Whatever the winter weather is like, it will be blamed on “the record low ice extent.” It is trivial to demonstrate that September ice extent has essentially no effect on the climate.
1) Sea surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean are at or close to the freezing point. The presence or absence of ice has little or no effect on the vapor pressure of water over the ice.
DMI /COI [Satellite SST analysis]
2) The sun is very low in the sky and the presence or absence of ice has little or no effect on the SW radiative balance
3) The Arctic Ocean is covered with clouds. Almost all of the small amount of light coming from the sun, reflects off the tops of the clouds.
arctic.io – Arctic Terra – (2012/265)
In summary, there is no reason to believe that variations in September ice extent have any meaningful effect on the winter weather. It will all freeze over in the next few weeks.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts
– Richard Feynman
The lack of ice did not prevent many stations from setting record lows over the last week. In winter, the cold source is usually the snowcovered landmasses between 50 and 70 N and not the high Arctic.
Wow, look at all that ice up there! I’d heard that it was ice-free! (Sarc/off).
The light grey is a temperature of -1.7 C, which is the freezing point of H2O at the salinity of the Arctic Ocean.
It’s ice and water, but that doesn’t matter much.
So is it not the case that a lack of ice insulating the water will cause more heat loss at night?
Yes, until it freezes over again.
I guess I am wondering if the lack of ice could cool the water more and sooner in the fall/winter leading to a more ice formation, going a bit further south this year.
The clouds have prevented even lower temperatures, some clear skies at night and zap!
Steven,
Water in space is ice. It has virtually the same composition as our oceans.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/SEMER89U7TG_0.html
Salt then becomes a good proxy as a residue left behind in evaporation to understanding water loss and the timeline of how much water was here when the planet was created.
Our planets velocity effects the movements of water vapor as they are of a different density to gases. Clouds NEVER cross the equator.
Currently I have moved ahead from velocity mapping to looking at the experiment of life evolved in water and the complexity changes by this evolving system.
An unexpected experiment occurred that helped with this…Feeding our humming birds.
The red coloring was breaking down after a couple of weeks and settling to the bottom. Ants were getting into the saturated sugar water and dying. This then changed the water into wine… 🙂
If you extrapolate the trend–
in 6 weeks it will be minus 100 C.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php