Arctic Ice

[pottyprof]

Potty, we all accept 07' was a 'perfect storm' up in the arctic and provided us with a min ice extent way below the 05' previous record min. The 'average summer' that brought us lowest ice volume was 08'.......but your still not concerned???? Isn't it about the 'amount' of ice left in the arctic or is it all about albedo??

I see, so we're talking about this years average summer.. I'm still not concerned ATM as things are still cooling off due to temperature lag. Volume will take a few years to recover. If this doesn't show signs of happening over the next 5 years then i'll start to get concerned.

There are many arguments as to why the oceans have warmed the way they did and until that problem has been worked out I don't think anyone can say that it won't recover or will for that matter..

[jethro]

J, I think you may have misunderstood a few of the (very confusing!) figures I came up with - even assuming you mean 'extra extent' rather than the 'extra mass' you say you want to consider (which would relate to thickness as well as extent, and by which comparison we are massively below average, as G-W says):

(1) Hudson is not "unfrozen", it is a bit over one-quarter frozen. The average (1979-2000) by this date (or yesterday's when I did the sums) would be half-frozen or so. The current shortfall for Hudson below that same average for this date is 0.3m sq km, not 1.23m sq km.

(2) Removing the Hudson "discrepancy", whatever it is, from the current Northern Hem shortfall doesn't tell you anything useful. The freezing rates in different places vary year to year, some higher than av, some lower, and they also have a meteorological inter-connection. You can't choose the higher-than-average ones from (as now) Bering or Chuckchi, but then say I don't like the below-mean Hudson or Barents figures, so we'll use the 1979-2000 av for them. You have to look at the whole picture. It's a bit like saying "If I disregarded the first 100m of a runner's 800m race, and substituted his time for 100m run on its own as a sprint, he might break the world record for 800m!" That's what I meant by 'cherry-picking'.

(3) I can't see how adding the still-to-be-frozen area (c 0.92 sq km) of Hudson to the current NH ice area will help us gauge anything about what's to come at the maximum for the N Hemisphere. Arctic Basin, Laptev, E Siberian, Chuckchi, Beaufort and Canadian Archip are all already near their seasonal max - but who knows what will happen to Bering, St Lawrence, Baffin, Greenland, Barents, Kara or Okhotsk in the next three months?

Ossie

I was merely working out an average - more for myself than anyone else. It may not tell you, or anyone else for that matter anything useful, but it's helped to clear up a few things for me; perhaps it's girly logic.

I'm not picking bits with higher levels or lower levels or randomly selecting averages from where it suits; I'm looking to see where recovery is better/poorer than average, then trying to decipher why. Looking at the whole picture, as you say to do doesn't reveal a great deal other than a mass extent. Fine if we are to expect evenly distributed freezing, no good at all if one wants to look at the regional differences and whys.

[stewfox]

I think maybe if we looked at 'ice mass' instead of 'ice extent' we find ourselves looking at an even lower figure when compared to the 79-2000 figure.I think that we would find ourselves with a lower 'ice mass' than the same time in 2007 and yet still we hear tales of 'recovery'.

How much research is done on ice mass rather then ice cover

You have made some valid points

Rather then watch the red line run away (which it will do as single year ice re freezes) what references are availibe re the over all ice mass cf March 2008 cf March 1988

Or cant we get that type of data yet ?

A pond with 100% ,1cm ice cover is going to melt quicker then half a pond with 50%10cm ice thickness ?

[osmposm]

How much research is done on ice mass rather then ice cover.......Rather then watch the red line run away (which it will do as single year ice re freezes) what references are availibe re the over all ice mass cf March 2008 cf March 1988

Or cant we get that type of data yet ?

A pond with 100% ,1cm ice cover is going to melt quicker then half a pond with 50%10cm ice thickness ?

A very good and easy-to-visualize illustration, Stew - thanks for that.....assuming that it's true, which I think it must be (though albedo must complicate matters where the melting is mainly through absorption of sunlight instead of ambient temp).

I don't know the answer to your question about ice mass research, though I suspect I know a man who does (and with a bit of luck he'll be along soon). There's certainly a good deal of knowledge about ice thickness, isn't there, which amounts to much the same thing? I'm sure G-W can point us in the direction of the established facts and figures about it in the last 30 years - he has done so in the past, but I'm ashamed to say I've rather failed to take in the detail hitherto.

Ossie

[Gray-Wolf]

We (UK) have been using the Radar on 'Envisat' to measure ice thickness for some time now but it has a 'blind spot' beyond 81.5 degrees north. Later in 09' we'll (European space agency) be putting up a custom designed (Cryosat-2) satellite that'll cover the whole of the arctic and 'plug the gap'.

