Arctic ice

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html

Don't forget we have webcams at the pole which give temp/pressure/humidity at the times the image was taken.

So, as you see, at 09:53 it was 3.5c at the north pole.

[bluecon]

Nothing's being taken personally. It's rather nice to force myself to take the time to examine the temps in that region more throughly.

A few more temperature profiles from the islands then, which indicate that it hasn't been cold there recently and that May and June where rather above average.I would almost certainly call it a warm spell. Also as they are 365 days they show the warmth which happened in July and August which isn't too far away from the warm anoms reached in May and June.

BTW I thought I said that temps had reached 15-20 not above 20. If I were to say that temperatures in the UK in May reached 25C it doesn't mean the whole month was 25C, nor that the whole country reached 25C at the same time, but that strangely 25C had been reached.

I guess I never realized it had reached twenty in the Canadian Arctic this year.

And there definately has not been widespread temps of 15 to 20C.

Spin how you want, but the Canadian Arctic has been somewhat cool this year.

And as far as forecasts go, science is very bad at predicting the weather.

Edited June 26, 2008 by bluecon

[Gray-Wolf]

but the Canadian Arctic has been somewhat cool this year.

And as far as forecasts go, science is very bad at predicting the weather.

See post above, 24hr day and the Pole is above freezing. What else do you need to melt ice?

The Polar Year team in the Canadian arctic last year saw hillsides slipping downslope revealing the bare rock beneath as the permafrost melted.

The high arctic team got rained on at the Pole.....and if there was any precipitation there today it'd be hard to call it. Rain's very good at melting snow and ice, ask any of us Brit's on here as our winters have been blighted by any snow turning to rain and then it washing away any of the white stuff that 'stuck'.

As for weather forcasters being 'pants'

[bluecon]

Are you the only Gray Wolf left in England?

[Gray-Wolf]

Are you the only Gray Wolf left in England?

Only if they don't finds me a few b1tches to amuse myself with!

I'm really a Ballantine-Gray but one of the Pacific tribes has my totem animal as the Wolf (which is good for me as I'm very dog eared myself) so there you are.

The fact my board initials are G.W. is just a fine example of serendipity!

Back to the thread !!

Edited June 27, 2008 by Gray-Wolf

[millennia]

It does at first glance bluecon but if you dig a little deeper and look at the higher resolution images, then ignore hudson and Chukchi which melt every year then the situation looks pretty bad.

Pockets of thin ice are floating all over the place, the deeper passage of the NW only has one chunk of sheet ice left, the rest is broken up first year ice. As GW has already mentioned as soon as the ice starts breaking up like this it's had it until September or October the water reflects alot less of the sun's energy and more ice movement occurs. So far during the spring conditions for the arctic particularly away from the Canadian coast really helping the ice to hold on, lots of cloud, cooler temps, less heat from the sun etc but even under these favourable conditions the first year ice is struggling to hold on.

Conditions in the next two weeks are set to reverse to an environment more favourable to melting with Temps in the Arctic Canadian Islands already hitting 15-20C this month the highest possibility still favours rapid ice melt.

A truly outrageous piece of alarmist "journalism" in the Independent (yeah, if only) today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/c...ole-855406.html

The journo has been truly flamed in their have your say section - the best comment I saw is quoted below. Sometimes it's so hard to counter things like "North Pole never known to be clear of ice in human history", and "northwest passage opens for first time in recorded history". Both statements, apparently, are untrue.... (I love the way the posting changed my original "bllx" to "dog biscuits" - a replacement profanity checker, what a brilliant idea :o )

THERMAL PATHS TO THE POLE,THE CURRENTS OF THE OCEAN, BY SILAS BENT, SAINT LOUIS: 1872. Just as the work was completed upon these currents in the North Pacific, in 1855, the news was received in the United States that Dr. Hane had discovered an open sea near the Pole, and people began to ask how that could be possible, when it was well known that a belt or region of ice several hundred miles in width must lie to the south of that sea, and which was never dissolved.

