Ice Free Arctic

[The PIT]

Here's an interesting historical report on the state of the Arctic: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/02/catastrophic-retreat-of-glaciers-in-spitsbergen/

Ah so the Arctic has all melted before. LOL Interesting reading of course there's no reliable records of extent but it's interesting read anyway. A subject worth watching and seeing what actually happens.

[jethro]

[

quote name='Gray-Wolf' date='06 May 2010 - 10:56 ' timestamp='1273139809' post='1813157']

I know we don't want this to be happening right now Jethro and that it is natural to scrabble around to find reassurance that it is 'normal behaviour' of the arctic pack but eventually we have to accept that this time, this 'melt' is beyond natural ,regional variation and has advanced to the point that we no longer have the Arctic we grew up with. We will all (eventually) accept that there is no 'instant rewind' to that place with the current destruction of the halocline and the loss of the perennial ice (that used to form the bulk of remaining ice come summers end) now creating a self reinforcing warming phase across the Arctic basin.

GW, I really am getting a little tired of your denunciation of my view as written in the above statement.

There is a world of difference between claiming the melt is all driven by natural causes and looking at the variation which can be caused by natural events - in order to discern the extent of the influence AGW has had/is having/will have on Arctic ice, it is first necessary to establish a natural baseline fom which to measure.

If you could perhaps accept the difference between those two broad stances, these discussions might proceed further than usual, perhaps avoiding the static state you yourself accept is the normal conclusion.

[Gray-Wolf]

Sorry to come across as such Jethro, I feel I'm merely outlining my 'viewpoint' so as to be clear as to what is being discussed. I am focussing solely on the past 15yrs of Arctic melt (this is where I feel we strayed beyond ''natural variability'' and into a wholly 'un-natural' Arctic Decline).

I have always tried to show 'why' this is beyond natural variability and highlight areas of the melt that you would not think of without being shown (esp. if this goes further to illustrate how 'un-natural' what we are seeing is in the recent geological past of the Arctic Basin).

I have always tried to show why ice volume is a sounder way to see the decline in the Arctic than ice 'extent'.

This year will really ram this point home as, with the cries of 'recovery!' still ringing in our ears, ice volume plunges below the catastrophic 07' min levels.

I do find it incredibly hard to credit any similar 'basin wide' event having occured in our historical past without the event being recognisable ,across the whole Basin, and attested too by a wide range of impacts in the Arctic records.

Surely folk, specialising in the many Arctic discaplines, would be easing our fears about our current Arctic collapse by showing us how these events are 'common place' in the recent geological past and a recovery always follows on and so it would not be left to a well known right wing skeptical blog to break the news that all of Science has missed???

Why would the likes of NASA,NSIDC (and all the universities doing reseach in the Arctic) be so horrid as to paint such a bleak picture for us all if they knew that it was just a 'normal' phase in the Arctic?Are they incapable of noticing such a Basin wide event? Do they know nothing of their individual discaplines?

I'd also like for you to remember that all through my period of posting on NetWeather.tv ( and on the beeb beforehand) I have had to bare many folk portraying me as a "Doomsayer" or "Catastrophist" whilst I struggled to try and have my concerns heard by the readership (most of whom are lurkers looking out for information on which to form their own opinion on). Though the news has never been 'good' I feel that people who are searching for info should be given the truth and I have always tried to bring them this.

Though I gain no satisfaction from seeing my warnings made flesh I do feel vindicated in my concerns over the years and that , if anything, they fell short of the mark. I hope the folk who have made me feel so poor about myself over these years can now accept that I was being no more than honest and open and that the events themselves are the problem and not the person reporting of them.

[Thundery wintry showers]

If AGW turns out to be as serious as projected then Arctic ice will continue to melt and we will at some point be looking at ice-free summers. Nothing new in that observation. At the same time, there's nothing irreversible about it either, as it has been reversed in the past.

After that exceptional drop in 2007 ice levels have returned to the approximate levels predicted by the IPCC's graphs, so we are currently on target with their projections.

[jethro]

GW I know you're focussing upon your viewpoint but sometimes you focus so hard, you seem not to see any other.

Whilst your attention may be on the last 15 years, other people are interested on periods prior to this, the lead up to the last 15 years and trying to understand how we have reached this point in Arctic decline. And whilst you may see no other way that we can have reached this point without a serious contribution from us in the form of AGW, other informed people on here through their own research and links to peer reviewed studies have shown there are viable alternatives.

Exploring the extent of natural variation is not the same as saying it is all natural, an important point you seem to often neglect or overlook in order to focus attention upon the very latest period in time and the problems you believe we have caused.

No one is suggesting that universities or NASA or NSISC are painting an untrue, bleak picture. Climate science is still in its infancy, it's an imperfect discipline, they don't have all the answers, no one does – surely information (if it's accurate information) should be welcomed from all sources? Doesn't it all contribute to painting detail on that picture?

I'm not painting you as a doomsayer; people are hearing your views and concerns but it's not your job to deliver the truth to people. We all have different views on things in life, it's part of what makes it interesting but our own individual views are our own versions of truth, real to us. To convince others that our truth is THE truth runs the risk of crossing the line between the sharing information and evangelising. If we believe our informed decisions are correct, then we must allow other people the same privilege.

