Suppose You Have 15% Concentration Ice, And The Wind Blows …

If the wind compacts the ice, the extent goes down. If the wind expands the ice surface, the extent also goes down – because it is no longer 15% concentration. Any gust of cold wind makes the extent go down.

Our alarmist friends hyperventilate with every meaningless reduction in 15% concentration ice, but the ice is not melting significantly, it is just moving around.

This is what 30% concentration ice looks like over the last week. No change.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

This is what area looks like over the last week. No change.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/

It would be nice to have an intelligent discussion about what is happening with the ice, but that seems almost impossible.

About Tony Heller

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22 Responses to Suppose You Have 15% Concentration Ice, And The Wind Blows …

  1. Mike Davis says:

    Steven:
    When people follow 15% or 30% and think it represents some meaningful dimension in ice concentration intelligent conversation is not possible. Throw in the number of reporting agencies that each use their own special process to manipulate the information and everyone is talking past each other. Ice melting in the region will allow some means of transportation and restrict other means during parts of the year. Other than that it don’t mean SQUAT and moneys spent chasing this fantasy is providing work for the otherwise unemployable wannabe scientists. This is almost as bad as studying drought in a desert! Well maybe worse! Well flip a coin! πŸ˜‰

  2. 30% concentration is a a more meaningful metric than 15%.

    • Mike Davis says:

      I know that because 70% error is less than 85%! πŸ˜‰

      • Mike Davis says:

        What is the size of the area that one pixel represents and how many pixels are needed to cover the entire region they are studying? What is the size of the area that one pixel represented in 1979? Rhetorical questions for thought experiments!

  3. Kaboom says:

    Probably mass would be the only meaningful measurement but instruments won’t be able to pick that up with a sufficiently small margin of error.

  4. Phil Nizialek says:

    Another problem occurs when both area and extent fail to support the death spiral meme. Then our friends in the “we’re doomed” camp say that ice volume is the proper measure to be used to prove AGW, even though there is nothing that measures volume with even a hint of accuracy.

    Truth is, if you look at all the graphs together there appears to have been a step down in summer extent beginning in the early 2000s. The summer ice extent appears to have stabilized after 2007. I for one think we’ll start seeing a gradual rise in summer extent over the next decade, back to 1970s levels. I could be wrong, but I’m certainly not ringing my hands muttering about the end of the world as we know it because there’s a 100,000 sq. Km melt day in August. These folks who experience daily despair about ice melting need to get a life.

    • Mike Davis says:

      The ice can not go back to what was measured in the 70s because the masking of the region has changed so even with maximum amount of area covered with ice the numbers will not be the same.

  5. Rod says:

    I’m completely agnostic when it comes to whether it matters or not if all of the ice melts in the Arctic during the summer in future years. However, it appears to me that the extent is going to easily drop below all years but 2007, and will likely drop even lower than 2007 before this melt season is over.

    2007 was a wind-driven event leaving the ice quite concentrated in the end. It looks to me that this year is completely different with the winds spreading the ice out into regions where it will melt in place, thinning the remaining ice. At the end, the concentration charts for 2007 will look much more robust than 2011, and the extent will probably be larger as well, whether measuring it by 15% or 30%.

    I’ve been cheering for a reversal of the trend to put all the alarmist talk to bed, but I’m coming to think that 2007 was the anomaly (due to wind) and that the trend remains down. Right now, under 4.5 (15%) looks easy to reach at the minimum, and under 4.0 will not be that difficult to reach given the present condition of the ice (spread out into warm waters instead of highly compacted.)

    I’ve been at “under 4.5” on the WUWT guesstimate all season, and made that guess based on how slowly the ice formed last winter. It appeared to me to be a really slow freeze-up in many areas of the Arctic.

  6. Latitude says:

    Why do people find it odd that water water had to go somewhere…..
    ….and there’s no warm water to replace it

  7. Latitude says:

    Looks like Rick Perry is going to be our next president……..

    ….every time I turn on CNN or MSNBC, they are trashing him

  8. Mike Davis says:

    I found the true cause of ice conditions in the Arctic:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuStsFW4EmQ

  9. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    So long term is the only thing that matters to global warmers? They should quit celebrating of every little thing that happens in Arctic ice and wait for the long term. But we all know they are not waiting for the long term. Heat in Russia or the US, and Arctic ice are all they go on and on about. One little change in the graph is proof of global warming to them. But I guess they have to hang on to something since the IPCC, and also those climate models, are doing so poorly.

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