Arctic Ice Discussion

[Alan Robinson]

The Danish Meteorological Institute announce they have established a 24 hour oil spil response service for Greenland.

http://www.dmi.dk/dm...andske_farvande

Their task is to man a computer that anticipates the spread of any reported oil spillage.

Great, so now we know where the oil will go.

Anyone interested in joining me in a new research project? We can perhaps become millionaires by inventing oil booms that work in drifting ice.

Edited September 1, 2011 by Alan Robinson

[Gray-Wolf]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/09/01/uk-arctic-mining-idUKLNE78001L20110901?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=stocksNews&rpc=401

We's all gunna be rich I tells ya!!!

[NorthNorfolkWeather]

http://uk.reuters.co...cksNews&rpc=401

We's all gunna be rich I tells ya!!!

I bet we aren't.

Typical money grabbing opportunists IMHO, I suspect you think similarly

[Alan Robinson]

I bet we aren't.

Typical money grabbing opportunists IMHO, I suspect you think similarly

I'd like to see them try inventing oil booms that work in drift ice. At least we should make them try.

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi NNW! Yes I do think the same.

I just hope that the 'cost' to us all (for their gain) is not too great?

I'm just worried about where we (as a planet) appear headed and the Arctic highlights (to me) this. The sad thing is that many posters (on this thread) are even trying to paint this year as no big deal and yet ,to me, it is as big a deal as we can get.

We saw poor ice thickness to start the year and even with a slow ,cold start to some areas of the basin (and little transport of ice from the basin) the JAXA plot looks appalling as I view it today.

I am told often enough I'm a 'glass half empty' kind of guy but, be it half full or half empty, the content is the same? We are still without the old spine to the Arctic ,we are still mixing out the Halocline, we still see permafrost melt (oh , another Baby Mammoth drooped out of the permafrost last month as well preserved as the one [Lubya?] 4 years ago) and the Siberian shelf sea shed Methane. All of this against the back drop of a waning PDO-ve phase and many Nina/neutral years with solar output supposedly low that were supposed to show us our recovery not lead us even further down the same path of losses and changes to the Arctic system that seems irreparable?

With my oversimplified observations of change I keep hoping that my 'half empty' view will fall by the wayside (as I'm told that it has this time each year) yet I keep being sickened by how close to the 'trend' my simplistic take ends up by being.

I'm impatient for 'recovery' and even more so for the mechanisms to achieve this (that makes some kind of sense in light of all we've seen over the past 10years?).

Surely the guys who promise me recovery, year on year, whilst telling me I'm wrong (yet again , for another year) can see why they leave me so impatient? Of all the folk posting I am probably the one needing to see this promised recovery most. Without a 'plan' for it's happening being posted (that makes any real sense to me in light of all the data we keep amassing for the opposite) I might as well go back to the old ways of getting down on bended knees and praying for it?

ho hum! Maybe Jaxa's revision will be for gains later?

I'd like to see them try inventing oil booms that work in drift ice. At least we should make them try.

Maybe we should be looking at letting nature work for us and use the ice itself as a boom?

[summer blizzard]

Good news for you all is that snow extent over Siberia is growing and ahead of 2010, so perhaps not the loss we saw last year as it may prevent such loss at the fringe.

Impressed by how Greenland has held its ice.

I agree with many of you, while i am not too concerned about their drilling, we do need to put measures in place to prevent ice loss.

Perhaps the real money winner could be a makeshift wall to stop ice drifting out and melting.

[4wd]

we do need to put measures in place to prevent ice loss.

Perhaps the real money winner could be a makeshift wall to stop ice drifting out and melting.

Is this a joke?

We can no more prevent ice doing what it wants to do than stop a hurricane making landfall.

Furthermore it would be most unwise to try.

There are always unforeseen consequences.

What the ice is doing now is what it always has done - change.

If more is lost, more heat escapes from the water below - a self-regulating system.

That some persist in portraying reduced ice extent for a few weeks in late summer as a man-made 'disaster' shows nothing more than a lack of understanding (and humility)

[BornFromTheVoid]

Is this a joke?

We can no more prevent ice doing what it wants to do than stop a hurricane making landfall.

Furthermore it would be most unwise to try.

