Arctic Ice Discussion - 2010 Freeze Up

[BornFromTheVoid]

One of the few journals I can't access through the college library! Nice find though Noggin.

Anyway, was discussing tipping points in a stratigraphy lecture yesterday, and as far as I'm aware, nobody believes passing a tipping point (such as loss of sea ice) will lead to such runaway warming as to make the planet uninhabitable, just that it would reach a new state of quilibrium, albeit a warmer one, certainly one that we could exist in.

[Gray-Wolf]

Agreed BFTV. It's a bit of a 'no boner' really as we see ice 'recover' each year as the Arctic win ter progresses? If we have our calc's wrong , and continue B.A.U. we may force the planet to warm the oceans similar to the last time the Arctic ocean was 'ice free' over winter but this would be a long way down the line? We may see 'reductions' in Winter ice cover but 'loss'?

As for summer ice a continuation of the trend seen over the past 100yrs will leaves us with a 'seasonal ice pack 'still.

[jethro]

Agreed BFTV. It's a bit of a 'no boner' really as we see ice 'recover' each year as the Arctic win ter progresses? If we have our calc's wrong , and continue B.A.U. we may force the planet to warm the oceans similar to the last time the Arctic ocean was 'ice free' over winter but this would be a long way down the line? We may see 'reductions' in Winter ice cover but 'loss'?

As for summer ice a continuation of the trend seen over the past 100yrs will leaves us with a 'seasonal ice pack 'still.

Did you read the link Noggin posted?

During the long polar winter the lack of an insulating ice sheet allows heat absorbed by the ocean during the summer to be released into the lower atmosphere. The authors find that increased atmospheric temperatures lead to more energy loss from the top of the atmosphere as well as a decrease in heat transport into the Arctic from lower latitudes.

How are you going to force the planet to warm? The AGW theory relies upon positive feedback loops to amplify the CO2 signal, a crucial part of that theory is the loss of the ice caps leading to greater absorption of heat, due to loss of albedo. If, as this study suggests, the additional heat absorbed during the summer months due to loss of albedo is lost during the winter months, where is your forced warming of the planet coming from?

[Iceberg]

There are lots of questions regarding the validity of this research but the most important for me is if the below is correct and that ice always recovers after 2 years then why hasn't fully recovered yet from 2007 ?

"The researchers, using a general circulation model of the global ocean and the atmosphere, find that Arctic sea ice recovers within 2 years of an imposed ice-free summer to the conditions dictated by general climate conditions during that time. Furthermore, they find that this quick recovery occurs whether the ice-free summer is triggered in 2000 or in 2060, when global temperatures are predicted to be 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer."

[jethro]

There are lots of questions regarding the validity of this research but the most important for me is if the below is correct and that ice always recovers after 2 years then why hasn't fully recovered yet from 2007 ?

"The researchers, using a general circulation model of the global ocean and the atmosphere, find that Arctic sea ice recovers within 2 years of an imposed ice-free summer to the conditions dictated by general climate conditions during that time. Furthermore, they find that this quick recovery occurs whether the ice-free summer is triggered in 2000 or in 2060, when global temperatures are predicted to be 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer."

Without seeing the full paper I can only hazard a guess..... The parameters entered into the model for an ice free Arctic and one with partial ice cover, would be completely different. The experiment was to discover if complete loss of ice during the summer would signal a permanent loss; the calculations used seem to have been lack of albedo and heat absorption of dark water versus heat lost to atmosphere due to no ice to insulate and thus prevent the heat transfer.

Those parameters wouldn't and couldn't measure or predict the recovery of ice in a partial ice loss situation, the insulating layer may be smaller than it was, but it is still there. I imagine the data in this study could be tweaked or re-worked to measure the difference between loss of albedo and insulation and heat absorption from dark water on an area scale; whether it would be possible to be any where near accurate on a so many square miles of new open water versus ice cover basis, remains to be seen. I imagine it would be more difficult to model on this smaller scale rather than basin wide, possible retrospectively but almost impossible to be done predictively.