[Gray-Wolf]

If AGW turns out to be as serious as projected then Arctic ice will continue to melt and we will at some point be looking at ice-free summers. Nothing new in that observation. At the same time, there's nothing irreversible about it either, as it has been reversed in the past.

After that exceptional drop in 2007 ice levels have returned to the approximate levels predicted by the IPCC's graphs, so we are currently on target with their projections.

The facts seem to differ from your observations TWS? What information are you using to form this opinion?

You see now why this concerns me so, somehow the 'data' is getting diluted and the gravity of the situation is not being recognised. Where are other people gaining their insights from and why do mine seem so at odds with them when I rely on the major outlets too?

As a question, where have we seen Arctic ice recover from such ice volume levels before? I cannot ,for the life of me, find any such reassurance on the web.

As I have been keen to point out many sectors of the basin have been ice free now for numerous summers and ,as such, been at the prey of wind and waves (Dr Barber's expedition watched that perennial ice floe done in, on the Barents sea ,by waves originating over on the Siberian side of the basin) which mixes the surface layers of ocean rendering it incapable of sustaining 'deep ice' over winter (as the ice is displaced into warmer ,saltier waters) and so melts out (hence the 2m+ restrictions on ice development we are seeing in the 2nd and 3rd year ice) leaving the flimsy pack we have had over the past 3 years.

How do we re-build the 50m depth in the halocline layer whilst open water exists to mix things again over summer?

EDIT: Data taken from here;

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

at the base of the report are links to other bodies such as the new 'volume ' data;

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php

Edited May 6, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[Thundery wintry showers]

The Arctic ice is melting overall (the trendline over the last 20 years is approximately where the IPCC expected it to be, now that we've seen a slight recovery from the exceptional 2007 minimum). There is a positive feedback that helps reinforce the melt once it starts up. But many of GW's posts seem to imply that it's irreversible, and that just isn't true, because the Arctic ice has melted before and subsequently re-formed. In fact, even Antarctica has been ice-free before. There are so many other feedbacks across the global climate system to consider.

I have little doubt that the decline isn't entirely due to natural variability and that AGW will be adding to the decline- though I have doubts as to the relative proportions, and suspect that natural variability is playing a much larger role in recent Arctic climate change than that across the globe as a whole. But AGW is just another climate forcing to add to all of the other forcings- my head doesn't really "grasp" the concept that because a forcing is caused by humans rather than other parts of nature, it somehow overwhelms all of the other forcings, it strikes me as far more likely that it just adds to them.

[Gray-Wolf]

I would not claim that the Arctic will not have an ice pack in future times but it will take the same for it to form as it did after the last period of ice free Arctic.

I have my own 'understanding' what was required to rebuild a summer ice pack last time we moved from an ice -free Arctic Ocean into one with a permanent ice presence 12 months a year. I do not think we are facing the required conditions for that to happen just yet (unless we have a nuclear winter on the horizon...LOL) and so this vicious cycle of melt and ocean warming/mixing is set to continue.

I fully agree with TWS that 'human impact' is just another small tweak to the system (at present) but once that tweak has started the carbon cycle on a 'warm phase' outpouring of GHG's (from all the sources we now know so well) what will we call that 'change'?

At the end of the day for me 'Man' only lit the blue touch paper. The major changes to the climate system will be driven by the natural responses in the carbon cycle that we know have occurred in the past when the planet has entered a 'warm phase' and so won't that be 'natural'?

History may well see man having a very small part to play in the climate change we look to be approaching but he will have played a part in it.

Our job today is seeing how far things look set to go i.e. if we lit the blue touch paper what size of firework does nature have at the other end of it?

Edited May 6, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[Gray-Wolf]

Does anyone else here enjoy the irony that the 'birthplace of the industrial revolution' may be the very place that freezes as the rest of the world bakes???

I've been trying to mull over the impacts of our warming globe on the North Atlantic Drift (as we knew it in college). The salinity of the Atlantic is above that of all other oceans. It is that 'salinity' that drives the sinking of the N.A.D. once it's waters have cooled (salty water denser than not salty). So what happens if we increase the 'freshwater input' (melting ice sheets, runoff from melting permafrost lands as they lose their lakes due to their bases 'melting out' and becoming porous, perennial ice melt) to the ocean? Will it interrupt the current (freshwater has done so in the past)?? Will the access to the Arctic Basin just take the current in a more direct line into the basin and have the water descend there? (and freeze out the Baltic states instead by taking the tail end of the current away from them?).

How do you see our current change change the current?

[Thundery wintry showers]

The latest view of most scientists is that a large scale melt could slow down the Gulf Stream but only enough to offset the warming that such a scenario would otherwise be seeing over north-western Europe.

[Gray-Wolf]

This is a fig. from the Cop. meeting. S'funny how the ice drops off as soon as we put Nuke Subs under it ?

Maybe all those props is wot done fer the Halocline????

Many a true word spoken in jest.......LOL