong winds over coastal Siberia that were partly from the south, pumping warm air into the region, also contributing to a warming Arctic. At the same time, these winds from the south acted to push ice away from the coast and into the central Arctic Ocean, further reducing ice extent in the coastal areas.

I may well be being a bit of a numpty here, dis- regarding the old adage of "better to be silent and thought a fool, than speak and remove all doubt" but; how can lack of cloud and high amounts of Solar energy be responsible for this when the establishment side of AGW also say differences in Solar output are minimal and effects even smaller, and that cloud coverage is fairly irrelevant too? Surely you can't argue from both sides of the fence and get the same answer whenever it fits the cause?

[parmenides3]

Contributing to the loss: sea-level pressure and clear skies

Why have we seen such a rapid loss of sea ice in the summer of 2007? A major cause is unusually clear sky conditions in the months of June and July. Figure 3 is a contour map of sea-level pressure averaged for June and July. High pressure dominated the central Arctic Ocean during this period, promoting very sunny conditions just at the time the sun is highest in the sky over the far north. This led to an unusually high amount of solar energy being pumped onto the Arctic ice surface, accelerating the melting process. Satellite data show that skies over the Beaufort Sea were clear or mostly clear for 43 of the 55 days between June 1 and July 23.

The region over Siberia experienced fairly low pressure during the same time period. Winds blow clockwise around high-pressure areas and anticlockwise around low-pressure areas. The combination of high- and low-pressure areas thus fostered fairly strong winds over coastal Siberia that were partly from the south, pumping warm air into the region, also contributing to a warming Arctic. At the same time, these winds from the south acted to push ice away from the coast and into the central Arctic Ocean, further reducing ice extent in the coastal areas.

I may well be being a bit of a numpty here, dis- regarding the old adage of "better to be silent and thought a fool, than speak and remove all doubt" but; how can lack of cloud and high amounts of Solar energy be responsible for this when the establishment side of AGW also say differences in Solar output are minimal and effects even smaller, and that cloud coverage is fairly irrelevant too? Surely you can't argue from both sides of the fence and get the same answer whenever it fits the cause?

Hi jethro, brief response: you're looking at different things. This year, the combination of factors has contributed to an unusually large melt; this is not about AGW or not, simply an observation of the conditions. These things make a lot of difference, as the sea ice level shows, to what happens in parts of the world at certain times. The AGW argument is that, averaged over the globe, changes in solar output or cloud amounts hasn't been sufficient to explain the trend in warming; the data do not correlate. This is not the same as saying they aren't important. The Sun is the source of almost all of the energy in the system at any one time, and small changes in solar output do have a measurable and known effect on temperatures. Same goes for clouds. The AGW argument does not say that these are irrelevant parts of the climate system, but they are not able to account for the global warming which has gone on for 30 years now.

I'd also point out that nobody is saying that this year's ice melt is ipso facto evidence of GW. The variables and uncertainty about the polar climate systems are still very large. But nobody can 'prove' that GW is causing the conditions which lead to the decline in sea ice. Likewise, though, they can't prove it isn't. Instead, we look at the trend in Arctic sea ice coverage over the past thirty years and ask what kinds of forces might be at work to stimulate a trend for which we have no known precedent and which looks, as this stands, to be pretty persistent. Until recently, changes in average North Pacific sea level pressure and changes in warm water influx form the Bering Straits and the Denmark Straits into the Arctic Ocean have been the main contenders for causes of change. But a new paper suggests that changes in Arctic Summer ozone levels may be more important than either of these.

Whatever the culprit, we need to ask why such changes would occur. Warming seas can be attributed more or less directly to GW effects. The same seems a probable answer for the SLP, though this is more speculative. I haven't read the ozone paper yet, so I don't know about that one. Whatever the answer turns out to be, for a long time now, it has been suggested that if the AGW hypethosis were true, one of the earliest signs of major impacts occurring as a consequence would be a decline in Arctic sea ice; this is something which the early climate models suggested. So this is looked at as a possible measure of the level to which the climate system is responding to measured changes. It is easy to see how one gets from here to a sense that the decline looks plausibly like an indicator of major changes just starting to have an effect on the climate system.

