It’s official. With two months of melting left to go in the season, scientists say there’s less sea ice in the Arctic in July than at any point in recorded history.
As previously reported, temperatures in the Arctic were as much as 14 degrees above average through parts of July, and now the National Snow and Ice Data Center has finalized its measurements of sea ice for the month. Not surprisingly, it’s another record in a long list of records for Arctic melting.
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NSIDC Monthly report was good this month
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
They seem to be branching out into different topics more nowadays.
Andy
14 degrees above normal? Hansen’s red and pink crayons must be working overtime.
I wonder how they got that? – above the sea ice? What altitude? I bet they have cherry-picked a temperature from the terrestrial arctic – easy enough as there has been (always is?) an interesting ring of above-average and below-average temperatures.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
where ? when?
The wording of that first paragraph is pretty outrageous. “It’s official. With two months of melting left to go in the season, scientists say there’s less sea ice in the Arctic in July than at any point in recorded history.” Deliberately worded to mislead? Or are NSIDC just incompetent with words?
We know what they really mean, but to the man-in-street this could sound like, “Hey wow! It’s only July and already there is absolutely less ice in the Arctic than there ever has been in history.”
“any point in recorded history” That’s just plain wrong. Depending on how it was measured and who measured it, July is perhaps slightly down on any other July since records began (which was not very long ago).
NSIDC: Shooting the breeze!
J…NSIDC did not write that news report. NSIDC wrote the blog entry that Andy points to.
So recorded history apparently began *since* the ice-age 1970’s.
Checked the article. It turns out that the phrase:
was added by the green nutjobs at that blog.
So NSIDC and Serreze didn’t actually use those words, this time, but their groupies of course fill in the blanks.
Serreze and Julienne should take note that their endless propaganda pays off on some blogs. Just not here.
Did you see Serreze’s name or my name in that news story? If you read the NSIDC blog entry you see that NSIDC states it is the lowest in the satellite data record, not EVER.
Julienne:
It was not the lowest during satellite history just for a few days compared to the same days during satellite observations. Get your story straight.
Clearly you missed my point by a country mile.
I said that the recorded history hype was added by your sycophants (the people that re-interpret your press releases which are already chock full of loaded language).
This discussion dovetails nicely with another comment I made here.
Yes, the story borrowed from NSIDC and they added their own “poetic license”.
It is interesting though. While the July comparison graph is accurate, it seemingly forgets the most recent part of the story.
Yes, we had very rapid ice loss through much of July, but then it stopped. But no mention of this rather rare phenomena. Strange, isn’t it?
I suppose that part of what we wrote in our blog doesn’t make for a good news story. 😉
The ice loss has sped up again though, and given the diffuse ice cover in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas it’s entirely possible that ice loss in August could be faster than in 2007. Remember in 2008, there was a speed up of ice loss during August as the ice was rather thin and the weather pattern was conducive to more ice removal.
FYI…here are the recent numbers:
20110731 = 6.7905200
20110801 = 6.6091000
20110802 = 6.6681700
20110803 = 6.5675000
20110804 = 6.4907200
Julienne,
I don’t see much evidence of melt so far in the Beaufort Sea, just spreading mostly. The Chukchi Sea does look like it will lose a significant amount of ice over the next week though.
Yes, this year has been most interesting towards the annual horse race. It rarely holds much interest for me, but this year has been full of some very interesting dynamics. It could be perception, but, it seems a bit different this year.
The real nutjob’s are creationist like Dr. Spencer who tries to mislead people about man made climate change.
Brian, if you can keep a lid on your religious bigotry for a minute, I have one simple question …
Can you give an example of “man made climate change“?
Any one will do.
I guess Jesus didn’t hang out there and give us reports?
Another story about cuddly polar bears for you Steve:
British group of 5 attacked by Polar bear. 1 killed, 4 seriously injured.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8683416/British-tourist-mauled-to-death-by-polar-bear-in-Norway.html
Obviously the victim wasn’t a Nissan Leaf driver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDilZXXBOxs
ECO tourists getting their “Hugs” from a cuddly Polar Bear”
Grumpy, sorry but the mean for July was the lowest in the satellite record. That is what is being discussed in both the NSIDC blog as well as that poorly written news story.
Apparently the poor bear was shot afterwards. Why? He was only doing what comes naturally.
Amazing how quickly they reacted to an unarmed bear.
Maybe the folks at NSIDC should keep this in mind when they make claims about future ice conditions: “Please note that NSIDC is not an operational ice forecasting center. For shipping purposes, please consult the Canadian Ice Service or the US National Ice Center.” The last sentence at the NSIDC web site.
The current information being given out is about as valuable as the information released during earlier periods of history when low ice conditions were experienced.
So why is the tree line in the arctic higher in the past then it is today? Oh less climate is 20 years and weather that’s 6 hours if its hot
SP:
The “Past” started at any time convenient for the promoters! For us deniers any point in the earths history can be the past, such as “Cherry picked” dates like 5,000 years before present or worse 8,000 years ago. We just do not understand that 12 years can represent recorded history when convenient.
