Arctic Ice Discussion - 2010 Freeze Up

[Gray-Wolf]

Yes, an unfortunate situation indeed. How do you see the strong La Nina playing out? A cold arctic winter with reasonably high max, a late melt and much better min extent next summer as suggested by some? Or a continuation of recent years with warm arctic winters, rapid melts and the lowest ice Min's on record?

As all the melt seasons since 07' have shown, it doesn't matter how 'late' the melt starts nor how high the 'Max', the ice melts out to one of the lowest levels recorded. I can see no reason why this year should prove different?

If we have already suffered a couple of 'bad' winters (with high final extents) aren't we statistically more likely not to have one? If we have a low max' and then we melt out the same area as this year did we have very little ice come min (you could say the same about 08'/09' which both melted more 'area' than 07' did?) so we'd all better hope for a long ,cold Arctic winter!

[jethro]

I think Jethro's second link offers rather more substance to its argument. Here's another link on the subject, which seems pretty balanced to me despite coming from Greenpeace:

http://archive.green...ts/seaice3.html

Overall, I think natural variability probably does account for a large proportion of the recent melt, but with a bit of AGW added on top, and aerosol pollution (affecting the albedo of the ice) is also an anthropogenic factor, albeit one that is in decline. The problem is the risk of AGW increasingly becoming the dominant factor as we head through the 21st century.

Which leads me back to my perennial question - how much ice would there be without the additional loss caused by AGW? I really wish someone could answer that, at least then we'd have a rough baseline of our impact up there, without which there's just endless speculation, claims and counter claims.

We've had a few guesses for ice extent, how about some for the proportion of change due to us (expressed in percentage terms)? I estimate (wild guess, off the top of my head, aided by at least three too many large, super strength coffees) our contribution to the ice loss, in the form of all contributors to AGW, not just CO2 is an additional 8% above expected normal levels if natural cycles alone were at work.

Isn't the AO more important than La Nina for impacting upon ice? If the deep La Nina continues or deepens further thus cooling the oceans, then any impact from that would surely be seen next Spring and Summer?

[Hiya]

The response article borders on laughable. The graphs published of global temps in 1917, 1936 and 1938 comnpared to 2010 only goes to show how warm the world is today. Similar synoptics yet look at the temperature difference. Looking at his graphs only reinforces the poor state of the arctic today.

Evening Skiwi!

I did wonder (and mention my wondering) about the second article, I can only think that J' skimmed instead of reading it?

I think both of you two need to read the article, instead of accusing other people of not reading it. A picture tells a story all in itself but you both have the jist wrong and have both come to the conclusion "that chart isn't good evidence for what he is trying to say."

Take graph 1 of temperature in Greenland, clearly a very low starting point for today’s warming. If you had already accepted that temperature had "bottomed out" when taken over 10k years, why would you bother hiding that in an anomaly chart? Of course it is going to be warmer, there has been warming, he doesn't deny that, in fact gives a nice graph in support of that. But that isn't the point of the article either. The point is that the pattern of the positive temperature anomaly in Arctic Canada/Greenland and negative anomaly in continental US is not unusual, and indeed similar magnitudes have been witnessed in the past, even taking a static point of reference and a background warming trend.

I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with his analysis of the data.

[Skiwi]

I think Jethro's second link offers rather more substance to its argument. Here's another link on the subject, which seems pretty balanced to me despite coming from Greenpeace:

http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/arctic99/reports/seaice3.html

Overall, I think natural variability probably does account for a large proportion of the recent melt, but with a bit of AGW added on top, and aerosol pollution (affecting the albedo of the ice) is also an anthropogenic factor, albeit one that is in decline. The problem is the risk of AGW increasingly becoming the dominant factor as we head through the 21st century.

Hi

Yes i agree natural variability is a contributing factor. However, the article posts temp maps from 1917, 1936 etc (all years with blocking highs over North America displacing arctic cold. Then in 2010 with a similar blocking pattern the world (and arctic) is exceptionally warmer than in previous years with similar synoptics. So yes this suggests blocking highs over north america lead to a warmer than average arctic however the scale of warm worldwide is quite astonishing in 2010 and bears no resembalence to previous years with similar set ups. Therefore, the extreme warmth of 2010 cannot have been caused single handedly by that blocking high but instead other process are clearly contributing to the warm temps. The same processes that have lead the last few years to be the warmest on record.

