Arctic Ice 2009

[Chris Knight]

Just shows how poor the models were - either the presupposed data or the model or both. Time to think it out again.

Does crop straw burning create black soot - I doubt it, the substrate is basically cellulose, which is a compound composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen - difficult to produce soot from unless burnt in situations where oxygen is restricted - you need things like *c-c-c-c-c-c* chains - polyterpenes (like rubber) or longish chain fats to generate soot, or of course tars and coals and aromatics.

Edited January 16, 2009 by Chris Knight

[Interitus]

What is interesting is that people continue to look solely at ice extent and fail to grasp the actual lack of ice volume.

TN9 posted a blog from wunderground.com and while it is well worth absorbing the content, even more compelling is the follow-up blog entry which specifically answers the critics with a concise overview -

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMaste...l?entrynum=1178

An important concept is that the winter ice extent is largely IRRELEVANT.

Edited January 16, 2009 by Interitus

[osmposm]

Funny isn't it when Arctic ice shows a big increase this thread go's all quite

Um...quite what? !

Actually - assuming you meant 'quiet' - it's a bit difficult to comment when the IJIS chart you've posted doesn't seem to show 2009's line at all: it's missing completely at the moment!

Before anyone concludes that it must be a warmist plot to keep a massive increase secret from the world, you can see from the NSIDC one here http://www.nsidc.com/data/seaice_index/ima..._timeseries.png that it's business as usual: the 15% ice extent line is still growing slowly at the usual sort of rate, somewhat above the 2007-8 re-freeze which took a big hit in early Jan last year, but still about one-and-a-half million sq km below the 1979-2000 mean. By the Cryosphere Today measure of area here http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...current.365.jpg we're at about the same level as last year, and perhaps three-quarters of a million sq km below the 79-00 mean.

Take your pick - but either way no particularly "big increase", I'm afraid, Barry. So nothing much to talk about.

Ossie

PS Thanks for the link, Interitus. Nicely argued.

Edited January 17, 2009 by osmposm

[osmposm]

Does crop straw burning create black soot - I doubt it, the substrate is basically cellulose, which is a compound composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen - difficult to produce soot from unless burnt in situations where oxygen is restricted - you need things like *c-c-c-c-c-c* chains - polyterpenes (like rubber) or longish chain fats to generate soot, or of course tars and coals and aromatics.

Not sure that's right, Chris. Ever been in a field after the stubble's been burned? Black as yer 'at! But you might be right as far as that really dense, pure matt black goes - I think I'd probably characterize it as ash-and-soot mixed, presumably because like any fairly low temp burn without a forced draught the oxygen is somewhat restricted.

[LadyPakal]

it's a bit difficult to comment when the IJIS chart you've posted doesn't seem to show 2009's line at all: it's missing completely at the moment!

Ossie

I can see the 2009 line - it's the red one on the left. Quite short, obviously, but not short enough to be invisible.

Edited January 17, 2009 by LadyPakal

[noggin]

I can see the 2009 line

Me, too! New specs, anyone?

[J10]

The latest figures in a easy to read chart (unlike the IJIS one which could be improved in terms of colours used etc. )

Arctic_Ice_Winter_2009.xls

[osmposm]

I can see the 2009 line - it's the red one on the left. Quite short, obviously, but not short enough to be invisible.

Me, too! New specs, anyone?

:wub: um.....yes, everybody. An unusually idiotic comment, even for me: so used to looking at the right hand side of the chart I missed it. (And strangely enough, nog, I am going this very afternoon for the first eye test I have ever had in my 57 years - at this rate I'll be lucky if I can find the optician's.)

Ossie

PS Barry, I now agree that on the IJIS chart there is currently a healthy re-growth showing, taking extent to roughly the 2004 level for the same date. But as Interitus' link above shows, it's the summer levels that are the important ones. And as G-W & others so often remind us, the bare facts of ice area/extent need to be considered in conjunction with thickness/volume, particularly in winter.

Edited January 17, 2009 by osmposm

[laserguy]

so used to looking at the right hand side of the chart I missed it.

Me too - a clear sign of my advancing years. However,even when Lady P and Noggin pointed us in the right direction it still wasn't immediately obvious,thanks to my colour blindness which is about as bad as it gets without actually seeing everything in only black and white and shades thereof! Ah well,onwards and upwards.

[noggin]

(And strangely enough, nog, I am going this very afternoon for the first eye test I have ever had in my 57 years - at this rate I'll be lucky if I can find the optician's.)

Ossie

It comes to us all, mate, it comes to us all!

