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Posted
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
Well, I never! Bet this gets glossed over...

LINK

What's to gloss? You have bizarrely (but usefully, thank you) posted a link that supports the views of those who are worried about the extent of Arctic ice loss!!

The big rise this year in the July level (the graph doesn't show the minimum) was about the same as the single-year rise in 1992, and smaller than the single-year rise in 1996 (both from particularly low levels the year before). Did this mean the ice cover continued to rise thereafter? No, it continued to fall, and by more than it had risen. Smaller, but longer rises occurred in 81-83, 98-00 & 02-04, but each was again followed by larger falls. As a result, as it says, overall the NH ice cover in July has reduced by 6%+ per decade since 1979.

That is why it is not sensible to look at one year, or even three years in isolation - something that applies to proponents as well as opponents of the existence of GW.

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Posted
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
So are you saying pre SUV the Arctic has never seen such a low level of ice?

Or do you think the history of the Earth begins in the 1950's?

This isn't the first time this has happened and won't be the last.

Now enjoy the new cool spell the Earths climate is entering.

Don't be silly, Bluecon, of course I'm not saying that (assuming I understand what you mean by pre SUV....Sports Utility Vehicle, is that right? We generally call them 4X4s over here, hence my slight confusion). But since these may be the lowest ice levels in mankind's recent history, it is sensible to be concerned about them as a possible bellwether for a change in climate that could prove difficult for our post-industrial population levels to cope with.

Oh, and talk to me again in 10 or 15 years' time about how I've enjoyed the 'cool spell'. If it has happened I will be a very, very happy bunny indeed. My children will have snowy winters, and I will realize that I was wrong to have been so worried for so long about their - and all our - futures.

If the 'cool spell' should come to nothing, what will your reaction be? Just to say, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway because the planet has been here before"?

Inevitably, as a human being, my concerns are on a short human level. If one takes the longer view suggested by some here, nobody would ever bother to get up in the morning: what does anything matter if the only truth worth knowing is that the planet was here before us and will be here after us? Indeed, what does the planet matter since the universe was here before it and will be here after it?

Edited by osmposm
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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Weather Preferences: Southerly tracking LPs, heavy snow. Also 25c and calm
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
Indeed, what does the planet matter since the universe was here before it and will be here after it?

We all end up in that black box ;)

BFTP

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Don't be silly, Bluecon, of course I'm not saying that (assuming I understand what you mean by pre SUV....Sports Utility Vehicle, is that right? We generally call them 4X4s over here, hence my slight confusion). But since these may be the lowest ice levels in mankind's recent history, it is sensible to be concerned about them as a possible bellwether for a change in climate that could prove difficult for our post-industrial population levels to cope with.

Oh, and talk to me again in 10 or 15 years' time about how I've enjoyed the 'cool spell'. If it has happened I will be a very, very happy bunny indeed. My children will have snowy winters, and I will realize that I was wrong to have been so worried for so long about their - and all our - futures.

If the 'cool spell' should come to nothing, what will your reaction be? Just to say, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway because the planet has been here before"?

Inevitably, as a human being, my concerns are on a short human level. If one takes the longer view suggested by some here, nobody would ever bother to get up in the morning: what does anything matter if the only truth worth knowing is that the planet was here before us and will be here after us? Indeed, what does the planet matter since the universe was here before it and will be here after it?

The children! If scientific fact doesn't work use the children! Your childrens future will be far more affected by the economic recession we are entering than any tiny increase in CO2. Pushing some far fetched AGW scheme with no factual basis to shutdown the economies of the west will have a great detrimental effect on your children.

For the last ten years the Earth has shown no signs of warming while the manmade CO2 has greatly increased. Is that not proof enough?

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Posted
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
The children! If scientific fact doesn't work use the children! Your childrens future will be far more affected by the economic recession we are entering than any tiny increase in CO2. Pushing some far fetched AGW scheme with no factual basis to shutdown the economies of the west will have a great detrimental effect on your children.

For the last ten years the Earth has shown no signs of warming while the manmade CO2 has greatly increased. Is that not proof enough?

Um, no, it isn't - as explained time and again by many others, a ten year period that just happens to start with a huge peak year is proof of nothing YET, though of course it may become so.