[VillagePlank]

There are lots of questions regarding the validity of this research but the most important for me is if the below is correct and that ice always recovers after 2 years then why hasn't fully recovered yet from 2007 ?

"The researchers, using a general circulation model of the global ocean and the atmosphere, find that Arctic sea ice recovers within 2 years of an imposed ice-free summer to the conditions dictated by general climate conditions during that time. Furthermore, they find that this quick recovery occurs whether the ice-free summer is triggered in 2000 or in 2060, when global temperatures are predicted to be 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer."

Was 2007 ice free, then?

[Iceberg]

No however its the same principle.

Year 1: Summer ice melts.

Year 2: Partial recovery (maybe to something 2007 in nature).

Year 3: Full ice recovery as the recovery continues.

I would assume that this is something like the 2 year recovery the paper is talking about in it's GCM. However we have seen in practice(i.e the real world that ice doesn't recovery from a 2007 scenario in a year), indeed nobody on this thread even comtemplated that this would happen.

Looking at the all the precious GCMs that have predicted an ice free arctic in the future, none of them showed a recovery in 2 years.

So what was so special about this study ? what parameters did they use to show something that doesn't seem to happen to nature and didn't show in other simulations.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

Still no 'miracle'.....

I'm not understanding (due to 'abstract' and not paper) how heat transport to the pole becomes reduced? I thought the whole reason for 'weather' was due to mother N.'s need for 'balance'(warm to cold ,cold to warm)? With a warming planet how do we overcome this desire for heat transfer to the poles? Warm air rising to the top of the atmosphere surely draws new air in beneath to replace the ascending air???? Where would that air originate other than further south???

I think I'm missing the bit of the paper that calls for below average summer temps and synoptics favourable for ice retention at the pole to facilitate this 2 year 'turnaround'? Common sense tells me any continuation of the same we have seen over the past 15yrs will lead to an ice free Arctic some time soon and with ice levels so low and thin we may go sub 3 million (extent) this summer?If so we'll see how much this 'dark water' takes to re-freeze and any impacts the delay in re-freeze puts on Arctic ice development.

The other thing being that the paper didn't arrive in an instant and 'events' may well have overtaken it in it's production (final loss of the 'backbone' of the Arctic pack?)

[noggin]

Re your post no.733 above..

That's the last time I ever post anything to give you any hope. <_<

[Gray-Wolf]

That's the last time I ever post anything to give you any hope.

sorry Nogg's just me being plain old me!!!

In reality I've deleted more posts than posted recently as they have been so dire! It surely is horrible if even I'm too depressed by the situation to burden others with it.

Just with 5 years of 'ice watching' you'd have real concerns, looking at the data today, about the melt season to come. If we could manage to hold onto enough ice to pull us away from the last 4 years of lows that would be something at least? As it is I know the ice is even more fragile than the past 3 summers with last years losses of Paleocrystic leaving the basin essentially full of ice 5 years old or less (the majority being F.Y. ice).

After 07's low we seem to have been ever less dependent on synoptics to achieve extremely low ice min extent figures and this summer we have no 'backbone' to the pack (and the possibility of the NW Passage deep channel acting as another drain to the only area of sea ice with some thickness).

With the channels from the Arctic ocean to the NW Passage Deep channel now 'scraped clean' of land fast/bay ice we would probably be in a position to be 'shipping ice' by late June giving us a good 8 weeks of flow out of the strip of ocean to the north of the Canadian Archipelago/N.Greenland.

The 'Topaz' thickness plots for Feb 4th;

showing thin ice all along the Russian side of the Basin and the only 'thickness' being on the Canadian side (but only 2m+ thick??). We know that a 'normal summer' will melt out 2m thick ice (even at the pole!) so how much 'in-situ' ice will we loose from mid May to mid Aug? How much are we left with if we rub out all the 2m or less ice?

[BornFromTheVoid]

A drop in extent of 52,000km2 as of the first update, which would be quite exceptional for the time of year if it was close to that by this afternoons update, however, I think it's very unlikely.