[Gray-Wolf]

I'd just like to echo the majority sentiment from the various authorities and some of our members on here. Sea ice extent is a poor indicator of how well the ice will perform over summer melt. For the first time this year we entered winter with the majority of the high latitudes having only 1st year ice (and not the usually mix of perennial). Any extended cold at lower latitudes may well challenge 'ice extent' records but ,it being at lower latitudes, it will melt out rapidly come spring warmth (and so only exist for a small portion of the year).

By winters end I would hazard a guess that we will still have the lowest ice volume recorded, for the time of year, due to the proportions of young, thin/old, thick ice .

Though I will not predict another 'record summer melt' (in terms of extent or ice volume) I would expect ice levels to remain similar to the past 2 years (either slightly above, or below, last years final figures) based purely on the amount of young ice we are taking into spring again this year (last years 'average melt season' came within 10% of 07's record lows so ,with an even greater proportion of 'young ice' this spring it won't take much to do the same again).

Edited January 17, 2009 by Gray-Wolf

[stewfox]

What is interesting is that people continue to look solely at ice extent and fail to grasp the actual lack of ice volume.

TN9 posted a blog from wunderground.com and while it is well worth absorbing the content, even more compelling is the follow-up blog entry which specifically answers the critics with a concise overview -

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMaste...l?entrynum=1178

An important concept is that the winter ice extent is largely IRRELEVANT.

I thought we couldnt measure Artic sea ice volume accurately ???

Anyway sea ice 'extent' at present is well up on recent years

[Interitus]

I thought we couldnt measure Artic sea ice volume accurately ???

Anyway sea ice 'extent' at present is well up on recent years

Satellite radar altimetry

[Gray-Wolf]

I thought we couldn't measure Arctic sea ice volume accurately ???

Anyway sea ice 'extent' at present is well up on recent years

Looks to be over a million sq km down on recent years......and that is before we look at ice volume. We are currently in the PDO cold phase, a cold AO phase and yet still this ice thins over the winter months in some areas. The recent (past 7 years) revitalisation (or so it appears to me from the plethora of time lapse movies now available) of the Arctic Gyre is surely not just a wind driven phenomena? If it is showing a greater flow in from the pacific then we are in the summer ices 'end time' and it makes sense of the poorly performing single year ice over the past few years and the 're-awakening' of the cold water subduction 'chimneys' in the North Atlantic.

Due to the volume of ice melt over the past 3 major de glaciations the presence of this novel 'arctic current' has not been noted (by it's impacts) in the way we have witnessed over the past few years (with the increase in 'far north' in Greenland[west and north] and across Ellesmere islands remnant shelf system). We may well find that ,like a syphon, once the 'route' in and out of the Arctic ocean is in motion, it will take a lot to stem it's flow (the salinity difference in the 'cold arctic waters' compared to the warmer Pacific waters may well have damed the Bering straights since the last 'melt out ' of summer ice).

Increased sinking in the north Atlantic serves to speed up the NAD (bringing more warm waters to the arctic via the Baltic) and the deep sea subduction of the cold ,displaced arctic waters (in the north Atlantic) further reinforces the Pacific ingest through Bering.So we have two entrance 'jets' spinning the arctic gyre and one 'exit' sump down the east coast of Greenland.

The potential for the new setup to further impact upon global climate patterns seems immense with more rapid exchanges of warm/cold air masses driving cyclogenisis and altering jet amplification (and the ramifications on weather that this has).

I am very interested to find out what the new la Nina will lend to the PDO negative phase in terms of global temps. Personally i feel this is the last 'Ya Boo' from such a combination for a long while as I , along with others, do not foresee a 'long period' PDO phase but a rapid 'flip -flop' back into the positive setup. The warm water anoms flirting around the equatorial cold (La Nina) anoms make me wonder as to whether this 'revitalised La-Nina' is also just a flash in the pan with us returning to neutral by summer and edging into El-Nino by 2010.

The 'new' arctic currents, a positive PDO and an El-Nino.....the forecasts for an ice free summer arctic ocean by 2013 do not seem so extreme anymore and ,as Mr Serreze said of the chappie predicting the 2013 event (back in 07') "Though an aggressive outlook ....... it is well within the bounds of possibility....."

Edited January 19, 2009 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

The PDO has flipped to it's negative phase, as confirmed by NASA earlier last year. Do you have any links to the contrary?

[Gray-Wolf]

The PDO has flipped to it's negative phase, as confirmed by NASA earlier last year. Do you have any links to the contrary?

From the reports I have been reading there seems low confidence for it to stay negative for any length of time (like the late 90's 'flip-flop'). We are also currently in a La-Nina and not an El-Nino

[jethro]

From the reports I have been reading there seems low confidence for it to stay negative for any length of time (like the late 90's 'flip-flop'). We are also currently in a La-Nina and not an El-Nino

Do you have any links you can provide for this please? I haven't heard of any doubt about it flipping back to positive, wondering where you heard that?

