Arctic Ice 2009

[Admiral_Bobski]

The problem of the 'maximum extent' seems to escape many of the posters (holding out for a polar recovery) here. The same happens in the autumn as the ice begins to form (as though some miracle is occurring).

Ah, GW, I do so love your sarcasm.

One could just as well say:

"The problem of the 'minimum extent' seems to escape many of the posters (holding out for a polar catastrophe) here. The same happens in the spring as the ice begins to melt (as though some tragedy is occurring).

CB

[Gray-Wolf]

Minimum extent shows us how the pack performed through the melt season. As we saw last year a high ice maximum means nothing if it comprises of majority single year ice (the largest ever ice area melt recorded and ,what is more, over an 'average' Arctic summer season).

The speed in ice loss through July/August does not just reflect the conditions on the ground at the time of melting but also reflects the capacity of the ice to maintain over the summer melt , a feat that perennial copes with but not so single year ice.

Mark Serreze (NSIDC) feels that 07' pushed the pack beyond the point of 'natural' recovery (unless we are facing a nuclear winter scenario that is) as the loss of perennial far outstrips its slow replacement (1 year to melt ,7 years to grow back) leading to a pack comprising mainly of easy to melt single year ice.

I would like to be as unconcerned as you appear C-Bob but, due to my personality, am unable to pull off the stunt. Until I see at least a 10% growth of ice over 7 years old (and no further 'flush out ' of the remaining perennial) I will remain deeply troubled by what I see of the ice loss and what I take onboard from the authorities that I feel know best about such matters.

I feel this is another area we'd better agree to disagree on C-Bob, try though I might I do not seem to be able to shake myself free of my grave concerns for both the cryosphere and the climate system as a whole. :lol:

[doctormog]

From a quick sweep (using MODIS) the central arctic basin pack is already well fragmented (so Catlin was right?) with dark water already visible between the cracks.

Yes it looks bad: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtim...213500.250m.jpg Ooops, no that was last year

Ah, here we go: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtim...230000.500m.jpg

Oops that's 2001!

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtim....php?T021392210

No, that's 2002 - I'm not very good at this. I got confused by all those other years which have dark water under those cracks on this day of the year. It seems like it's every year I look at. Could it be because it's not actually anything apart from normal?

My point is, don't read cracks in the sea ice showing water as unusual at the time of year as it's not. It happens throughout the year except in the winter it refreezes rapidly, it doesn't in May and as far as I'm aware never has done in recent times (i.e. the satellite era)?

I've been looking at the images every year and see this cracks (with water) every year at this time.

If you wish I can provide lots of examples. What does it mean in the bigger melt picture? At this stage not much to be honest. There could be a massive melt this season or a relatively small one compared to recent years for all the cracks in the ice tell us in my opinion and based on past evidence.

[tundra]

Minimum extent shows us how the pack performed through the melt season. As we saw last year a high ice maximum means nothing if it comprises of majority single year ice (the largest ever ice area melt recorded and ,what is more, over an 'average' Arctic summer season).

The speed in ice loss through July/August does not just reflect the conditions on the ground at the time of melting but also reflects the capacity of the ice to maintain over the summer melt , a feat that perennial copes with but not so single year ice.

Mark Serreze (NSIDC) feels that 07' pushed the pack beyond the point of 'natural' recovery (unless we are facing a nuclear winter scenario that is) as the loss of perennial far outstrips its slow replacement (1 year to melt ,7 years to grow back) leading to a pack comprising mainly of easy to melt single year ice.

I would like to be as unconcerned as you appear C-Bob but, due to my personality, am unable to pull off the stunt. Until I see at least a 10% growth of ice over 7 years old (and no further 'flush out ' of the remaining perennial) I will remain deeply troubled by what I see of the ice loss and what I take onboard from the authorities that I feel know best about such matters.

I feel this is another area we'd better agree to disagree on C-Bob, try though I might I do not seem to be able to shake myself free of my grave concerns for both the cryosphere and the climate system as a whole.

This could be a good thread if it wasn't continually interrupted by the drivel you keep coming out with.

[Iceberg]

To support GW, I've just spent the last hr or so trawling though the modis pictures and the various ARMSE pictures since 2005.

I think the fracturing is more intensive than in previous years personally, The ice to the south of Franz Josef is surprisingly low compared to recent years, particularly given the lack of any decent warm plumes in that area.

The warm plume coming up over the Alaskan side is still forecast and I wouldn't be surprised to see more serious melt there on top of the large melt that has occured across the arctic in the last couple of days.

[doctormog]

To support GW, I've just spent the last hr or so trawling though the modis pictures and the various ARMSE pictures since 2005.

I think the fracturing is more intensive than in previous years personally, The ice to the south of Franz Josef is surprisingly low compared to recent years, particularly given the lack of any decent warm plumes in that area.