Looking at the concentration images here it seems we've lost a little over the sea of Okhotsk and perhaps another little bit over Barents, but we've gained a large amount in the Bering sea and the Baltic/Gulf of Bothania, so I'd definitely expect the extent figure to look better later on.

[songster]

You're all missing the key point in that report. After abruptly removing Arctic ice, within two years it recovers to the conditions dictated by general climate conditions during that time. The paper itself is here (not sure if you can all access it, but I can from my University login).

http://www.agu.org/j...010GL045698.pdf

It has next to nothing new to say about the average predicted Arctic ice loss. As with other models, it has September ice extent down to 2 million square kilometers by 2040, and negligible levels (~0.1 million) in the 2060s. What it does however show is that if there is a "freak year" causing much greater loss than expected, there is a "recovery" over the following two years. In 2040, the ice will "recover" back up to 2 million, and in 2060, it will "recover" to the dizzying heights of 0.1 million.

The take-home message is that Arctic ice decline is an inexorable process driven by large-scale climate changes, and that year-to-year fluctuations will not perturb the overall picture. True, there's no "latching effect" whereby a random freak event causes a permanent change in ice cover. However, that conversely means that the long-term changes we are seeing must be consequences of "general climate conditions" and not simply after-effects of high-melt years.

The interpretation of 2007 is pretty obvious in context. Ice did indeed recover after 2007 - it rose all the way back up to the long-term trendline. In fact, it recovered in two years, exactly as this new paper predicted: look at the graph here (http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20101004_Figure3.png). The trendline, however, continues downards and appears to be accelerating.

Edited February 11, 2011 by songster

[jethro]

Pure speculation on my part (without the full paper, it's impossible to do more) I'd hazard a guess that a reduction in heat transported northwards to the pole would be as a result of different atmospheric pressure belts. If the pole is ice free, creating higher atmospheric temperatures and thus more energy loss from the top of the atmosphere, it would change the usual weather patterns. A bit like the idea that less ice at the pole will lead to more snow at lower latitudes during the winter.

Iceberg: I don't see how or why you would expect the same principle to apply to a two year period. The insulation layer was still there in 2007, albeit smaller. The reduction in ice in 2007 although dramatic, probably wasn't enough to trigger the loop that this study claims to have found.

I'm curious to know what role ocean currents play in this, they take ages to transport heat around the globe so I'm a bit confused how this newly discovered mechanism would impact upon them.

[Gray-Wolf]

Is that not far too 'general' songster? I mean in 07' we lost a fare swathe of the perennial ice for it to be replaced with F.Y. ice. Both ice types act differently over a summer melt season (as we continue to see) with any 'young ice' unable to resist the 'melt' in the way thick ,desalinated ice can.

If the model is merely about ice 5 years and younger we can probably gain some solace from it but we must abandon the notion of the ice 'recovering' as this would mean that , at ice min, the majority of ice be 5 years and older? With the ocean dynamics we see across the basin the potential for such an 'ice island' to form and maintain over multiple years must be nil?

When we run the animations of the ice for the past 15 years we can see the general motion of the ice over a typical year with the Beaufort Gyre and Trans polar drift pushing ice out of the basin via Fram. The motion focuses on the area that used to 'form' the perennial ice so the ocean there 'collects' the older ice for removal from the basin. This year will see the last remnants of the 3rd,4th, and 5th year ice be lost by the same mechanism leaving us with a basin of predominantly F.Y. ice instead of having 50 to 60% old ice come ice min.

Is this the 'new Arctic'? Most of the basin covered in F.Y. ice with a core of 2nd year ice to the North of Greenland/C.A. come max. extent?

Edited February 11, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[Gray-Wolf]

.

I'm curious to know what role ocean currents play in this, they take ages to transport heat around the globe so I'm a bit confused how this newly discovered mechanism would impact upon them.