Earlier this year we had press reports about the 'plummeting' ice thickness;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7692963.stm

here's another from, 1999 logging the reduction in sea ice thickness (as logged by the U.S. Navy) since the 1960's Back then a 40% reduction in ice thickness;

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/...91115145020.htm

so we can see that from 1958 we have a continuous record of sea ice thickness reduction with only minor periods of 'respite' when cold winters bolstered the thinning pack.

To melt out ice it seems obvious that first you need to reduce the thickness and this has been occurring throughout the second half of the twentieth century. We tend to be visited with very short memories and so most of us will only recall the ice extent losses this century (seeing as they were so dramatic) but these were only able to occur because of the melting out of the perennial for the half century before.

The past 5 years has seen the larger part of the remaining perennial ice fragment and float down the east coast of Greenland into the Atlantic or into the shallows off the Siberian coasts where it too melted out completely. At the same time this was occurring we saw the massive reductions in summer ice extent (2005,2007,2008) that a predominantly 'single year' arctic pack allows to occur annually with ,or without, 'favourable conditions'.

When I read of Potty profs 'confidence' that nothing is yet 'known' I have to allow myself a wry smile for we have been plotting the decay of the cryosphere for over 60 years and most of the dramatic losses probably occurred whilst he was still primary school 'potty undergrad'.

Ho-Hum.

[Android]

A pond with 100% ,1cm ice cover is going to melt quicker then half a pond with 50%10cm ice thickness ?

And a pond with 50% 1cm ice cover will freeze over faster than a pond with 100% 10cm ice thickness.

[Gray-Wolf]

And a pond with 50% 1cm ice cover will freeze over faster than a pond with 100% 10cm ice thickness.

:lol:

[keithlucky]

:lol:

You wont accept that the world is cooling down to the el nino affect doom and gloom .

[pottyprof]

When I read of Potty profs 'confidence' that nothing is yet 'known' I have to allow myself a wry smile for we have been plotting the decay of the cryosphere for over 60 years and most of the dramatic losses probably occurred whilst he was still primary school 'potty undergrad'.

Ho-Hum.

No need for the personal stuff GW.

And I don't appreciate twisting of words. I clearly stated..

There are many arguments as to why the oceans have warmed the way they did and until that problem has been worked out I don't think anyone can say that it won't recover or will for that matter..

Polar bears are not the only creature walking on thin ice..

Its obvious that some of the loss comes from warmer water. But what triggered the 2007 melt? Was it a one off occurence or will it happen again? If it was a one off then why won't the ice gain mass and cover in the future? You seem to know all the answers GW.. Please explain. I'm sure several thousand scientists would love to hear the answer. It would make their life easier...

In 60 years we've seen the ice melt. Who's arguing that it hasn't melted? All I'm saying is if it doesnt show signs of recovery within the next 5 years then I'll get concerned about it. Like many other people, I have more immediate problems to deal with..

[jethro]

In 60 years we've seen the ice melt. Who's arguing that it hasn't melted? All I'm saying is if it doesnt show signs of recovery within the next 5 years then I'll get concerned about it. Like many other people, I have more immediate problems to deal with..

And in 90 years we've seen the ice melt, recover and melt again; I know what my money's on for the next instalment of this story.

[Solar Cycles]

No need for the personal stuff GW.

And I don't appreciate twisting of words. I clearly stated..

Polar bears are not the only creature walking on thin ice..

Its obvious that some of the loss comes from warmer water. But what triggered the 2007 melt? Was it a one off occurence or will it happen again? If it was a one off then why won't the ice gain mass and cover in the future? You seem to know all the answers GW.. Please explain. I'm sure several thousand scientists would love to hear the answer. It would make their life easier...

In 60 years we've seen the ice melt. Who's arguing that it hasn't melted? All I'm saying is if it doesn't show signs of recovery within the next 5 years then I'll get concerned about it. Like many other people, I have more immediate problems to deal with..

All this scaremongering about what may happen, is bordering on the ridiculous

. Arctic sea ice as, is, and will continue to grow and decline.There are far more pressing matters in the world to address right now, other than this.One thing I will add, and that how can warmer air temperatures heat up vast oceans to the point of melting Arctic sea ice. IMPOSSIBLE!!!!

[Iceberg]

Not Impossible at all as you arn't warming the entire oceans only the top bit, if you don't think air temperatures can have much effect try looking at the SST's from Spring to Autumn !.

Even in the UK temperatures in the Atlantic off the SW (i.e not the shallow North sea waters) can range from 18C to 11C between autumn and spring.

[Gray-Wolf]

I know of no 60yr+ arctic wide warming/cooling cycle Potty (and I would suspect that ice was being lost before the nuclear subs started to log it's depth) .