The warm plume coming up over the Alaskan side is still forecast and I wouldn't be surprised to see more serious melt there on top of the large melt that has occured across the arctic in the last couple of days.

Can you support it with some like for like comparison images too then please.

[Solar Cycles]

This could be a good thread if it wasn't continually interrupted by the drivel you keep coming out with.

I agree tundra, reading the drivel that is posted in here makes my blood boil. BEST TO AVOID AT ALL COST!!!! Edited May 20, 2009 by Solar Cycles

[Devonian]

This could be a good thread if it wasn't continually interrupted by the drivel you keep coming out with.

Why can't you just say you disagree and why then? Others have without resort to words like 'drivel'...

What, for instance, do you make of the decline of multi year ice?

I agree tundra, reading the drivel that is posted in here makes my blood boil. BEST TO AVOID AT ALL COST!!!!

Ditto.

[stewfox]

Why can't you just say you disagree and why then? Others have without resort to words like 'drivel'...

What, for instance, do you make of the decline of multi year ice?

Ditto.

If you say 'we never seen that football team play in red', and someone shows that football team playing red at least 5 times before , is it a disagreement or are they talking drivel ? Its a mute point.

[osmposm]

I agree tundra, reading the drivel that is posted in here makes my blood boil. BEST TO AVOID AT ALL COST!!!!

If only you would - avoid it at all costs, that is. But since you don't seem to want to, perhaps (as has been suggested) you and/or Tundra could consider writing a rebuttal of G-W's argument that is as thoughtfully and carefully written as his 12-line post. I often disagree with him myself, but at least he thinks enough and cares enough to spend some time explaining his opinion, right or wrong.

If you say 'we never seen that football team play in red', and someone shows that football team playing red at least 5 times before , is it a disagreement or are they talking drivel ? Its a mute point.

Stew, the point is not that he said that particular argument was drivel - which is just about all right in my book, if supported by countering evidence. What he said was that this otherwise good thread is "continually interrupted by the drivel you keep coming out with". And nothing else. That is really offensive, I'm sorry, and IMHO certainly not a moot point.

"Well, I have a right to my opinion, and my opinion is: You have no right to your opinion." :winky:

George Carlin (1937-2008)

Edited May 21, 2009 by osmposm

[MR EXTREMES]

arctic ice is melting ofcoarse it is,

in summer it melts in autum winter and spring it freezes its normal so dont panic spring is only just over lol,

so trying to predict how much melt will take place is silly right now because nobody really knows.

ok so a warm plume is taking effect lets face it has there never been warm plumes in the arctic before over millions of years?.

so 2007 record melt and today a recovery thats what the facts show,

so in the last couple of years a recovery has setin,

if trends continue over the comming years then ice will become thicker still and in the coming years could continue to grow but where have to wait and see if this happens.

but if it where to continue to melt then what the hell do you expect us to do? build huge freezers and make our own ice and use more of the worlds resources,

silly answer but the main answer is theres nothing we can do,

gw there is nothing we can do about this either.

but im firmly in the opion yes if ice where to keep melting at recod pace like 2007 then soon enough sea ice will be gone perhapes within a decade which is not impossible but unlikely and if this where to happen make sure you have big ponds and gardens because the polar bears need a home awww.

but on the otherside of the coin there seems to be recovery happening each year since 2007 it does not take 1 or 2 years to recover 10years or more of already melted ice,

so some can scream oh no the ice is cracking up its going to melt at record pace thats it lol.

no thats not it because if we where to continue in the years ahead to cool then it would recover and a dramatic ice advance is not impossible either and in some places glacers are growing again,

and around the world cold is hitting the headlines not just here in the uk but all over the world.

ok some will say that the recent years cooling is related to la nina event im not so sure yet,

because a couple of years is by far not enough time to come to a agreement over wether its man made gw or natural cycle i go for the later if you asked me but i could be wrong.

whatever happens the ice will continue to shrink and grow as it has over millions of years,

even if it where to completely melt there has been less ice before so the question is why?but it returned with avegance.

we could all be sitting here talking about there is not enough co2 in the atmosphere the globe is cooling we need to work on a way of keeping the globes temps up,

or where all going to freeze to death but where not its all about warming because this has been happening but still far to soon to know the answers to why.

i think man is to big for its boots and we think we know the answers to everthing that will happen within our universe nope we dont.

but what we do have is the ability to lern but one thing im sure of is climate will take many many more years to workout,

and even then something else will come along and once again science will have to be rewrote.

certainly plenty of doom and gloom in here but i was always taught to worry about it when it happens, and ok melting has happened,

but not enough to convince me that its time to live on top of a mountain.

the years ahead are going to be intresting what with maybe global cooling and more arctic ice recovery.

and its far to soon to be flapping over the warm plumbe thats invading a (PARTS) of the arctic,

its not the end of the world and could possibly not melt all that much, there could be more freezing next week up there,

nobody knows not even thease super duper computer models.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

<h1 class="blogHeading">A slow start to the spring melt season thats the headlines 4th of may good news lol.</h1>

lets wait and see what happens next winter maybe if where lucky it may well beat the 1979-2000 average and its very possible this could happen.