THE NORTH WEST PASSAGE BEING THE RECORD OF A VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION OF THE SHIP "GJOA" 1903 - 1907 BY ROALD AMUNDSEN

"We encountered no ice with the exception of a few narrow strips of old sound ice, carried by the wash. Of large Polar ice we saw absolutely nothing.

Between the ice and the land, on either side, there were large and perfectly clear channels, through which we passed easily and unimpeded.

The entire accumulation of ice was not very extensive. We were soon out again in open water.

Outside the promontories, some pieces of ice had accumulated; otherwise the sea was free from ice.

The water to the south was open, the impenetrable wall of ice was not there.

At 5.30 P.M. we met a quantity of ice off Cape Maguire,a fairly broad strip of loose ice. Beyond this we could see clear water.

Captain Knowles reports the season the most open he has ever known. He entered the Arctic on the day we left San Francisco, May 22, and thinks the straits were open even earlier than that.

The ice of the Arctic Ocean is never at rest. Even in the coldest winters it is liable to displacement and pressure by the currents of air and water. The expansion and contraction, due to changes in temperature,also assist in this disturbance."

[Mr Sleet]

A truly outrageous piece of alarmist "journalism" in the Independent (yeah, if only) today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/c...ole-855406.html

The journo has been truly flamed in their have your say section - the best comment I saw is quoted below. Sometimes it's so hard to counter things like "North Pole never known to be clear of ice in human history", and "northwest passage opens for first time in recorded history". Both statements, apparently, are untrue.... (I love the way the posting changed my original "bllx" to "dog biscuits" - a replacement profanity checker, what a brilliant idea :o )

I read the article. Some of the comments by so called "scientists" are what makes me distrustful of them, and I have been a scientist in R&D for 21 years !

[Gray-Wolf]

After reading through the article I find nothing contentious or exaggerated from the Papers we saw and linked back in march/April though it has taken them a long time to pick up on it.

Never mind Mill., you only have 2 months to go before we either see the awful truth or you are vindicated in your comments.

If you look at the ice conc. maps you'll see that the melt section facing the Bering is ,year on year, approaching the pole section of the ice.

The fact that NSIDC have dropped off a number of sea Buoys on the ice up there shows there confidence in their predictions (as the tackle is not cheap) and very useful ,once in the water, to gauge how big an impact currents are having across the pole.

Edited June 27, 2008 by Gray-Wolf

[millennia]

Never mind Mill., you only have 2 months to go before we either see the awful truth or you are vindicated in your comments.

Well,yeah, exactly - so I wish they would lay off the hand wringing doom mongering until we really have something to discuss. I'll be only too happy (if that's the word) to enter into a discussion of a new record melt AFTER it happened - especially if it all melts with a normal weather pattern and not an anomalous late summer like last year. However if it doesn't and even half that first year ice goes into a new winter we then have a load of multi-year ice next year to watch drifting about.

As the quotes from 100+ years ago indicate, it's actually not an unknown event for the NP to go ice free and a polynya could form in the 90 deg area due to pack drift and the amount of first year ice up there - surely nobody expected it would take 1 year to restabilise after a record melt? Not even me

[Gray-Wolf]

To help pass the time I'll keep up with the 'current images'.......nice meltwater pool today eh?

[Bobby]

How thick is that ice? It would be amusing if the station vanished into the ocean.

[Gray-Wolf]

How thick is that ice? It would be amusing if the station vanished into the ocean.

from the blurb I believe the orange, mid-distance object (to the right of the lefthand foreground object) is one of the buoys so if it all goes (the ice) the buoys take over the monitoring.

As you say, will be interesting over the next couple of weeks.

The other thing is, though sat images are cool, the total fragmentation, round melted ,rest of the pack would be better viewed from such a vantage as the webcam as you'll see more of the mechanics of the melt, than from a few miles overhead, when it goes.

[jethro]

Here's some further info about the new discovery of volcanic activity in the Arctic; hard to see how it cannot be contributing to warming oceans: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.ht...be-f48c0dc90304

[Iceberg]

I don't think there is very much mixing at that depth though the NADW production and the various columns/zones that take the descending water prove that the top section of the sea doesn't mix with the bottom at least from the bottom up.