I know we've measured a continuous global temp. rise over that period .

I know we've logged a continuous global sea temps rise over that period.

I know we've logged the northerly migration of the 10c isotherm in the oceans over that period.

I know we've noted the northly shift of storm systems over that period.

All of those things alone would suggest a mechanism for ice depletion/poor ice retention (and in the past 10yrs both sea and air temps have increased their average rate of change).

If I could ask then why do you feel it prudent to wait yet another '5yr period' before you are willing to concede that these changes are real and are tied in with our measuring of global warming throughout this period ?(I really am interested as you seem quite driven in your unwillingness to accept the facts on the ground and to then 'project' these forwards to imagine where 'more of the same' will lead us without first allowing another 5yrs to elapse.......a very long time in the remaining time summer ice has up there!).

All the talk (that I am privy to) from the scientific community is not about whether the pack will melt out over the summer months but 'when' it will so it does surprise me that you appear content to be so at odds with them.

In my opinion too much focus has been placed on the synoptics of 2007 and ,as you rightly observe,not enough on the ingress of warm Pacific waters into the Arctic basin. We have measures of the extension of these warm currents into the arctic basin (remember the 2005 polynya to the rear of Bering?...when there used to be ice retention there over summer) and two years of studies of these 'warm waters' ,and their impacts, upon the coasts of Greenland/Canadian Archipelago.

Both temperature gradients and salinity are fundamental in driving these currents and ,once established,they are difficult to switch off. The apparent strengthening of the Arctic Gyre ,over the last 7 years, seems to be the logical conclusion of warm water ingress through Bering (with it's natural 'exit' being down the East coast of Greenland). There are plenty of time lapse images of summer ice decay (from 2005) onwards and it is quite easy to view the rotation of the pack (like foam going down the plughole) and the flushing of the remaining perennial ice down the east coast of Greenland.

The 'trigger' for the 2007 melt was the loss of the physical integrity of the ice pack over the preceding half a century (as we have seen). The Arctic Gyre no longer reliant upon plastic deformation of a 3m thick perennial ice to 'move it' (squeezing building size chunks of ice past building sized chunks of ice) it simply snaps it into bits and floats it where it will. The final areas/strongholds of perennial ice are now rapidly flushing away into the Atlantic (this years time lapse shows this still ongoing mid Oct!!!) so the 'ice conditions' needed to repeat 07' no longer exist. Most of the ice across the geographical pole is now less than 2 years old (and a pretty paltry first year growth was reported across the arctic in the winter 07/08) and so the chances of it beaching to block the NE passage are Nil and the chances of the 'annual ice jam' to the north of Greenland Svalbard are greatly reduced as the integrity of the ice floes that now form the jam are not comparable with the old 5yr+ perennial and , in fact, the remnant 5yr+ ice acts as a super ice breaker by ploughing through the weaker 2nd year ice (remember the ice that floated into the rear of the north pole cam shot through July???).

Without dramatic and consistent ice growth/retention we cannot repeat 2007 as those conditions no longer exist in the Arctic. Could we 'beat' the ice min record? sure, and it will not need anything exceptional to achieve it.

I will make a prediction here. No matter what min ice extent is next summer season we will exceed the min ice mass record (again) and this will continue until there is so little ice as to make it a nonsense. Remember that the 'old perennial' was still being shipped out of the Arctic over a month past ice min this year.If you doubt it then explain why, over such an 'average summer', the record fell this past summer (removing even more of the 'old perennial') along with a significant proportion of the remaining ice shelfs??

[Solar Cycles]

Not Impossible at all as you are warming the entire oceans only the top bit, if you don't think air temperatures can have much effect try looking at the SST's from Spring to Autumn !.

Even in the UK temperatures in the Atlantic off the SW (i.e not the shallow North sea waters) can range from 18C to 11C between autumn and spring.

But they are not responsible for melting Arctic sea ice. There is no proof that warmer currents are linked to rises in CO2, as there is no proof that the equivalent air temperature is effected by CO2. Only lab results and computer models show this, but where it counts in the real world, scientist still can't put 2+2 together.

[Iceberg]

Hey Mr SC your moving goal posts now.

You said "One thing I will add, and that how can warmer air temperatures heat up vast oceans to the point of melting Arctic sea ice. IMPOSSIBLE!!!!"

I counted this by saying that it happens all over the planet and gave an example close to home.

Whether you agree that AGW is warming the oceans is another point entirely. But since you don't agree it's warming the atmosphere it's not something I am going to be able to convince you of today on this thread.

[Solar Cycles]

Hey Mr SC your moving goal posts now.

You said "One thing I will add, and that how can warmer air temperatures heat up vast oceans to the point of melting Arctic sea ice. IMPOSSIBLE!!!!"