[Thundery wintry showers]

I think some may be getting a little confused over the two links Jethro posted. Here's the one that I felt had some substance and was worth taking seriously, though I'm not sure of how well its arguments stand up:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ARCTIC.pdf

...and here's the one that I didn't think was worth taking seriously (i.e. the one with the 1917 and 1936 links):

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Winter2010playthattuneonemoretime.pdf

That said, "frightening" sums up my verdict on the temperature anomalies for last winter compared with 1917, 1936 and 1978!

Edited October 25, 2010 by Thundery wintry showers

[Skiwi]

I think some may be getting a little confused over the two links Jethro posted. Here's the one that I felt had some substance and was worth taking seriously, though I'm not sure of how well its arguments stand up:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ARCTIC.pdf

...and here's the one that I didn't think was worth taking seriously (i.e. the one with the 1917 and 1936 links):

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Winter2010playthattuneonemoretime.pdf

That said, "frightening" sums up my verdict on the temperature anomalies for last winter compared with 1917, 1936 and 1978!

Sorry for the confusion

I have been reffering to the second 1. I agree the first one raises some interesting points. Right or wrong

The temperature anomalies are certainly frightening. Amazing differences. In 2010 there are barely ANY cold anomalies. A sea of red!

Edited October 25, 2010 by Skiwi

[jethro]

I've actually read the first one now (better late than never eh) all it's saying is that the headlines for Arctic doom are a little misleading when they focus upon the AGW element, whilst leaving out the detail of seasonal weather. I actually think that's quite an important point. All too often weather is used to demonstrate climate in an instantly, accessible way but when the tables are turned, it is dismissed as weather and irrelevant.

As 2007 clearly demonstrated, weather is vitally important when trying to assess the AGW element. The record breaking AO over the last however many months it's been, has been primarily responsible for the ice loss. The AO isn't driven by AGW, it has nothing to do with CO2 and yet the results produced by it are used as evidence for our influence upon the Arctic. Whenever this is pointed out, it is then seized upon as being proof positive that we have to act NOW to not only counter our influence, but bolster the ice against natural cycles, the implication being that it is us which has enabled the AO to have such an impact. That's a spurious claim at best and deliberate massaging at worse; to do what, re-enforce a personally held belief when the actual evidence doesn't offer strong enough support?

Sometimes it's difficult to see where the actual science begins and ends and where hype, hysteria and hopecasting takes over; if articles like the one I linked to makes folk take the time to stop, look and question for themselves then that's fine by me.

Sorry for the confusion

I have been reffering to the second 1. I agree the first one raises some interesting points. Right or wrong

The temperature anomalies are certainly frightening. Amazing differences. In 2010 there are barely ANY cold anomalies. A sea of red!

One year does not a climate make.

Thirty year averages are used for very good reasons, unless of course we can take last winter's cold as being indicative of a cooling world.

[Skiwi]

I've actually read the first one now (better late than never eh) all it's saying is that the headlines for Arctic doom are a little misleading when they focus upon the AGW element, whilst leaving out the detail of seasonal weather. I actually think that's quite an important point. All too often weather is used to demonstrate climate in an instantly, accessible way but when the tables are turned, it is dismissed as weather and irrelevant.

As 2007 clearly demonstrated, weather is vitally important when trying to assess the AGW element. The record breaking AO over the last however many months it's been, has been primarily responsible for the ice loss. The AO isn't driven by AGW, it has nothing to do with CO2 and yet the results produced by it are used as evidence for our influence upon the Arctic. Whenever this is pointed out, it is then seized upon as being proof positive that we have to act NOW to not only counter our influence, but bolster the ice against natural cycles, the implication being that it is us which has enabled the AO to have such an impact. That's a spurious claim at best and deliberate massaging at worse; to do what, re-enforce a personally held belief when the actual evidence doesn't offer strong enough support?

Sometimes it's difficult to see where the actual science begins and ends and where hype, hysteria and hopecasting takes over; if articles like the one I linked to makes folk take the time to stop, look and question for themselves then that's fine by me.

One year does not a climate make.

Thirty year averages are used for very good reasons, unless of course we can take last winter's cold as being indicative of a cooling world.

True, but last winters warm anomaly is not isoslated. It is just an example of how warm the planet currently is. If you look back through the past 30 years you will see increasingly warm winters with the last 5-10 years exceptionally warm. Not just 2010. What has caused the increasing temperature is somewhat debatable but the warmth of the arctic is not. In my opinion weather cannot be solely blamed for the very warm temperatures we are currently experiencing but id love to be proved wrong!