We know that the influx of the Pacific , via Bering Straights, has be hitting record 'flow rates' for the past years. I do not think it necessitates a general increase of the Deep ocean Current/Surface Currents flow rates , just an alteration within the Basin itself? Let's say that the Straights are now swept clear of deep ice opening up more area for the Pacific to flow in? would that promote larger volumes into the Basin? We've seen the NW Passage swept clear of thick ice and the channels swept clear of Paleocrystic bergs so wouldn't the flow be increased through there just to reflect the extra 'room' available now? I think that we will see a stronger flow from Bering to Baffin from now on (and the odd Grey Whale with it?) introducing warmer waters in the Canadian Archipelago and allowing another 'Exit' to open up for the 'thick ice' to the north of the C.A. and N.Greenland.

My question is will this 'river' cause further eddies into the Souther Beaufort sea area and accentuation the Beaufort Gyre? Is this how we've manged to lose the Paleocrystic from this area (both Prof Barbers observations and last years final melt out of the Paleocrystic ice there) in such a short space of time?

[PersianPaladin]

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq.html#summer_ice

"A recent study suggests that 5,500 years ago, the Arctic had substantially less summertime sea ice than today. However, it is not clear that the Arctic was completely free of summertime sea ice during this time."

And what of the apparent feedback mechanisms that existed at that time? Were they as sensitive as current models say they will be from such a scenario?

I doubt it.

Pure speculation on my part (without the full paper, it's impossible to do more) I'd hazard a guess that a reduction in heat transported northwards to the pole would be as a result of different atmospheric pressure belts. If the pole is ice free, creating higher atmospheric temperatures and thus more energy loss from the top of the atmosphere, it would change the usual weather patterns. A bit like the idea that less ice at the pole will lead to more snow at lower latitudes during the winter.

Iceberg: I don't see how or why you would expect the same principle to apply to a two year period. The insulation layer was still there in 2007, albeit smaller. The reduction in ice in 2007 although dramatic, probably wasn't enough to trigger the loop that this study claims to have found.

I'm curious to know what role ocean currents play in this, they take ages to transport heat around the globe so I'm a bit confused how this newly discovered mechanism would impact upon them.

You mean the AMO?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg

[BornFromTheVoid]

Second update is in and we're back to lowest on record after a loss of about 19,000km2. That puts us 50,000km2 below the next lowest, 2005.

[songster]

Is that not far too 'general' songster? I mean in 07' we lost a fare swathe of the perennial ice for it to be replaced with F.Y. ice. Both ice types act differently over a summer melt season (as we continue to see) with any 'young ice' unable to resist the 'melt' in the way thick ,desalinated ice can.

Well, er, yes. That's why there's a downward trend in summer sea ice. Loss of perennial ice and its replacement by seasonal ice is part and parcel of "the conditions dictated by general climate conditions during that time". Our current "general climate conditions" are such that the Basin has much less perennial ice than it did 20 years ago, and much more seasonal ice, leading to a lower summer minimum when the seasonal stuff melts out. In 2040, the "general climate conditions" will be even more disfavourable to ice retention, and more favourable to a seasonal pack.

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks BFTV!

I'm sure folks are as concerned as we are about the prospects should we start our melt season with both low extent and low thickness across the basin. I'm of the opinion that the Arctic Amplification is asserting itself more and more as time moves on and ,should we find ourselves with more and more open water earlier and earlier in the melt season, things will only become more pronounced?

I'm still not quite 'firm' about what this means for the UK in early winter. Will the AO-ve always push air towards us or will the 'plunges' vary in their locations? I do recall that the early noughties saw them in varied locations around the globe with only the past 2 winters pushing them our way?

How does the winter 'pattern' impact upon our the spring/summer patterns? are there any teleconnections which programme our spring/summer or are the 2 things unrelated?

I know this is not 'strictly' Arctic but if the changes there do impact our experience of weather here I'd rather it be in a way that I like than not!!!

I could cope better if the winters cold was balanced by some crazy summer heat for July and Aug so the kids can get out from under my feet during the long holidays!!!