I counted this by saying that it happens all over the planet and gave an example close to home.

Whether you agree that AGW is warming the oceans is another point entirely. But since you don't agree it's warming the atmosphere it's not something I am going to be able to convince you of today on this thread.

Apologies Iceberg, I got rather carried away and went off on one!

[pottyprof]

I know of no 60yr+ arctic wide warming/cooling cycle Potty (and I would suspect that ice was being lost before the nuclear subs started to log it's depth) .

I know we've measured a continuous global temp. rise over that period .

I know we've logged a continuous global sea temps rise over that period.

I know we've logged the northerly migration of the 10c isotherm in the oceans over that period.

I know we've noted the northly shift of storm systems over that period.

All of those things alone would suggest a mechanism for ice depletion/poor ice retention (and in the past 10yrs both sea and air temps have increased their average rate of change).

Totally agree with you GW. It suggests... Who said there is a 60 year cycle?

If I could ask then why do you feel it prudent to wait yet another '5yr period' before you are willing to concede that these changes are real and are tied in with our measuring of global warming throughout this period ?(I really am interested as you seem quite driven in your unwillingness to accept the facts on the ground and to then 'project' these forwards to imagine where 'more of the same' will lead us without first allowing another 5yrs to elapse.......a very long time in the remaining time summer ice has up there!).

Sorry GW. I said "I" wouldn't start worrying about it... It will either start increasing in mass or it won't. Nature will be the decider long term..

All the talk (that I am privy to) from the scientific community is not about whether the pack will melt out over the summer months but 'when' it will so it does surprise me that you appear content to be so at odds with them.

Because its melted before? Nature has a habit of wiping the slate clean. Didn't someone publish an artical over recent months that confirmed this using sediments from the ocean floor? I'll check but im sure there was...

In my opinion too much focus has been placed on the synoptics of 2007 and ,as you rightly observe,not enough on the ingress of warm Pacific waters into the Arctic basin. We have measures of the extension of these warm currents into the arctic basin (remember the 2005 polynya to the rear of Bering?...when there used to be ice retention there over summer) and two years of studies of these 'warm waters' ,and their impacts, upon the coasts of Greenland/Canadian Archipelago.

Both temperature gradients and salinity are fundamental in driving these currents and ,once established,they are difficult to switch off. The apparent strengthening of the Arctic Gyre ,over the last 7 years, seems to be the logical conclusion of warm water ingress through Bering (with it's natural 'exit' being down the East coast of Greenland). There are plenty of time lapse images of summer ice decay (from 2005) onwards and it is quite easy to view the rotation of the pack (like foam going down the plughole) and the flushing of the remaining perennial ice down the east coast of Greenland.

Again I agree.

This is why i say if in 5 years there is no sign of recovery.. We still don't understand the compexity of the arctic and the oceans in general. As daft as it sounds, the Mayan calender rebirth starts in the next few years.. We dont understand that either so perhaps it ties in with that? Who knows? Details we have lost..

The 'trigger' for the 2007 melt was the loss of the physical integrity of the ice pack over the preceding half a century (as we have seen). The Arctic Gyre no longer reliant upon plastic deformation of a 3m thick perennial ice to 'move it' (squeezing building size chunks of ice past building sized chunks of ice) it simply snaps it into bits and floats it where it will. The final areas/strongholds of perennial ice are now rapidly flushing away into the Atlantic (this years time lapse shows this still ongoing mid Oct!!!) so the 'ice conditions' needed to repeat 07' no longer exist. Most of the ice across the geographical pole is now less than 2 years old (and a pretty paltry first year growth was reported across the arctic in the winter 07/08) and so the chances of it beaching to block the NE passage are Nil and the chances of the 'annual ice jam' to the north of Greenland Svalbard are greatly reduced as the integrity of the ice floes that now form the jam are not comparable with the old 5yr+ perennial and , in fact, the remnant 5yr+ ice acts as a super ice breaker by ploughing through the weaker 2nd year ice (remember the ice that floated into the rear of the north pole cam shot through July???).

Without dramatic and consistent ice growth/retention we cannot repeat 2007 as those conditions no longer exist in the Arctic. Could we 'beat' the ice min record? sure, and it will not need anything exceptional to achieve it.

I will make a prediction here. No matter what min ice extent is next summer season we will exceed the min ice mass record (again) and this will continue until there is so little ice as to make it a nonsense. Remember that the 'old perennial' was still being shipped out of the Arctic over a month past ice min this year.If you doubt it then explain why, over such an 'average summer', the record fell this past summer (removing even more of the 'old perennial') along with a significant proportion of the remaining ice shelfs??