[Gray-Wolf]

I think that the difference from 'normal' cyclical variations and the likes of 07' (and the losses via Fram prior to this) was the ice was of a condition to allow the mass exodus we saw over those years. Past years with similar synoptics came nowhere near to the 'exodus we saw in 07' (the last 2 being 77' and 87').

Where it natural we would have seen the type of losses we saw in 07' over both these years (where we have sat images to 'see' as we all did in 07').

If you need to 'see' what is different from 'natural' to our AGW Augmented patterns then maybe comparing the 'perfect storm' synoptic years (The AGU of Nov 07' gave the a cycle of 10 to 20 years so there should be a number of them through the 20th Century?)

To me it is a simple as the continued 'basal melting' of the perennial throughout the 20th century that went 'critical' in the early noughties and allowed the ice to be so dynamic in that year.

We know that ice transport increased dramatically through the noughties (as the buoy data shows us) and we know (from our historical data) that we do not see periodic 'spurts' in ice transport speeds across the basin over previous 'perfect storm years' so we need to ask "What is different now?".

The answer I keep coming back to is the loss in ice volume that we had since the 50's (over 50% lost from the late 50's to the late 70's?).

Anyhows , the data is out there for all to check and muse over.

Edited October 25, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

But you two keep coming back to an either/or choice. No one's saying it's all natural. I've no doubt that will be countered with "we're not saying it's all AGW, natural cycles count too" but continue to emphasise the AGW element as the most important, the driving force. Augmentation guys, augmentation.

Cards on the table - how much augmentation in percentage terms?

Going back to that first link I posted, curiously the Kara sea levels seem to run counter to the expected cycles - why, anyone know?

[jethro]

True, but last winters warm anomaly is not isoslated. It is just an example of how warm the planet currently is. If you look back through the past 30 years you will see increasingly warm winters with the last 5-10 years exceptionally warm. Not just 2010. What has caused the increasing temperature is somewhat debatable but the warmth of the arctic is not. In my opinion weather cannot be solely blamed for the very warm temperatures we are currently experiencing but id love to be proved wrong!

That's the crux of the matter though, isn't it. A warming world? Yes. How much of it is natural? There's as many answers for that as there are items on all the Dear Santa letters of an entire average primary school.

It's IMO misleading to take a single season or two as representative, in terms of climate it's not particularly informative to take 30 spans (when looking from a geological view) - if we must (and we must) have a delineated time period then it should be large enough to encompass both the negative and positive periods of all major ocean drivers. Take for example the PDO and the AMO; if we take temperature records which cover both the negative and positive cycles of these, we would have a much better idea of how much temperatures are above normal. Expressed in those terms, the last 30 years are above average but not so above average as some would have us believe.

Tiny time spans just tell us temperatures fluctuate, it doesn't address why or how. And certainly doesn't predict the future.

[Thundery wintry showers]

True, but last winters warm anomaly is not isoslated. It is just an example of how warm the planet currently is. If you look back through the past 30 years you will see increasingly warm winters with the last 5-10 years exceptionally warm. Not just 2010. What has caused the increasing temperature is somewhat debatable but the warmth of the arctic is not. In my opinion weather cannot be solely blamed for the very warm temperatures we are currently experiencing but id love to be proved wrong!

I don't think Skiwi was guilty of that "either-or" assumptiion- I've highlighted the all-important word in the post to illustrate this.

It is unreasonable to blame individual weather events on AGW but changes in occurrences of anomalies over a given threshold are a different matter. If Winter 2009/10 had been a one-off for its widespread positive anomalies across the globe, it would say very little about AGW, but unfortunately, averaged globally most other recent winters have been warm as well. There has been a clear upward trend in global temperatures, which has been amplified in the Arctic. We can debate over what the causes of this warming is, but not that some warming has clearly occurred.

Re. Gray-Wolf's reference to ice volume between the 1950s to the 1970s, has anyone got a source for that? I can't find any reliable ice volume data from before 1979, other than generalised outputs which give a "geological" account going back many thousands of years. Also, if ice volume did retract between the 1950s and the 1970s, you can't blame that on AGW because global temperatures actually fell slightly during that period. The recent phase of warming started around 1980.

[jethro]

We were posting at the same time TWS, I think I've addressed those issues.

I really must go and do some work...later folks.