As to the children, well, this is the first time I've mentioned them, and then merely to express that I, at least, do think about the future and any possible effects we may have on it.

Anyway, we're drifting off-topic again (no surprise since you are so reluctant to discuss the details of arctic ice coverage). If you wish to keep repeating, like a Hindu mantra, your only remaining bit of generalized evidence that GW is a myth, then the proper place is elsewhere in the Climate Change sub-forum.

Edited by osmposm
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Um, no, it isn't - as explained time and again by many others, a ten year period that just happens to start with a huge peak year is proof of nothing YET, though of course it may become so.
Inevitably, as a human being, my concerns are on a short human level. If one takes the longer view suggested by some here, nobody would ever bother to get up in the morning: what does anything matter if the only truth worth knowing is that the planet was here before us and will be here after us? Indeed, what does the planet matter since the universe was here before it and will be here after it?

I am trying to figure this out. A ten year period is to short and worthless?

And your concerns are on a short human level?

What are your exact parameters of the years we are allowed to use in this scientific discussion?

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Posted
  • Location: Colchester, Essex, UK (33m ASL)
  • Location: Colchester, Essex, UK (33m ASL)

To my mind the period of time that needs to be looked at is as large as possible but retaining a high degree of accuracy.

10, 20, 30 even 50 years is too short, and even 100, it needs to be longer on all accounts.

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Posted
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
I am trying to figure this out. A ten year period is to short and worthless?

And your concerns are on a short human level?

What are your exact parameters of the years we are allowed to use in this scientific discussion?

Please, Bluecon, not in the Arctic Ice thread: people are being driven driven away, and detailed discussion on the thread subject has practically ceased. Ask your question again in the proper place and I will try and answer it.

Thank you, Ossie

Edited by osmposm
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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

Just wanted to renew my contrarian statement issued several times before, that reduced ice coverage in the arctic is not necessarily symptomatic of a warming climate to follow. It could be entirely the opposite, so almost everyone invovled in this "debate" may be arguing each other's point of view if a climate reversal follows.

Perhaps with that partly in mind, I am not looking at this year's actual ice cover as either "a lot more" than last year, or "a lot less" than any given average of past years. I am looking and seeing significant continuing melt off Siberia where it has remained quite warm for several weeks, and just wondering (imagine that, not even knowing) whether it will open up from west to east to give us another significant ice-free anomaly later in August or September, or whether it will hold on in patchwork form and start freezing up quickly this autumn.

I think it is quite borderline, to be honest. But please, keep in mind, the climate shifts to come in the mid-latitudes can and quite possibly will be out of phase with arctic ice cover. This seems to be the pattern in the past. At least beyond a certain tipping point which was perhaps almost reached last year, but may not be approached again for a few years.

In all the research that goes on, we keep finding interesting facts but we are stuck with the same old basic truth that there is no reliable predictive theory for each of the next fifteen or twenty years, perhaps we could say there is some indication of one or two rather cold years right ahead of us, but other indicators point to possible warmings later in the next decade (see for example what GWO posts about that) and really, we all need to accept that we are largely in the dark as far as natural variability is concerned, anything could happen, and let's hope it includes some colder winters in the UK, just for the sheer fun of it.

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/..._timeseries.png

Though a little delayed we now seem to be seeing the death of the single year ice (as we suspected would occur) and we can expect a rapid fall away of ice levels as more and more 'dark waters' present between the ablated ice.

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Posted
  • Location: Cheddington, Buckinghamshire
  • Weather Preferences: Winter: Cold & Snowy, Summer: Just not hot
  • Location: Cheddington, Buckinghamshire

As a complete novice when does the ice stop melting and start rebuilding again? End of September? Just curious.

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Posted
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/..._timeseries.png

Though a little delayed we now seem to be seeing the death of the single year ice (as we suspected would occur) and we can expect a rapid fall away of ice levels as more and more 'dark waters' present between the ablated ice.

Yes, indeed,GW - the renewed steeper fall of the last few days is also showing on the IJIS graph, with the 2008 line now bang on top of 2006 and very close to 2005: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

As a complete novice when does the ice stop melting and start rebuilding again? End of September? Just curious.