But it wasn't that long ago you were convinced that the mimimum extent would go in 2008. See what happens when people think again? I don't doubt the ice has melted and never said otherwise. What I'm failing to see is how, when we don't understand the whole picture can anyone say "x" will happen from either side of the argument. Yes its melting.. Nature's sweeping brush?

I agree in part with the trigger. I'm still convinced the sun plays more of a part than has previously been understood.

[Gray-Wolf]

Potty, the evidence/facts are there to be rooted out should you care to go search for them, more is known/accepted than it would seem you care to embrace at the moment so I think it best I disengage my attempts to show you my POV and what brought me to it.

For the rest out there here is some interesting new info. I have had folk tell me that we are seeing both the 'cold phase' of both the PDO and AO......maybe those things no longer impact in the way they once did?

FAST-FORWARD WARMING

Point of No Return for the Arctic Climate?

By Volker Mrasek

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising much faster than elsewhere in the world. Researchers now say it may be the result of a dramatic shift in global climate patterns. If they are right, ice at the North Pole may soon be a thing of the past.

ANZEIGE

For years, scientists have been watching the Arctic Ocean with a mounting sense of unease. Sea ice on the very northern tip of our planet is melting -- and it has been doing so much more quickly than expected.

By September 2007, in fact, the area in the Arctic covered by sea ice was only half as big as Europe, a 40 percent reduction from the mid-1990s, as calculated by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the US. Glaciers on Greenland are likewise disappearing at an alarming rate. And the Arctic Ocean itself has been warming up since 1995, a trend that has only accelerated since the beginning of this decade. In the summer of 2007, water temperatures in the Bering Sea between Alaska and eastern Siberia were 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average -- warmer than ever before.

So much for the data. The question has long been: why is the Arctic heating up so fast? Climate models project what ought to be a much slower rise in temperature for the Arctic region. An increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting warming of the Earth's atmosphere is not enough to explain the phenomenon.

Point of No Return

A new study completed by a team of US, Norwegian and German researchers may now provide some clues. Published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters in November, the study posits that a dramatic change in atmospheric circulation patterns has taken place since the beginning of the decade, with centers of high pressure in winter shifting toward the north-east. The new pattern of sudden climate change is characterized by "poleward atmospheric and oceanic heat transport," the authors write in the study, a transport which drives temperature increases in the Arctic. The discovery was made using specialized filters that allow one to follow changes to high pressure centers over time.

Behind the complex language and impenetrable calculations upon which the study is based, however, is a frightening possibility: climate change in the Arctic could already have reached the point of no return. Climate researchers have long been warning of such "tipping points," and that crossing them could mean irreversible developments for eco-systems and humanity. In the case of the Arctic, that could mean a complete disappearance of ice in the region during the summer months. Such an eventuality would then further magnify global warming, due to the fact that bright white ice reflects sunlight back into the atmosphere whereas dark colored land and ocean absorbs heat.

"In the case of Arctic Sea ice, we have already reached the point of no return," says the prominent American climate researcher James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA.

Warm Air for the Arctic

The waters around the North Pole are heavily influenced by the currents coursing through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Those currents are driven by conflicting pressure systems in each ocean: in the Pacific, the low pressure zone located near the Aleutian Islands extending west from Alaska is doing battle with a subtropical high pressure zone further south; in the Atlantic the currents are determined by the Azores High and the Icelandic Low.

Winter in the Arctic has long been determined by what researchers refer to as a "tri-polar" pattern. The interaction among the Icelandic Low, the Azores High and the subtropical high in the Pacific led to primarily east-west winds, a pattern which effectively blocked warmer air from moving northward into the Arctic region.

But since the beginning of the decade, the patterns have changed. Now, a "dipolar" (bipolar) pattern has developed in which a high pressure system over Canada and a low pressure system over Siberia have the say. The result has been that Artic winds now blow north-south, meaning that warmer air from the south has no problem making its way into the Arctic region. "It's like a short-circuit," says Rüdiger Gerdes, a scientist at the Alfred Webener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and one of the five authors of the study.

The influx of warm air from the south was especially intense during the winter of 2005-2006, the study says. During that period, 90 terawatts of energy flowed into the Artic Ocean from the North Pacific -- an amount that far exceeds the needs of the entire industrial world. Gerdes has no doubt that the ice will "quickly disappear if the new pressure patterns stay the way they are." He says that the Arctic Ocean would still freeze during the winter, but the ice pack would be too small to survive the warmer summer months.