There are always unforeseen consequences.

What the ice is doing now is what it always has done - change.

If more is lost, more heat escapes from the water below - a self-regulating system.

That some persist in portraying reduced ice extent for a few weeks in late summer as a man-made 'disaster' shows nothing more than a lack of understanding (and humility)

C'mon now! While I wouldn't quite advocate an ice wall in the Arctic, the whole self regulating system isn't as simple as that. If it was, I don't think we would have gone from having much of the northern hemisphere covered in ice to being near a seasonal sea ice pack in such a short space of time. The overall trend in the last 12,000 years or so has been towards a reduction in the earths ice cover so this self regulating system doesn't even work like that, even without man's interference.

The Earth is also doing now what it's always done also, change. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a good or wanted thing. We have it pretty good now climate-wise and it's probably best that it stays as it is. Even in this idyllic setting we find ourselves in, there are millions starving around the world. It would take much to break the mass delusion we have in the Western World that everything is just rosy and safe!

Sure, the world isn't going to end if the sea ice disappears for a few weeks each summer, even the ice caps melting and greenhouse gas levels rising aren't going to do that. But don't feel as though they won't have a huge affect on global ecosystems and our own population, especially with it expanding the way it has been.

[Alan Robinson]

Maybe we should be looking at letting nature work for us and use the ice itself as a boom?

Maybe we should try to understand nature. Homo sapiens are as far as I know a product of nature. Euler to Diderot "repondez!"

[4wd]

We have it pretty good now climate-wise and it's probably best that it stays as it is.

Huge areas of the land mass are desert, or frozen tundra, other areas are OK-ish most of the time.

This isn't an unusual or novel situation, it's always like this.

We just adapt to the climate as it is now because if we don't we wouldn't be here to be thinking about it.

Everything self-regulates, we can't control it by issuing environmental edicts or wringing hands about how terrible it might be *if* something happens.

[Gray-Wolf]

Euler to Diderot "repondez!"

I think i prefer Perdita and her unwillingness to have such B*stards in her garden? though many plants and critters change the face of the planet none are capable of contemplating their impacts (or wish to redress the impacts their 'changes' place upon otheir life). We either lump ourselves firmly in with the rest (and so excuse our behaviours as it's just 'how we are' as a species) or we note 'difference' (in this capacity to contemplate that we posses) and seek to become 'stewards' of our planet and it's inhabitants?

Seems the court is still out?

[Gray-Wolf]

Impressed by how Greenland has held its ice.

.

http://today.msnbc.m...r/#.Tl-7eGq49_w

Yup , Greenlands doing just fine..........

and business couldn't be better (sorry Alan)

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/northern-sea-route-setting-arctic-commerce-records

Edited September 1, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[BornFromTheVoid]

Thought I'd do a quick review of the August melt in the Arctic, average of all data in brackets.

Average daily melt rate 58,500km2/day (43,500km2)

Extent on 31st 4,743,750km2 (6,579,878km2)

Percent of total ice loss compared to maxima 13% (9.5%)

[Gray-Wolf]

Y'know, without a 'Perfect Storm' this does look far to close to 07' to not be seen as an 'exceptional' melt year?

I'm sure we are all best pleased that , unlike 07', we saw very little export from the Arctic Basin this summer? If we'd seen the normal 30% to 40% of extra losses (from 'normal export' years) then we'd need to lower the line by another 20 to 30% from where it lies today.

[pottyprof]

So why haven't we seen those losses? Has something changed? Serious Q btw.

[BornFromTheVoid]

So why haven't we seen those losses? Has something changed? Serious Q btw.

It's because the Arctic dipole that has been present more often in recent years wasn't around much this year.

In 07 there was generally high pressure near the Canadian and Greenland side with low pressure on the opposing side

This tends to send the ice south through the Fram strait where it melts in the N. Atlantic

This year there has been a tendency for high pressure right across the Arctic, so no real driving force on the ice.

08,09 and 10 all had a stronger dipole than this year, though not as strong as 07.

[BornFromTheVoid]

According to the IJIS site, we now have the 2nd lowest extent on record

We're about 430,000km2 off lowest on record. I'd say it's unlikely we'll reach that figure though.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv

[Thundery wintry showers]

I recall that the dipole pattern persisted for a large part of June 2011, though it largely disappeared during July and August (when, as you say, pressure was high across the Arctic in general).