[Iceberg]

Thanks Songster, I don't have a Uni logon so can't access the full paper, have to admit the info you've given is not the impression given by most of the anti sites and blogs like WUWT.

A recover in extent to the natural background probably seems reasonable all things being equal and it's possible that 2007 recovered in 2008/2009 to the what is the general background level.

Taking this and the paper into account it looks like the cycle will likely be summer ice free, a couple of years to take it back to a very low minimum ice, then icefree again as soon as synoptics become favourable.

However if heat is transfered from ocean to atmosphere in the winter it must mean more heat in the atmosphere in autumn/early winter and so less cold making winters shorter and less cold in nature on average.(On average is important as the increase heat could well lead to the enhanced early season WAA that categorised November/December)

[Gray-Wolf]

I too have noted the 'skew' on the paper (the abstract is not very revealing either?) given by some of the folk posting their synopsis of it. This is why I've cautioned folk about that type of interpretation of the paper as it just did not make sense? The 'rebound' back from an extreme melt seems to make sense though (common sense?) but ,as cautioned, within the trend that the ice shows. Once we are at a 'seasonal pack' if the warming continues then we may well move away from even this as summer ice may just not be feasible?

[jethro]

I too have noted the 'skew' on the paper (the abstract is not very revealing either?) given by some of the folk posting their synopsis of it. This is why I've cautioned folk about that type of interpretation of the paper as it just did not make sense? The 'rebound' back from an extreme melt seems to make sense though (common sense?) but ,as cautioned, within the trend that the ice shows. Once we are at a 'seasonal pack' if the warming continues then we may well move away from even this as summer ice may just not be feasible?

And of course you always give an absolutely unbiased synopsis GW? People in glass houses eh.

[Gray-Wolf]

And of course you always give an absolutely unbiased synopsis GW? People in glass houses eh.

I'm happy you feel I have the same scale of influence as WUWT 'J'!!! and , in reality I do always try and give 'my' understanding of what is being said?

Folk obviously know how my 'world view' is and, as such, I do not try and 'Skew' things by omission or tinkering, just by appreciating the words from my viewpoint/ understanding of things?

The inclusion of the 'sliding scale' is an important part of the paper and without it a very erroneous impression of what is being said is cast?

Edited February 11, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[jethro]

I'm happy you feel I have the same scale of influence as WUWT 'J'!!! and , in reality I do always try and give 'my' understanding of what is being said?

Folk obviously know how my 'world view' is and, as such, I do not try and 'Skew' things by omission or tinkering, just by appreciating the words from my viewpoint/ understanding of things?

The inclusion of the 'sliding scale' is an important part of the paper and without it a very erroneous impression of what is being said is cast?

But if you feel you are entitled to your understanding of what is being said and your world view, then you have to respect that other people are too, without accusations of skew. Appreciating the words from your viewpoint/understanding of things is called confirmation bias, we all are guilty of that, some more than others. Trouble is, it is rare to notice or acknowledge it exists in our own views, but oh so glaringly obvious when presented with views contrary to our own.

Can't comment on the full paper as I haven't even opened it yet, perhaps sometime over the weekend, if we miraculously start working on a 36 hour day.

[Gray-Wolf]

Ice is still on a 'go slow' , does anyone have access to the earliest date ice max has been called? We know last years was one of the latest (if not latest) ever called so what about the earliest?

If we run into the tidal fragmentation event with such a low figure it may actually promote the end of the season as ice at the periphery (lost to fragmentation and drift) might not re-freeze as the sun rises further into the Arctic?

EDIT: Talking of Fragmentation and drift;

taken from the bottom right hand corner of;

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2011040/crefl1_143.A2011040233000-2011040233500.250m.jpg

You can see that not only is the ice not as extensive here as last year but also that it is melting in the areas ice locked this time last year.

Over the next 2 weeks we'll see more of the peripheral pack on the Modis suite so we'll get to watch the impacts of the coming full moon's tidal hikes.

Edited February 12, 2011 by Gray-Wolf