Those stumps sticking out of the ice can be ignored because they do not have any green on them and were probably planted by Goodard to trow off “Real” climate scientists. 😉
Ice melts. Big deal.
The NSIDC report states :-
While the amount of older sea ice has increased somewhat since September 2007, an updated analysis of satellite-derived sea ice age recently published by James Maslanik and co-authors show the oldest ice (ice older than five years), has continued to decline.
Is this not self contradicting, Julienne?
I’m not sure I follow. Multiyear ice is ice 2 years or older. What that statement says is that while multiyear year ice has increased somewhat from the 2007 minimum, the amount of ice that is 5 years or older has continued to decline. So basically you have less of the really old ice, which tends to be the thickest ice, despite the fact that there has not been a new record low since 2007.
Surely the 5 year ice, i.e. ice that survived in 2007, can only reduce at the moment as inevitably some must always melt every year. It can only start growing after the 2007 low is out of the way and the recovery in ice starting in 2008 becomes 5 years old?
We (at realscience) have discussed this. Julienne, wouldn’t this be what is expected, given the ice loss of 2007? Next year can we expect a study of the diminished amount of 6 y/o ice?
Perhaps Steve can post the paper we published in GRL? I sent it to him a while back. It might be easier for you to read it rather than me detailing every part of it since I can’t show you the corresponding graphs to go along with the discussion.
Neven did post a summary as well with graphs from the paper if you don’t want to read the paper: http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/07/new-paper-from-maslanik-et-al.html. The graphs on Neven’s site will help you understand what I mean about the 5+ ice.
Julienne, I’d love to read the entire paper……. while I can glean much information from graphs, I seem to get more from reading. Unfortunately, you guys published to GRL, where my opportunity to read the paper is limited to my willingness to depart with some money.
I’m hoping to change this system soon. I have an aversion to buying some information that I’ve likely already paid for in one form or another. (Note, this comment wasn’t directed at you, but rather a general observation.)
Steve!!! Send me the paper…….. please.
Is it legal to send papers like that? I have access to most paywalled articles…
-Scott
i can share my papers with anyone and we all regularly pass our papers onto our colleagues, so if you send me your email address I can email you a copy as well.
Wonderful!! That’s very gracious.
Uhmm, I don’t have your e-mail addy to send you my addy….. 🙂
No biggy, if you’d just send the paper to suyts@hotmail(dot)com…..
Thanks much.
James
Hi Julienne
I think I understand bits of Neven’s post but please bear with me if I make an obvious boo boo.
But Neven’s graph clearly shows 3 and 4 year ice in 2011 well up on 2010. This being so and assuming no extraneous factors surely this can only lead to an increase in 5 year ice over the next 2 years.
PS I would add to Scott’s and others’ comments and thank you for spending time with us.
Thanks
Paul
Just to add as well.
When I eyeball the graph, the very low level of 2011 5yr+ seems to correspond with the very low level of 3yr ice in 2009. Is not it this factor that has most to do with determining this year’s 5 yr+ rather than this year’s climate?
Hi Paul, no question is a bad one 😉
For the Arctic as a whole, the 4 year ice did increase from 163,906 sq-km to 298,750 sq-km between March 2010 and March 2011. So depending on how much of this survives this summer, it could help the 5+ ice recover. And there was also a doubling of 3 year old ice.
As of the 3rd week of July most of the 4 year old ice was still there, but I suspect that more of that was lost in the Beaufort since I last looked at the data, as well as more of the 5+ ice since some of that ice is right in the region of the Beaufort/Chukchi seas where lots of open water areas have developed. Guess we’ll know soon enough. More 3 year old ice has been lost than the 4 year old ice thus far, but percentage wise, there has been more 5+ ice lost between March and the third week of July than 3 or 4 year old ice, so there will be a trade-off.
Julienne – is it legal for me to share my papers with anyone like that? No one ever taught me what those sort of rules were while I was in grad school.
Thanks,
-Scott
Scott, my understanding is that we can send whoever we want a pdf (or hard copy) of our papers. Back in the past before everyone was using pdfs, we would always purchase the hard-copies and then I would make a list of colleagues I thought may be interested in my paper and then mail them a hard copy. Today, we don’t tend to purchase the hard copies but keep the pdf to pass around. I don’t see why there should be distinction if I give the paper to another scientist or to someone from the general public interested in reading the paper.
Hi Julienne,
Thanks for the clarification. I’d avoided passing around my stuff (to say, my family), just b/c I was worried about the legality of it.
-Scott
Ah, yes the old “shifting definitions” trick. You see, to most people recorded history means the last 3000-5000 years, since we actually have a written record of at least some part of this period. In this case, though, they give us the definition meaning, “Since 1979 A.D.”. It’s a pretty good trick, if you ask me, being able to give an impression of 5000 years, while also being able to back up and say that 32 years or so is all they have to furnish for evidence.
I agree. I think it would be more objective for NSIDC to say ” 2nd highest since 1979″.