It doesn't bode well for the ice when we get a near-record year despite unexceptional conditions re. synoptics for ice retention.

[Gray-Wolf]

Ain't it the truth TWS? We are in the final days (I hope) of the melt season so we'll have the data in by mid Oct and be able to see just how the season went.

We should not forget the other seasons where the ice is concerned. It is not just the lengthening 'trend' of the melt season (and the shortening of Autumn/Spring) that matters. The summer melt season was always going to be the most 'visible' in it's changes but the way ice export over Autumn and winter has ramped up since the mid 80's should also have peeps antenna twitching esp. since the turn of the century and the losses to ice thickness since with the more mobile pack this produces.

When you look at the 'age of ice' animations you can easily see how this trend is now effectively emptying the basin of the older ice.

This Autumn winter may prove no exception to that trend with a lot of vulnerable ice awaiting the 'Fram Train' once we start our equinocturnal storm season.

Edited September 5, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[Methuselah]

Very alarming, IMO. What'll happen when the Polar Jet (in the places that matter anyway) heads back northwards?

[Gray-Wolf]

Dunno Pete, if what we see across the Arctic is 'messing' with our N.Hemisphere climate already (and the 'Arctic Amplification' is to be accepted as an impact large enough to mess with the lower latitude climates) then we have no 'analogue' to go by?

I believe that we are experiencing impacts, from the A.A., that are above and beyond natural climate variation and that the rapid exchange of Arctic air (north to south) that we (N.Hemisphere) have been seeing since at least 02' (and here for the past 2 winters at least) is one aspect of this in late autumn/early winter.

How anyone can think that 20c anoms across large swathes of the Arctic Ocean (as the summer heat dissipates to allow re-freeze to begin) will not have an impact is beyond me!!! Imagine your locale with a 20c positive anom over you in Dec? what would folk say???

EDIT: Oh! BTW.... I bet there's rich folk eating in a fancy dining car

Edited September 5, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[paul tall]

Imagine your locale with a 20c positive anom over you in Dec? what would folk say???

They'd say nothing because a 20c anom here in December is absolutely impossible.

Therefore you are not making a compelling point in favour of your stance.

Edited September 5, 2011 by paul tall

[Gray-Wolf]

They'd say nothing because a 20c anom here in December is absolutely impossible.

Therefore you are not making a compelling point in favour of your stance.

By early Dec it is not uncommon for the Barents/Kara seas to be frozen with a temp (2m) of -20 to -25c. Some of those sea areas, in recent years, have still been fluid and so the temps (2m) are obviously above -1.8c. If we believe the data this mass of rising air creates , what I call a 'Faux' high, allows the real polar cold to be pushed south (slip off the high) into N.Hemisphere locations,

To me a 20c anom is big where ever it is positioned but it would seem some folk would rather ignore such occurrences?

Edited September 5, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[paul tall]

By early Dec it is not uncommon for the Barents/Kara seas to be frozen with a temp (2m) of -20 to -25c. Some of those sea areas, in recent years, have still been fluid and so the temps (2m) are obviously above -1.8c. If we believe the data this mass of rising air creates , what I call a 'Faux' high, allows the real polar cold to be pushed south (slip off the high) into N.Hemisphere locations,

To me a 20c anom is big where ever it is positioned but it would seem some folk would rather ignore such occurrences?

You asked me to imagine a 20c positive anomaly over my area in December. And you asked me to imagine what people would say.

I can't imagine a 20c positive anomaly over my area in December because it is completely impossible. People would say nothing about it, because it is impossible and couldn't happen for them to comment on.

You have veered into the realm of hypothetical nonsense by posting the "imagine if your area was 20+ in December and what would people say?"

Edited September 5, 2011 by paul tall

[songster]

I can't imagine a 20c positive anomaly over my area in December because it is completely impossible. People would say nothing about it, because it is impossible and couldn't happen for them to comment on.

I believe the point is that a 20 degree C anomaly in the Arctic/Antarctic should be equally unthinkable, equally noteworthy and equally concerning - the only reason it isn't is because nobody much lives there.