The reversal begins at different times in different areas of the Arctic, mainly determined by how far North they are.

Overall, though, nowadays minimum Northern Hemisphere ice levels are reached in mid, or in the last couple of years even late September, as you surmise, Nick. In the high arctic it is somewhat earlier, perhaps late August, but often later.

You can see when the NH levels bottomed out 2002-2007 on the link above.

Ossie

Edited by osmposm
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Posted
  • Location: Larbert
  • Location: Larbert
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/..._timeseries.png

Though a little delayed we now seem to be seeing the death of the single year ice (as we suspected would occur) and we can expect a rapid fall away of ice levels as more and more 'dark waters' present between the ablated ice.

Big difference a year makes: http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/bist/bist.pl?conf...e_extent_trends

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Posted
  • Location: Cheddington, Buckinghamshire
  • Weather Preferences: Winter: Cold & Snowy, Summer: Just not hot
  • Location: Cheddington, Buckinghamshire

Cheers for that Ossie.

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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

The temperature anomaly pattern in the arctic has undergone a flip-flop in the past four days. It has become much warmer than average in the Ellesmere-north Greenland sector (16 C at Alert just before the solar eclipse on Friday), and considerably cooler along the Siberian coast although the warmer air is still lurking a few hundred miles inland.

This may slow the recent rapid melt off Siberia; the ice cover off east Greenland looks to be very close to historic low values.

I'm hoping to unearth some evidence of actual ice cover in the Canadian arctic prior to 1970 from various sources, this will require a trip to a library that is closed over the long weekend here. Canada does have some observations from the arctic on a rather scattered and irregular basis from about 1890 onwards, but the statistics are not on the website because they only go back to 1938 there (that being the year when Toronto's airport opened up) -- Toronto City had a continuous record from 1840 onwards but of course that will be of little help to our inquiries.

My personal belief is that ice cover in the Canadian arctic before about 1975 was generally more extensive than today, I have the feeling that the 1938 ice minimum north of Eurasia was not totally duplicated on this side, and I ascribe this in part to the much more southerly position of the NMP before 1950 (it was still down around Somerset Island). This would lock in more of a semi-permanent vortex over the Canadian arctic. Some scattered temperature records from Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island suggest that while there were a few rather mild years in the 1930s, the average back in the period 1931-1970 was perhaps 1.5 C lower than for 1971-2000. It has apparently dropped back a bit since 2000 though.

Maybe we should start a pool on Netweather for guesses as to when the arctic ice will largely disappear (this could include guesses of never). I have the feeling that it will one day totally or at least largely disappear one summer due to natural variations already well underway, and I would suggest the approximate timing for this might be 2018-2023. By "disappear" I mean just scattered discontinuous ice sheets north of 80 degrees at minimum with the possibility of sailing through open water north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island to north of Novaya Zemlya. Any other guesses? Or will 2007 prove to be the long-term minimum for ice cover?

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I have downloaded the figures from the http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm website, to show the current figures, both in tabular and chart form, and full details shown in the spreadsheet below. The figures represent the Sea Ice in the Arctic Ocean in km squared.

Current Figures Are 6909063 on the 3rd August,

this is well up on last year which was 6109844.

The other available figures are 7458594 (2003), 7693750 (2004), 6866719 (2005), and 6967188 (2006).

So the figures are well below 2003 and 2004, and close to 2005 and 2006.

Looking at recent years, at the end of August between 75% and 85% of Sea Ice at 3 August remains at the 31st August, so on this basis, we should be looking at Sea Ice Extent on the 31st August 2008, in the region of 5.2 to 5.9m sq km.

I will be updating this regularly to see how accurate this is, and that the likely position should be.

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

As you can see from the above graphic we are not short of the point in time that saw a plateauing off of ice loss last year. there appeared to be a month long 'balancing act' with high arctic 'new' ice' forming and the final ablation of the lower latitude ice.

From my reading of things the 'multiyear' that was blocking the eastern passage last year was one areas of rapid melt that did not appear as 'ice loss' as it melted down from above, neither did the multiyear to the north of Greenland. None of this ice exists this time around (hence the forecast that the passage will open this year) so are we to witness a continuation of the current increase in ice loss rates as the last of the 'thin' single year ice succumbs to the now 'warm' waters bathing them?