Depending on where these volcano's are they might interfer wit the NADW production and hence effect the THC and various ocean currents. Worth keeping more of an eye on them though to try and measure how active they are.

[Devonian]

Here's some further info about the new discovery of volcanic activity in the Arctic; hard to see how it cannot be contributing to warming oceans: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.ht...be-f48c0dc90304

The question surely is 'But by how much?'?

Now, I'm no mathematician, so perhaps someone (someone who think the effect is more than absolutely minimal) can do the calculation for me? Volume of the Arctic Ocean? Times specific heat capacity of water of said volume? Times the heat emitted by a medium sized volcanic eruption? =???

[Filski]

I don't know if this has been posted yet...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtm...27/eaice127.xml

By comparing and averaging ice survival rates for the past 25 years the NSIDC predicts the end-of-summer extent should be 1.39m square miles but if the survival rate is as bad as 2007 it will shrink to 0.86m square miles - barely more than half the record low extent set last September of 1.65m square miles.

Looks like a new record is a foregone conclusion... just by how much now.

[Gray-Wolf]

Here's some further info about the new discovery of volcanic activity in the Arctic; hard to see how it cannot be contributing to warming oceans: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.ht...be-f48c0dc90304

I'm sure everything has got it's impact Jethro but I think you're 'scales' are awry (I feel) if you're looking for another mechanism to have impacted upon melt these past years. There is just too much cold water and pressure to allow any more than a very local phenomena. Now something like the eruption that flooded the Deccan at the start of the Tertiary might have an effect but that was HUGE.

We are the reason and ,as things go, for the year on year the impact on the northern ice. Yes, there is always natural cycles playing out their roles (like the recent La-Nina and the past winter) but again we have to look at 'trends' and not individual events.

As time goes on we amass both more measurable data to highlight the human impacts but also the physical impacts become ever more noticeable.

As with the IPCC's % of 'surety of human impact things just keep wracking up. It will be a shame ,I feel, if some folk wish to continue to argue the toss right up to the 100% surety (and then argue that you can never be 100% sure of anything). Though Paul and I disagree over this I do feel that it is most difficult to remove personalities from posts and ,by the end, it will be the personality 'type' and not the facts that drive the debate.

[bluecon]

I don't know if this has been posted yet...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtm...27/eaice127.xml

Looks like a new record is a foregone conclusion... just by how much now.

You base that assessment on the Telegraph?

What science is that article based on?

The scientist commonly predict the weather wrong hours ahead and yet you believe they know the temps and ice conditions in the Arctic for the whole of the melting period?

[Thundery wintry showers]

That's a very poor analogy- what would people think if someone said, "We can't predict what the weather's going to do in 5 days' time, so how on Earth can they have any confidence that in two months' time we will be nearing the end of August?" they'd not look too clever.

Not to mention that if the article had predicted that we would see a long-term recovery in the ice you would be accepting it as truth, for the real argument is more along the lines "AGW isn't happening, therefore, AGW isn't happening. Therefore it isn't happening, because if it was happening, it would be happening. This argument isn't circular because it isn't, therefore it's right."

I don't think breaking last year's record is completely a foregone conclusion yet- we were always looking at a scenario where we'd beat last year's record unless we had very favourable conditions, and this remains the case. But the odds certainly aren't good. At this rate we could indeed have completely ice-free Arctic summers in the next decade or two.

[Chris Knight]

snip/ img

To help pass the time I'll keep up with the 'current images'.......nice meltwater pool today eh?

I guess the image changes on the NOAA site - I can't see the meltwater on the picture today, GW, only the water droplets (melted snow or rain?) on the lens.

All is not lost

It seems we can select from the picture archive on:

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/index.php?year=2008

for the images we want to see from there, and then copy the location here.

Edited June 28, 2008 by Chris Knight

[Thundery wintry showers]

I can see meltwater quite clearly, right in front of the camera. Note the sunlight casting ripple effects on the far left of this pool- doesn't usually happen on ice!