[BornFromTheVoid]

The preliminary IJIS figure puts us below 2009, back to second lowest on record. Looking at the concentration images I see little reason to believe we'll see a large jump in extent for todays update, though you never know!

CT shows us still over 1.5 million km2 below the long term figures in the NH, and just over 250,000km2 above the the SH.

Conditions over the next few days look like improving acorss much of the Arctic. The depression over the Barents sea is weakening while also filling with much colder air than a few days ago. Winds are falling light on the Bering side too with some cold uppers spreading in that direction.

After that a large depression approaches the Bering strait but doesn't manage to push into the Arctic, only really affecting the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

Going over the last 5 days data available for the Arctic, here are the anomaly maps for both surface and 850hPa temperatures

What are the reasons for the surface anomalies being so much higher than the upper air anomalies? Could it be the extra open water and the A.A.? Or maybe the energy given off during the freezing of sea water (similar thing?)?

I understand that the 850s don't always correlate perfectly with surface temperatures (inversions and things of the like), but some of the anomaly differences are huge!

Anyway, to end this I thought I'd post up the NH surface temperature anomalies from each of the last 3 decades. Can the negative PDO/ La Nina pertubation cycle reverse what seems like a clear enough trend?

[Thundery wintry showers]

What are the reasons for the surface anomalies being so much higher than the upper air anomalies? Could it be the extra open water and the A.A.? Or maybe the energy given off during the freezing of sea water (similar thing?)?

I understand that the 850s don't always correlate perfectly with surface temperatures (inversions and things of the like), but some of the anomaly differences are huge!

This is interesting- back in September I recall that the reverse was true, with well above average 850hPa temperatures near the pole but only slightly above average surface temperatures. Perhaps the strong winds blowing through the Arctic around that persistent 1040mb high could've been a factor?

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/slp_07b.fnl.html

The temperature anomaly maps for the three decades are very illuminating, and back up a pair of observations that I've come across. Terminal Moraine pointed to a study (I can't remember where it was) which suggested that the main reason for the decline of snowiness and cold in winters up until 2002 had been a decline in the frequency of airmasses from cold sources, and that the cold sources had not warmed significantly. I get a sense that since 2002 this has changed dramatically with the cold sources becoming a lot less cold than they used to be.

Surprisingly, given the anomalous warmth of the Arctic last winter, this didn't seem to be much of an issue last year. It may have simply been that the anomalous warmth was concentrated away from the areas that we were getting our cold airmasses from.

[Gray-Wolf]

"If ship and aircraft records from before the satellite era are taken into account, sea ice may have fallen by as much as 50 percent from the 1950s. The September rate of sea ice decline since 1979 is now more than 10 percent per decade, said the CU-Boulder research team."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071001160655.htm

I also found these maps showing extent;

( 'Phillips' Handy volume Atlas 1930)

note by the 'russian map' Iceland was in open water......good job they had the warm 40's to thaw out with!!!

(Russian map from 1955)

When you compare it to todays 'extents' for spring and winter you can see how much we have lost (or maybe folk think we couldn't rely on our observations before the sat. era?)

[barrel1234]

Wow, what facinating maps, ice all the way down to Iceland- and plenty more over the otherside as well!!!!! Regardless of how some people feel 'the more ice the better' I would prefer not to return back to an arctic ice area that big.

Well done GW for searching those out for us.

Edited October 25, 2010 by barrel1234

[Gray-Wolf]

Crikey! you didn't tell us IJIS has already updated and given us a 24.5k loss for yesterday NDS!!!

I am even more hopeful that you're right about things picking up from here on in!

I knew we had a lot of 'warm waters' around still but that's quite a poor run of days when we were making over 100k gains just over a week ago.

I think we'll need to watch the next 7 days as we're looking like we'll take the lowest gains for any of the Oct's on the record?

Not really the start to the season some folk were telling us it was (memories of last spring....I wonder if it was the same folk winding us again?)

I know that there are a lot of folk who feel my outlook 'gloomy' but when ,year in ,year out, we see science confirming my cogitations I have to slip off my 'gloomy' tag and re-attach my 'realist' one...LOL

[BornFromTheVoid]

Crikey! you didn't tell us IJIS has already updated and given us a 24.5k loss for yesterday NDS!!!

I am even more hopeful that you're right about things picking up from here on in!

I knew we had a lot of 'warm waters' around still but that's quite a poor run of days when we were making over 100k gains just over a week ago.