Dramatic Disappearance of Arctic Ice

James Overland from the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle agrees. In the scientific journal Tellus the oceanographer, together with colleagues, also points to the new north-south flow patterns in the Arctic. "If the current flows stay the way they are, then we will see the disappearance of Arctic sea ice 40 years earlier than we would as a result of greenhouse-gas emissions alone," Overland told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Even if the Arctic circulation were to return to normal and would switch to the "dipolar" pattern just once in a decade, the situation would look grim, he said. "Each time we would see a loss of so much ice that it would be impossible to return to the initial state."

Overland says that the dramatic disappearance of Arctic ice observed in 2007 was no exception. The summer of 2008 was just as bad, he says. The progression is clear: sooner or later the ice cap will become so small that it will not be able to survive the warm summer months.

Gerdes and his co-authors fear that the changes in the Arctic could mean that a "new era of global-warming-forced climate change" has begun. The volume of greenhouse gas emissions like CO2 and methane into the Earth's atmosphere could have resulted in a permanent change in the global climate system.

The series of warm winters experienced in the Arctic this decade, it should be noted, is not the first time in recent history the region has been visited by mild weather. In the 1930s, there was a similar "dipolar" pattern that pushed warm air into the Arctic, as researchers now know. Back then, though, it was air from the North Atlantic and not from the North Pacific. Furthermore, says Gerdes, the warm air did not penetrate beyond 75 degrees north latitude, which roughly marks the previous limits of the ice cap. Today, the heat spreads through the entire Arctic.

It could be that the new patterns of air circulation in the Arctic are caused by natural climate variations. But given the dramatic ice melt currently being observed, such an explanation is not enough to satisfy researchers. The American scientist Overland, for his part, has no doubts: the dramatic change in pressure systems in the Northern Hemisphere combined with Arctic warming is, he says, "a clear signal of warming."

Edited December 11, 2008 by Gray-Wolf

[BARRY]

Potty, the evidence/facts are there to be rooted out should you care to go search for them, more is known/accepted than it would seem you care to embrace at the moment so I think it best I disengage my attempts to show you my POV and what brought me to it.

For the rest out there here is some interesting new info. I have had folk tell me that we are seeing both the 'cold phase' of both the PDO and AO......maybe those things no longer impact in the way they once did?

FAST-FORWARD WARMING

Point of No Return for the Arctic Climate?

By Volker Mrasek

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising much faster than elsewhere in the world. Researchers now say it may be the result of a dramatic shift in global climate patterns. If they are right, ice at the North Pole may soon be a thing of the past.

ANZEIGE

For years, scientists have been watching the Arctic Ocean with a mounting sense of unease. Sea ice on the very northern tip of our planet is melting -- and it has been doing so much more quickly than expected.

By September 2007, in fact, the area in the Arctic covered by sea ice was only half as big as Europe, a 40 percent reduction from the mid-1990s, as calculated by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the US. Glaciers on Greenland are likewise disappearing at an alarming rate. And the Arctic Ocean itself has been warming up since 1995, a trend that has only accelerated since the beginning of this decade. In the summer of 2007, water temperatures in the Bering Sea between Alaska and eastern Siberia were 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than average -- warmer than ever before.

So much for the data. The question has long been: why is the Arctic heating up so fast? Climate models project what ought to be a much slower rise in temperature for the Arctic region. An increase in greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting warming of the Earth's atmosphere is not enough to explain the phenomenon.

Point of No Return

A new study completed by a team of US, Norwegian and German researchers may now provide some clues. Published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters in November, the study posits that a dramatic change in atmospheric circulation patterns has taken place since the beginning of the decade, with centers of high pressure in winter shifting toward the north-east. The new pattern of sudden climate change is characterized by "poleward atmospheric and oceanic heat transport," the authors write in the study, a transport which drives temperature increases in the Arctic. The discovery was made using specialized filters that allow one to follow changes to high pressure centers over time.

Behind the complex language and impenetrable calculations upon which the study is based, however, is a frightening possibility: climate change in the Arctic could already have reached the point of no return. Climate researchers have long been warning of such "tipping points," and that crossing them could mean irreversible developments for eco-systems and humanity. In the case of the Arctic, that could mean a complete disappearance of ice in the region during the summer months. Such an eventuality would then further magnify global warming, due to the fact that bright white ice reflects sunlight back into the atmosphere whereas dark colored land and ocean absorbs heat.

"In the case of Arctic Sea ice, we have already reached the point of no return," says the prominent American climate researcher James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA.

Warm Air for the Arctic

The waters around the North Pole are heavily influenced by the currents coursing through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Those currents are driven by conflicting pressure systems in each ocean: in the Pacific, the low pressure zone located near the Aleutian Islands extending west from Alaska is doing battle with a subtropical high pressure zone further south; in the Atlantic the currents are determined by the Azores High and the Icelandic Low.