Hope this helps,

:)P

[rc28]

Hi jethro, brief response: you're looking at different things. This year, the combination of factors has contributed to an unusually large melt; this is not about AGW or not, simply an observation of the conditions. These things make a lot of difference, as the sea ice level shows, to what happens in parts of the world at certain times. The AGW argument is that, averaged over the globe, changes in solar output or cloud amounts hasn't been sufficient to explain the trend in warming; the data do not correlate. This is not the same as saying they aren't important. The Sun is the source of almost all of the energy in the system at any one time, and small changes in solar output do have a measurable and known effect on temperatures. Same goes for clouds. The AGW argument does not say that these are irrelevant parts of the climate system, but they are not able to account for the global warming which has gone on for 30 years now.

I'd also point out that nobody is saying that this year's ice melt is ipso facto evidence of GW. The variables and uncertainty about the polar climate systems are still very large. But nobody can 'prove' that GW is causing the conditions which lead to the decline in sea ice. Likewise, though, they can't prove it isn't. Instead, we look at the trend in Arctic sea ice coverage over the past thirty years and ask what kinds of forces might be at work to stimulate a trend for which we have no known precedent and which looks, as this stands, to be pretty persistent. Until recently, changes in average North Pacific sea level pressure and changes in warm water influx form the Bering Straits and the Denmark Straits into the Arctic Ocean have been the main contenders for causes of change. But a new paper suggests that changes in Arctic Summer ozone levels may be more important than either of these.

Whatever the culprit, we need to ask why such changes would occur. Warming seas can be attributed more or less directly to GW effects. The same seems a probable answer for the SLP, though this is more speculative. I haven't read the ozone paper yet, so I don't know about that one. Whatever the answer turns out to be, for a long time now, it has been suggested that if the AGW hypethosis were true, one of the earliest signs of major impacts occurring as a consequence would be a decline in Arctic sea ice; this is something which the early climate models suggested. So this is looked at as a possible measure of the level to which the climate system is responding to measured changes. It is easy to see how one gets from here to a sense that the decline looks plausibly like an indicator of major changes just starting to have an effect on the climate system.

Hope this helps,

:)P

Top post, concise and very nicely explained for learners like me

Edited August 17, 2007 by rc28

[Duncan McAlister]

A rather poignant moment - the graph on CT has had to be altered to account for a greater than 2 million km2 negative anomaly. And after showing signs of leveling off, looks like the ice has taken a big drop in the last day or two.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...current.365.jpg

[parmenides3]

Top post, concise and very nicely explained for learners like me

Thank you.

:)P

[carinthian]

Not sure that is the case. The poleward transfer of heat from the NW Pacific seems more likely in my view . Temperatures in the East Siberian Arctic Region are currently +10C above normal. Most of the sunlight in the Arctic Basin is reflected from the white surface and has little power to cause melting. Most of the heat available is used up in this process, for the specific heat and latent heat of snow and ice are high, and little is available to cause excessive melting. Advection of heat seems to more probable cause of sea ice loss.

C

Just to clarify my thoughts on the above post with reports on this thread of the influence of 'solar energy' helping the cause of this summers rapid decline of Arctic Sea Ice. Heat into the Arctic Basin is imported in the main by air currents. There is no accurate evalutation of measuring the interferences caused by increased amounts of solar radiation, only an estimation and this is known as 'solar climate' and combined with poleward heat advection is known in our trade as 'physical climate'. So a word of warning, do not always accept what you read into scientific reports as being gospel as there are no rigid laws in evaluating the causes in loss of ice. Many years of experience has taught me a hard lesson in what or not to believe!