I think we'll need to watch the next 7 days as we're looking like we'll take the lowest gains for any of the Oct's on the record?

Not really the start to the season some folk were telling us it was (memories of last spring....I wonder if it was the same folk winding us again?)

I know that there are a lot of folk who feel my outlook 'gloomy' but when ,year in ,year out, we see science confirming my cogitations I have to slip off my 'gloomy' tag and re-attach my 'realist' one...LOL

A loss? The update looks like a 24,500km2 gain to me GW?

Not as bad as a loss but still way below average...

[Gray-Wolf]

A loss? The update looks like a 24,500km2 gain to me GW?

Not as bad as a loss but still way below average...

Doh! (the snot finally got to me brain.....not quite brain freeze but just as challenging.....)

Sorry about that, i did find it odd (as all the fuss shows!)

Soon be November

[barrel1234]

Yes, we are well below what I had expected by now, its still early days yet regarding the refreeze, I'm still expecting the colder global temps (should be forthcoming to to -ve PDO) to give a good maximum freeze area and then the next year minimum showing that we have turned a corner regarding Arctic ice. But yes still less than I had expected for now.

[Gray-Wolf]

2010** 0.83 0.82 0.44 0.78 0.62 -0.22 -1.05 -1.27 -1.61

08' had 1 lower monthly figure than Sept this year and so did 09'. Sadly the rest were either positive or low values over recent years (since NASA 'called it').

The above are this years PDO figures , we should see from Octs figure whether we will carry a -ve PDO into winter but the past years of PDO-ve (either since NASA called it or since 98') have been very upy downy?

We will need to see if the AO ends up cracking records again this year too!

Edited October 25, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[Thundery wintry showers]

"If ship and aircraft records from before the satellite era are taken into account, sea ice may have fallen by as much as 50 percent from the 1950s. The September rate of sea ice decline since 1979 is now more than 10 percent per decade, said the CU-Boulder research team."

Thanks for the source- I think it may have produced some confusion. Given that sea ice declined by approximately 39% relative to the 1979-2000 reference period, and that the ice was thickest and most widespread near the beginning of that period, we're probably talking a decline approaching 50% since 1979 (which is pretty scary), but at the same time it implies that there was very little change between the 1950s and 1970s. Indeed, it wasn't really until the early 1990s that we started to see a significant decline (though again, this isn't necessarily a good thing as it highlights the speed of the recent decline).

[knocker]

Indeed, it wasn't really until the early 1990s that we started to see a significant decline (though again, this isn't necessarily a good thing as it highlights the speed of the recent decline).

Streuth, sounds like the acceleration after the tipping point.

[Gray-Wolf]

This is how I see it (though many individual things surely went into the arriving at this point?) W.S.

The losses up to 79' (from the 50's) would probably have been hidden beneath the ice and ,the most common complaint, is that the sub data is not as extensive as later records so not only could it be over-representing ice loss it could also be under-representing the losses over that period. Why? well ,not much room under the old 'impenetrable pack' to the North of Greenland/Canadian Archipelago so we don't have records of how this ice fared but lots of data on the transits across the Basin.

With this bank of ice impacted we set the scene for the fragmentation and transport of the broken remnants of the perennial out of the basin (as we saw) via the very currents that helped build and maintain it in the past.

With the loss of this bank of old ,thick ice we started to get summer swells running the length of the basin (even under the remaining central pack). This both fragmented the central pack more than was usual (more surface area exposed to the water) and started mixing the column of water it sat in.

By the onset of the noughties all we were waiting on was the 'perfect storm' scenario to really make folk sit up and pay attention (odd that? the less ice the more clamour) but on reading through the documentation of this period it is clear that many bodies were already voicing concerns about the future durability of the pack just that ,at that time ,no one was really listening.

I keep asking folk to read up the articles before 07' so they can remind themselves that this is not all about 1 freak event in the Arctic but a predictable outcome that was a little premature...some models had it showing up in 2013?

Anyhow the loss in draught and the mixing of the halocline make it an incredible 'ask' for a recovery to take place. We will have varying extents but the deep bank of 'impenetrable ice' has left the basin until the next ice age rolls in.

The position will be one of accelerating decline across the basin ( punctuated with 'weather events' but trending in one direction only) and for me that is the wrong side of the Arctic 'Tipping point'.

Edited October 25, 2010 by Gray-Wolf