Winter in the Arctic has long been determined by what researchers refer to as a "tri-polar" pattern. The interaction among the Icelandic Low, the Azores High and the subtropical high in the Pacific led to primarily east-west winds, a pattern which effectively blocked warmer air from moving northward into the Arctic region.

But since the beginning of the decade, the patterns have changed. Now, a "dipolar" (bipolar) pattern has developed in which a high pressure system over Canada and a low pressure system over Siberia have the say. The result has been that Artic winds now blow north-south, meaning that warmer air from the south has no problem making its way into the Arctic region. "It's like a short-circuit," says Rüdiger Gerdes, a scientist at the Alfred Webener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and one of the five authors of the study.

The influx of warm air from the south was especially intense during the winter of 2005-2006, the study says. During that period, 90 terawatts of energy flowed into the Artic Ocean from the North Pacific -- an amount that far exceeds the needs of the entire industrial world. Gerdes has no doubt that the ice will "quickly disappear if the new pressure patterns stay the way they are." He says that the Arctic Ocean would still freeze during the winter, but the ice pack would be too small to survive the warmer summer months.

Dramatic Disappearance of Arctic Ice

James Overland from the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle agrees. In the scientific journal Tellus the oceanographer, together with colleagues, also points to the new north-south flow patterns in the Arctic. "If the current flows stay the way they are, then we will see the disappearance of Arctic sea ice 40 years earlier than we would as a result of greenhouse-gas emissions alone," Overland told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Even if the Arctic circulation were to return to normal and would switch to the "dipolar" pattern just once in a decade, the situation would look grim, he said. "Each time we would see a loss of so much ice that it would be impossible to return to the initial state."

Overland says that the dramatic disappearance of Arctic ice observed in 2007 was no exception. The summer of 2008 was just as bad, he says. The progression is clear: sooner or later the ice cap will become so small that it will not be able to survive the warm summer months.

Gerdes and his co-authors fear that the changes in the Arctic could mean that a "new era of global-warming-forced climate change" has begun. The volume of greenhouse gas emissions like CO2 and methane into the Earth's atmosphere could have resulted in a permanent change in the global climate system.

The series of warm winters experienced in the Arctic this decade, it should be noted, is not the first time in recent history the region has been visited by mild weather. In the 1930s, there was a similar "dipolar" pattern that pushed warm air into the Arctic, as researchers now know. Back then, though, it was air from the North Atlantic and not from the North Pacific. Furthermore, says Gerdes, the warm air did not penetrate beyond 75 degrees north latitude, which roughly marks the previous limits of the ice cap. Today, the heat spreads through the entire Arctic.

It could be that the new patterns of air circulation in the Arctic are caused by natural climate variations. But given the dramatic ice melt currently being observed, such an explanation is not enough to satisfy researchers. The American scientist Overland, for his part, has no doubts: the dramatic change in pressure systems in the Northern Hemisphere combined with Arctic warming is, he says, "a clear signal of warming."

I don't know why we bother with this thread, as it seems that because your views seem to be the only one that matters.

Edited December 11, 2008 by BARRY

[osmposm]

I don't know why we bother with this thread, as it seems that because your views seem to be the only one that matters.

Well, Barry, a good start to giving us an alternative view would be not to pointlessly copy out the whole of G-W's post again immediately below the original as the major part of your otherwise very short comment.

But I don't understand the comment anyway. G-W can be dogmatic and sometimes plain rude. But why does his view(s) "seem to be the only one that matters"? Because he's prepared to read and write more than you? You are at liberty to research and post your opposite view - even to cut & paste as G-W has on this occasion. He disagrees with the prof, and has explained clearly why in previous posts: I would prefer a less aggressive and personal debating style, but at least he engages.

I am a (qualified) warmist, but I welcome interesting links, facts, analysis and comment from all viewpoints. However, I fully expect them to be analysed and argued with in order to test them. It's hardly G-W's fault if you don't have the energy or knowledge or insight or time or inclination (or whatever it is) to argue persuasively against him, is it?

Ossie

[BARRY]

Well, Barry, a good start to giving us an alternative view would be not to pointlessly copy out the whole of G-W's post again immediately below the original as the major part of your otherwise very short comment.

But I don't understand the comment anyway. G-W can be dogmatic and sometimes plain rude. But why does his view(s) "seem to be the only one that matters"? Because he's prepared to read and write more than you? You are at liberty to research and post your opposite view - even to cut & paste as G-W has on this occasion. He disagrees with the prof, and has explained clearly why in previous posts: I would prefer a less aggressive and personal debating style, but at least he engages.

I am a (qualified) warmist, but I welcome interesting links, facts, analysis and comment from all viewpoints. However, I fully expect them to be analysed and argued with in order to test them. It's hardly G-W's fault if you don't have the energy or knowledge or insight or time or inclination (or whatever it is) to argue persuasively against him, is it?