[MR EXTREMES]

its is clear that ice has declined in a big way over the last 5 years but a recovery is always possible as this shows:

as you can see pretty massive melts over the year but im still convinced ice will make a comeback in years to come if cooling continues.

[Iceberg]

Thanks for the post BB.

I don't have time to tackle what is a long but wide ranging post that does raise some valid points.

I would say that the only year of "recovery we've had was last year. TBH I don't really regard last year as a recovery, but that really will get shouts.

Winters are really not the important factor the extent of summer melt is really the controlling factor. It matters nota jot to long term ice retention if we continue to see most of melt each year.

I don't think anybody is panicing because ice is melting in the spring, but people are concerned about the where and why.

Finally as to prediction, your right it's not possible to predict exactly what will happen, but predictions can be pretty good all the same. We can predict roughly the state of the ENSO in 3 months time, equally we can predict roughly who would win between Man U and Hull.

The predictions last year were for a melt around the 2007 melt some said slightly below some slightly above. But they were pretty accurate.

[Gray-Wolf]

To support GW, I've just spent the last hr or so trawling though the MODIS pictures and the various ARMSE pictures since 2005.

I think the fracturing is more intensive than in previous years personally, The ice to the south of Franz Josef is surprisingly low compared to recent years, particularly given the lack of any decent warm plumes in that area.

The warm plume coming up over the Alaskan side is still forecast and I wouldn't be surprised to see more serious melt there on top of the large melt that has occurred across the arctic in the last couple of days.

The other area to 'compare' is the area from NW Greenland/start of the Canadian Archipelago through to Svalbard. The loss (last year ) of the multiyear from the rear of Svalbard thru' Greenland is most noticeable with large swathes of open water where there traditionally was ice. It show how well perennial used to perform if this area cannot hold onto ice when once it was a solid 'wall'.

The MODIS files are too large to load and the area I'm talking of (in 250m resolution)) is quite large but I would suggest that folk have a look themselves.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2009141/

There have been some good breaks in the cloud cover, as the north pole cam has shown over the past 3 days, so things are clear enough to see.

I have to wonder at the impacts of the shelf loss on Ellesmere island and the glacial front losses from Northern Greenland on ice retention through this area.

I do tend to ignore the horrid folk on here but thanks to the kind words some have offered over the past few posts .

[Thundery wintry showers]

"Well, I have a right to my opinion, and my opinion is: You have no right to your opinion."

George Carlin (1937-2008)

Lol- that quote illustrates exactly the kind of attitude that has been annoying me!

I don't think what Gray-Wolf has posted is drivel, but some of it contains the flaw of extrapolating the gloomiest scenario into the future as if it's a given, when in reality due to our incomplete understanding of climate, nothing is a given.

I can't remember exactly where but there is some thin first-year ice about that was projected to all melt very quickly when it does eventually melt, so the current high ice extent could well be an illusion- we could see a rapid retreat to an extent closer to the 2003-08 average in the next month or two. Still, I think we'd need unfavourable synoptics (like summer 2007) to initiate a melt that went much beyond last year's.

I don't think having large swathes of water is that unusual in the melt season but it's something to keep an eye on for the cracks are indeed larger than usual.

[MR EXTREMES]

simply saying if ice extent where to continue to grow in winter then theres more to melt in summer.

i dont know to much about the enso and its effects to be honest.

just seems cooling has happened wether it continues we will see nice im certain that ice will make a come back and that cooler climbs are ahead.

i will also look at shortening my post i must apoligise

[MR EXTREMES]

simply saying if ice extent where to continue to grow in winter then theres more to melt in summer.

i dont know to much about the enso and its effects to be honest.

just seems cooling has happened wether it continues we will see im certain that ice will make a come back and that cooler climbs are ahead.

i will also look at shortening my post i must apoligise

so tell me then is there a way to return the ice to its original state do we need to cut more co2 be honest if this doomsday situation is happening and is going to continue what can we do?

im sorry but it all seem like the focus is on massive melt,

im very confused is there global cooling happening is the globe still warming it would seem only one direction no arctic sea ice, desert europe, massive hurricaines and lots lots more.

i think this subject along with global warming cheeses me off so much i think im going to have to stick with looking out at the sky.

perhapes it might be that nobody really understands what is really happening i think who ever bothered with the hype of this global warming needs to be shot.

what will be will be.