Guten Tag

C

[parmenides3]

Hi Carinth.; can I draw your attention to this, very new, study of Arctic conditions: Shidell, GRL 08/07: here is the abstract;

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L14704, doi:10.1029/2007GL030221, 2007

Local and remote contributions to Arctic warming

Drew Shindell

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

Abstract

I investigate the relative impact of local and remote radiative forcing by tropospheric aerosols and ozone on Arctic climate using GISS climate model simulations. During boreal summer, Arctic climate is well-correlated with either the global or Arctic forcing. During other seasons, however, large-scale dynamics strongly influence the Arctic, so that the surface temperature response follows the global or Northern Hemisphere extratropical forcing much more closely. The decoupling is so strong that Arctic surface temperature trends often show the opposite sign to the local forcing. The analysis also demonstrates that ozone and aerosols affect Arctic climate more strongly per unit global forcing than well-mixed greenhouse gases, typically 2.5–5 times in non-summer seasons, making them powerful levers for influencing Arctic climate. However, controlling atmospheric burdens of climate-altering pollutants outside the polar region appears to be at least as important as controlling them within for mitigation of Arctic warming.

What do you think?

:)P

[Gray-Wolf]

Again I find it prudent to mention single year ice and 'multiyear' ice. We may well quibble about extents but a thin skin stretching ice extents means nothing (IMHO). No matter how bloo*y sunny it's been this year if it's single year ice it'll melt in no time at all (even in +0.5c waters).

The worry is that with ice at this level now then the rest of the melt is to be of old (ancient?) ,multilayer ice pack. No matter how cold the winter to come the depth of pack WILL NOT be replaced and by the next melt cycle the 'thin' , new ice, will melt just as rapidly as this year and allow further inroads into the degradation of the 'old pack' ice.

The spectre of 'ice free arctic' will only be realised when the multi year ice has gone and single year ice predominates ....and this appears, to me, to be happening far more rapidly than that modelled.

Edited August 17, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[carinthian]

Hi Carinth.; can I draw your attention to this, very new, study of Arctic conditions: Shidell, GRL 08/07: here is the abstract;

What do you think?

:)P

Hi P,

I am not sure this is a joke. After reading this abstact, I do not have a clue what the guy is on about. We know these reports as Journalistic Jingo.Advice is to jettison.

C

[ribster]

Hi, not sure whether this is the right place, but I'm just curious as to whether the arctic/antarctic (during the planets entire history) have ever been completely devoid of snow and ice, if not what the minimum might have been? Also during any ice age, how far south has any cold/ice extended?

Thanks.

[carinthian]

Hi, not sure whether this is the right place, but I'm just curious as to whether the arctic/antarctic (during the planets entire history) have ever been completely devoid of snow and ice, if not what the minimum might have been? Also during any ice age, how far south has any cold/ice extended?

Thanks.

Hi Ribster,

The main glacier formed over Scandinavia with a clockwise swirl around the glacier anticylone that had formed in this location. The maximum southern extent of the great glaciers were to the Mid -west states in North America. Greenland link via Iceland to Scandinvia and pushed southwards to include the British Isles and much of the North European Plain as far south as Central France and the Alps.

C

[ribster]

Hi Ribster,

The main glacier formed over Scandinavia with a clockwise swirl around the glacier anticylone that had formed in this location. The maximum southern extent of the great glaciers were to the Mid -west states in North America. Greenland link via Iceland to Scandinvia and pushed southwards to include the British Isles and much of the North European Plain as far south as Central France and the Alps.

C

Hi Carinth, thanks for that, much appreciated. Just curious as to whether the whole lot could melt (or be substantially reduced anyway), and then reform as things cool again.

Edited August 17, 2007 by ribster

[parmenides3]

Hi P,

I am not sure this is a joke. After reading this abstact, I do not have a clue what the guy is on about. We know these reports as Journalistic Jingo.Advice is to jettison.

C

Hi, C. How can you call a paper in Geophysical Research Letters 'journalistic jingo'? It's about as far removed as can be. And Drew Shindell is a highly respected climate scientist, not some hack.

What he's saying is that he's done a model, and thinks it shows that ozone levels outside summer have a bigger impact on ice extent than warm water, air temps or GW. It's a newish idea to me , & I thought it might be something worth considering as a possibility. I'll not jettison it unless it is shown that his methodology or conclusions are demonstrably false, but that doesn't mean I think he's right, either.

:)P