Ossie

well excuse me,i read G W posts as well as yours you have your views, and he has his but it is always the same ground that is covered.

[Chris Knight]

I have not been watching the Arctic as long as some, but it has become apparent that the sea ice in the north has been diminishing for many years, culminating in the record losses over the past few years.

Drifting buoys from the IABP have recorded weather patterns, over their short (buoyish?) operational lifetimes, and showed distinct changes in the polar weather, particularly with regard to storminess, published on the same pages that GW was so fond of showing webcam images from in the late summer this year.

Between 2004 and today, the Arctic winds were much less strong than in the previous years, and the ice just did not "pack", leading to thin annual ice, which of course was easier to melt through during the summer months.

Air temperatures over the short summer months, measured by the buoys, were rather similar, as you might expect, being measured by sensors about a metre and a half above ice and melt pools - between zero and a degree or so above.

Is this climate or weather? Has there really been any difference in energy applied to the Arctic sea ice from either the oceans below or the atmosphere above?

Climate models seem to be based on radiative energies - solar input, greenhouse gas forcing, uncertain feedbacks, but do not, and cannot include the major kinetic energies that really move ocean currents and atmospheric pressure systems that actually drive the weather, and subsequently, the climate.

[osmposm]

......but it is always the same ground that is covered.

Well, being the Arctic ice thread, discussion is necessarily somewhat restricted. But in fact G-W's long post that triggered your annoyance covered, as far as I am aware, a pretty new aspect of Arctic climate research: has G-W drawn our attention before to the emergence in the last decade of a dipolar, as opposed to tri-polar system, and the resultant tendency of the Arctic winds to be North-South instead of East-West? If so, I don't remember it.

But if you still feel that all he does is cover the same ground, then please cover some different ground yourself: I repeat that I (for one) am not only open to, but intensely interested in all new evidence and comment.

I suspect that what you really don't like about G-W's posts is that he always comes to the same conclusions. And they are undeniably depressing.

[Kained]

GW i would really like it if you would provide the links to your articles and not just the text.

From the article itself i get the impression that there was a recent change in the weather pattern that had an affect on the Artic ice. The article admits something similar happened in the 30's but tries to minimise the implications. So instead of trying to understand why there was a change in the weather pattern an assumption is made that it is somehow due to the hypothetical Global Warming.

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks osmposm. I have been glad of your support these last few\ weeks as I tend to find myself in trouble if I rise to my own defence

Barry, when you are not being understood what do you do? do you ignore it and plough on or do you try a different tack in the hope that the penny will drop? What I see happening in the arctic is not a minor 'flip-flop' that will right itself in time. What I see is the final death rattle of a system that was in meltdown as I was being conceived

In a way the arctic is the 'blueprint' for the rest of the planet......what we see occurring there will occur here as the impacts of AGW peculate down to the lower latitudes.

Speaking for myself I had seen/read enough before 1985 to concede that things were happening that were outside 'natural variability' though of course ,it being the Arctic, the impacts seen had occurred before through natural variability. Even today we find many folk (willing to post on here) who are content to hide behind the 'it's all happened before' smokescreen. The past years have seen us rapidly move beyond the 'happened before scenario' and into uncharted territories for an interglacial period (as the records show) and into a period where the remnant ice sheets that should grow to bring the next full glacial period are rapidly starting to ablate.

It takes 1 cal of energy to raise 1gm of water 1c, it takes 1 cal of energy to raise 1gm of ice 1c, it takes 80cals of energy to change 1gm of ice at 0c to 1gm of water. Imagine the amounts of energy now free to impact upon the system now that the majority of 'melting' has occurred?

Folk wonder at the 2007 melt, science tells us it is the ingress of warmer waters from the Pacific driven by the 'new synoptics' of the region (up through Bering). With little or no perennial left to burn that energy on what do you see occurring? Final collapse of the remaining ice shelfs?(already occurring), Retreat of the coastal ice/glaciers around Greenland? (already occurring), Releases of methane from permafrost/shallow sea cathrites? (already occurring) or is some magicians wand going to appear and dissipate it from the system?

Over winter ice will form, it is winter. Over summer? last years 'average summer' brought us the lowest ice mass ever recorded, it was not the 'weather' up there that enabled this feat to occur but the 'new synoptics'. These changes have taken the planet over 90yrs to install and I am constantly asked to believe that over a period of years 'balance' will be re-established and the ice will regrow. Can you understand why that cannot occur? can you grasp what it will take to bring us this 'reversal' and it's impacts on the 6 billion people on the planet today?

None of this is palatable, neither where I see us headed or where you would wish us headed.Fact.