Edited May 21, 2009 by badboy657

[Thundery wintry showers]

simply saying if ice extent where to continue to grow in winter then theres more to melt in summer.

But we're not measuring the amount that melts, we're measuring the minimum summer sea ice extent. And there is no way that larger ice cover in winter is going to be positively correlated with summer sea ice extents!

i dont know to much about the enso and its effects to be honest.

just seems cooling has happened wether it continues we will see nice im certain that ice will make a come back and that cooler climbs are ahead.

Rather like on the other thread- there seems to be an element of "uncertainty implies certainty" here. Somehow, because all things AGW-related are uncertain, it means that AGW is certain to be insignificant (in the sense that we're going to cool)? Doesn't add up.

Re. temperatures the globe as a whole has stayed fairly constant over the last decade but the Arctic has warmed substantially. The temperature in one region of the globe often does not follow exactly the same trend as the rest of the globe- the global average is just that, an average.

The attitude of "either AGW isn't a major issue, or it is but we can't do anything about it" is the classic laissez-faire, bury-our-heads-in-the-sand approach- indicative of a desire to avoid worrying and just maintain faith that everything will be okay. It makes individuals happier in the short term, but in terms of long term it can be catastrophic.

As for this stuff about what to do about ice melt, surely that's not the main point of this thread? The main point is to speculate and analyse on what is happening to sea ice now and what might happen to it in the future.

[Gowon]

so tell me then is there a way to return the ice to its original state do we need to cut more co2 be honest if this doomsday situation is happening and is going to continue what can we do?

im sorry but it all seem like the focus is on massive melt,

im very confused is there global cooling happening is the globe still warming it would seem only one direction no arctic sea ice, desert europe, massive hurricaines and lots lots more.

i think this subject along with global warming cheeses me off so much i think im going to have to stick with looking out at the sky.

perhapes it might be that nobody really understands what is really happening i think who ever bothered with the hype of this global warming needs to be shot.

what will be will be.

Hi BB

You have to learn to ignore the doom and gloom and scaremongering posts in here especially from GW.

Dont be confused, there's no evidence of any of those things mention in your post happening or will happen. Do a little research on climate history, or you could read Mr Dilley's book and when you've done all that use a little logic.

[pottyprof]

Hi BB

You have to learn to ignore the doom and gloom and scaremongering posts in here especially from GW.

Dont be confused, there's no evidence of any of those things mention in your post happening or will happen. Do a little research on climate history, or you could read Mr Dilley's book and when you've done all that use a little logic.

Who's to say it's not going to be all doom and gloom..?? The truth is that we do not know what will happen. All we know is that the climate is changing, everything else is just an educated guess..

[Solar Cycles]

Who's to say it's not going to be all doom and gloom..?? The truth is that we do not know what will happen. All we know is that the climate is changing, everything else is just an educated guess..

But some of the guessing gives education a bad name! I'll get my coat!!

[Gray-Wolf]

At the basest level what we have witnessed since the turn of the century in the arctic is exceptional. for a turnaround we'd need to witness something as exceptional.

Sadly ,to me, it seems that things are stacked in favour of continued melting. It took season to destroy the majority of the perennial lost. By definition it will take several years for 'perennial' to rebuild. Can anyone tell me why we should not see continued losses of the old perennial? The changes ,due to the lack of perennial, have meant a more mobile pack so most ice will find itself in unfavourable conditions at some pint in it's life as the ice flows around the arctic gyre.

:lol:

[stewfox]

Re. temperatures the globe as a whole has stayed fairly constant over the last decade but the Arctic has warmed substantially.

The only problem with this statement is no one has told the artic B)

http://digg.com/environment/Record_Cold_In..._and_Thickening

In terms of artic sea ice, real interest will start early July. The melt rate this year so far has been the slowest of the century

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm

[J10]

Latest Update and this year ice extent has remained the highest since these records began in 2003 for over a month but is now around 365,000sqkm above the 2003-08 mean as ice rate begins to slightly increase to around 55,000sqkm per day over the past week.

Arctic_Ice_Spring_2009.xls

Latest Update and this years ice extent is starting to drop closer to the average at this time of year, being just over 220,000sqkm above the average at this time of year, and this equates to the second highest, very slightly below the corresponding figure in 2003, the current ice loss is around 70,000sqkm per day.

[Iceberg]

Temps continue to increase in the arctic with sub zero temperatures forecasted to be few and far between away from Greenland. Nothing unusual about this and it's pretty much as expected at the start of June, so things temperature wise near normal.

There are a few signs that warmer plumes might find their way into and around the Arctic circle for the first half of June, but this is very very uncertain.

It looks like May might have seen the largest amount of melt for May in the last 8 years or so. Bringing us back to or maybe even slightly below last year.