Plenty of folk have tried to use last years ice loss rates as a measure of how we are 'doing' this time around (apart from the various authorities that deal with the cryosphere) but I feel it is the next 6 weeks that will mark out the true extent of 'how we are doing' seeing as we should not expect the same 'plateauing' of levels before ice build starts again.

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Posted
  • Location: Dorset
  • Location: Dorset

Well the shallow NW passage is now open.

See picture below.

The ice in the deeper NW passage is only 50% extent. So no doubt you could sail through it very easily, but with a further few weeks of melt available, a 100% ice melt looks on the cards.

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds...tic/default.htm

for an interesting 45 mins watch the above Ozzie programme from last nights antipodean viewing

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Posted
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
  • Location: Putney, SW London. A miserable 14m asl....but nevertheless the lucky recipient of c 20cm of snow in 12 hours 1-2 Feb 2009!
The ice in the deeper NW passage is only 50% extent. So no doubt you could sail through it very easily, but with a further few weeks of melt available, a 100% ice melt looks on the cards.

I think 'only 50%' is an exaggeration, Iceberg, from that (Bremen) image, though it's not easy to assess from their colour coding.

It's much easier to tell on the Cryosphere high colour level image: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NE...e.color.004.png

I'd say that as yet there are still substantial areas of 70%, 80%, even 90% ice in Viscount Melville Sound (between Melville & Victoria Islands), and I doubt that it's passable. I agree, though, about the direction it's heading, if not to the extent of 100% ice free.

Similarly, although the shallow passage may be passable, from the Cryosphere image there seem to be significant areas of 30-50% ice to the south of Prince of Wales Island (where the Franklin Strait meets the McClintock Channel), so a very careful progress would be required - but then they don't seem to show up on your Bremen image.

However, temps up there, as Roger has said, are high at the moment: it's currently +10C by day & +5C by night at Resolute (the eastern end of both deep and shallow passages), though a slight - but only slight - cooling is forecast for the rest of the week. They should be around +3C max/zero min.

So the prognosis is not good (if you like ice).

Edited by osmposm
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Posted
  • Location: Brixton, South London
  • Location: Brixton, South London
Which one is telling the truth? Something's changed..

N_timeseries.png

20080801_Figure2.png

CO2 figures were apparently adjusted too (at Mauna Loa) for July.

http://www.nsidc.com/arcticseaicenews/

I think I'll remain 100% skeptic/non-believer.

Well from a quick and crude look it appears that the first graph is slightly earlier than the second so no implications (either way) for the AGW hypothesis.

regards

ACB

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Posted
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada
  • Location: Rossland BC Canada

I came across some interesting although isolated facts in a history of Siberia that has been gathering dust here since my long-ago university days (for some reason I got very interested in Siberia, perhaps thinking I might end up there).

Efforts to sail around the northern tip of Siberia (Cape Chelyuskin) routinely failed due to thick ice in the 19th century, although it was fairly easy to sail almost that far and then head up the Lena or Ob rivers. Although it was widely believed that nobody had ever sailed around there before the 19th century, some archaeological finds more recently pointed to the possibility that some fortunate sailor had made it through and progressed somewhat further east leaving behind some traces of that activity along the shore. This may have been anywhere from 1550 to 1650 apparently.

Now at the eastern end of Siberia, and bearing in mind the heavy ice encountered by Franklin 1845-47 or so, some expedition was able to get within a few miles of Wrangel Island in 1849 so this must have been a fairly normal ice limit in the colder 19th century. Later expeditions had less sucess getting close to Wrangel in 1875 and 1914, or if they did get there they were then stuck for several years.

In between these anecdotal events, Nordenskjold sailed the northeast passage over the two seasons of 1877-78 but encountered thick enough ice around the New Siberian Islands in the late summer of 1877 that he had to over-winter there and drift along all winter until the next season he found he could break his way through and reach the Bering Strait.

Later accounts speak of relatively ice-free seasons around the 1920s to 1940, possibly something more similar to the past year and possibly this one as well.

I have not had time to look any further into Canadian ice historical accounts, maybe tomorrow.

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