[bluecon]

That's a very poor analogy- what would people think if someone said, "We can't predict what the weather's going to do in 5 days' time, so how on Earth can they have any confidence that in two months' time we will be nearing the end of August?" they'd not look too clever.

"The end of August is something that will happen exactly the same every year. Not actually predicting anything. Like predicting one plus one equals two. Well within sciences capabilties. Now predicting the weather a slight time ahead and acurately is not something that they are known for. Now predicting this Summers temperatures in the Arctic is not something they can do any better than guess at. The article is not based on fact and is merely alarmist info with no basis in actual science. There is right now more ice in the Arctic this year than last and the Pole is not covered with thin first year ice."

Not to mention that if the article had predicted that we would see a long-term recovery in the ice you would be accepting it as truth, for the real argument is more along the lines "AGW isn't happening, therefore, AGW isn't happening. Therefore it isn't happening, because if it was happening, it would be happening. This argument isn't circular because it isn't, therefore it's right."

"I would neither post such a poorly written article as this or support it even if it backed up my views."

I don't think breaking last year's record is completely a foregone conclusion yet- we were always looking at a scenario where we'd beat last year's record unless we had very favourable conditions, and this remains the case. But the odds certainly aren't good. At this rate we could indeed have completely ice-free Arctic summers in the next decade or two.

There is more ice at this point than there was last year and last year had an unusually warm and lengthy melting season.

I can see meltwater quite clearly, right in front of the camera. Note the sunlight casting ripple effects on the far left of this pool- doesn't usually happen on ice!

Ice often freezes up with ripples like that.

[Thundery wintry showers]

"The end of August is something that will happen exactly the same every year. Not actually predicting anything. Like predicting one plus one equals two. Well within sciences capabilties. Now predicting the weather a slight time ahead and acurately is not something that they are known for. Now predicting this Summers temperatures in the Arctic is not something they can do any better than guess at. The article is not based on fact and is merely alarmist info with no basis in actual science. There is right now more ice in the Arctic this year than last and the Pole is not covered with thin first year ice."

Where has anyone said that the pole isn't covered by first year ice? And if anyone has, why accept that as gospel and ignore the contrary posts? I suspect I already know the circular argument behind that one.

The Arctic ice cover has, according to various graphs posted earlier, actually declined to around last year's extent.

The predictions of ice melt have very little to do with Arctic temperature, they are showing that conditions would have to be exceptionally cold and cloudy in order for the melt not to reach or exceed last year's. It's called probabilities.

Ice often freezes up with ripples like that.

Even if this were true, it would imply that there had just been open water and that it had frozen up again, but it's difficult to imagine how that region near the front of the picture can be ice when it's a different colour to the ice further behind and has a distinctly fluid/watery texture.

[Richie V]

Where has anyone said that the pole isn't covered by first year ice? And if anyone has, why accept that as gospel and ignore the contrary posts? I suspect I already know the circular argument behind that one.

The Arctic ice cover has, according to various graphs posted earlier, actually declined to around last year's extent.

The predictions of ice melt have very little to do with Arctic temperature, they are showing that conditions would have to be exceptionally cold and cloudy in order for the melt not to reach or exceed last year's. It's called probabilities.

Even if this were true, it would imply that there had just been open water and that it had frozen up again, but it's difficult to imagine how that region near the front of the picture can be ice when it's a different colour to the ice further behind and has a distinctly fluid/watery texture.

This thread has turned into the best example of popular tripe I've ever read. If I want to read at this level of crap I will go and buy a copy of the daily mail or the sun.

Christ in a damn sidecar, When will you all learn. Nobody and i repeat NOBODY has a damn clue what is round the corner as regards the artic ice situation, this includes the "experts" as well. Well I agree that debate is healthy, there is far from suficcient evidence to prove persistant warming or cooling OR the potential cause, and now you have sunk to the lows of arguing over a damn pool of sodding melt water. Spare us all purrrrleese.

The experts havent been able to produce any awnsers so I doubt that the know - it - alls here know any better, take a step back and a deep breath, go and have a ciggarette and get back to reality!

Edited June 28, 2008 by Chassisbot

[tundra]

good post great advice not that they will listen.