I know we're currently in a La Nina, didn't mention El Nino (puzzled).

[Chris Knight]

Do you have any links you can provide for this please? I haven't heard of any doubt about it flipping back to positive, wondering where you heard that?

I know we're currently in a La Nina, didn't mention El Nino (puzzled).

No, we are currently ENSO neutral.

There are some like David Archibald and the overall tone of the NOAA above, who are pushing the current "La Nina" state of the SOI, which indicates a high La Nina potential, but the ONI remains firmly in neutral territory, with the last few months being -0.1/0.0/0.0/0.0/-0.3 in the ERSST v3b Nino3-4 region.

They are so desperate that the cold northern winter 2008/09 :rofl: is a La Nina phenomenon, and not (shiver) something else like, maybe, global cooling :) .

[Iceberg]

This will be the cold northern winter whch has led to N.Hemsphere temps well above average.

Chris, You can tell looking at those fgures that Enso hasn't been positive for some time, also you don't have a winter ENSO figure in that list. Finally the nOAA discussions have constantly described the atmoshperic patterns and weather as being La Nina Like

[Gray-Wolf]

This will be the cold northern winter which has led to N.Hemisphere temps well above average.

Chris, You can tell looking at those figures that ENSO hasn't been positive for some time, also you don't have a winter ENSO figure in that list. Finally the NOAA discussions have constantly described the atmospheric patterns and weather as being La Nina Like

PDO state doesn't help as it tends to augment Nina and flatten Nino patterns so maybe a neutral approaching Nina can be 'augmented to a mild Nina state. That said if we trawl back through comparable periods in the past I think we'll start to see that this period is somewhat warmer ,thus far, including our weather at home (which folk who lived through the 60's 70's 80's will know full well).

Jethro;

Monthly index figures for '-ve state' for 08'

2008** -1.00 -0.77 -0.71 -1.52 -1.37 -1.34 -1.67 -1.70 -1.55 -1.76 -1.25 -0.87

** Derived from OI.v2 SST fields

A graphic comparing monthly PDO values for 1982-2002 derived from the v1 and v2

sst products is available at

http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/img/v1v2PDOComp.png

As you can see the 'index' is rapidly diminshing (which is why I feel it'll 'flip-flop').

More later when I've dug a bit more

Edited January 20, 2009 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

Individual ENSO events are not the same as a phase pattern shift; Grey Wolf said expectations are that the PDO will flip back into it's positive phase. I've seen no reports suggesting this to be the case, has anyone else?

Just seen your reply GW, have you found the links for expected phase shift back to positive?

Weather back in the 60's etc - the negative phase shift happened less than 12 months ago, give it time.....

Edited January 20, 2009 by jethro

[Gray-Wolf]

Sorry Jethro , popped it in as an EDIT above.

http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest

2008**Jan= -1.00, Feb =-0.77, March= -0.71, April= -1.52, May= -1.37, June= -1.34 ,July= -1.67, Aug=-1.70 ,Sept= -1.55,Oct= -1.76, Nov = -1.25 ,Dec= -0.87

** Derived from OI.v2 SST fields

A graphic comparing monthly PDO values for 1982-2002 derived from the v1 and v2

sst products is available at

http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/img/v1v2PDOComp.png

Let's see what Jan/Feb have in store in tyerms of seeing a 'trend' for reducing index back to positive eh?

Adherents half axpect to see large scale climate osscilations modified by the ocean heating and ,should this flip positive (followed by a large El-Nino forming) we'd have to ask questions again (wouldn't we?).

Edited January 20, 2009 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

Individual ENSO events are NOT the same thing as phase shifts. We don't get approx thirty years of exclusively La Nina or El Nino events.

As you can see the 'index' is rapidly diminshing (which is why I feel it'll 'flip-flop').

This is not the same thing you said yesterday, yesterday you said reports were coming out expecting another phase shift. Where are these reports? I've seen nothing from the authorities suggesting this to be the case, have I missed it? Who's saying this?

[Gray-Wolf]

Individual ENSO events are NOT the same thing as phase shifts. We don't get approx thirty years of exclusively La Nina or El Nino events.

This is not the same thing you said yesterday, yesterday you said reports were coming out expecting another phase shift. Where are these reports? I've seen nothing from the authorities suggesting this to be the case, have I missed it? Who's saying this?

As I said above I'm busy trawling back through my 'searches' to find where I've heard it and will be back!

[jethro]

As I said above I'm busy trawling back through my 'searches' to find where I've heard it and will be back!

Ta muchly.

I'm curious because it goes against everything else I've read recently. Off to work soon, will look forward to reading it when I get back.

D