The map below compares Sept 3, 2013 ice vs. the same date in 2009. Red shows ice present in 2009 but not present in 2013, and green shows the opposite.
Note that there is a little more ice in 2013 than 2009, but what is really interesting is the location. In 2009, the ice (red) was on the wrong side of the Arctic, and almost all of it blew out into the North Atlantic and melted over the winter. This year the ice (green) is on the western side of the Arctic where it will thicken into multi-year ice over the winter.
And that is when the real alarmist wailing and gnashing of teeth will begin.
Yep.
In the last 3 days the ice loss was only 0.053 million km2. So the melt is really slowing down. For example the melt from the 31st till the 1st was 0.044 million km2, the day before was 0.048 million km2. I guessed 5.3 for the low and 5.5 for the Sept average. The sea ice should be close to 5.3 by tomorrow. The correct number for the low will most likely be close to 5.2. One of the NWP yachts ran aground in 25 kt winds and had to be rescued. Yesterday the jet skiers Dangerous Waters TV were rescued by a CCG ship. The waters truly were and are dangerous. The ships that make Tuktoyaktak harbor will likely have to stay there. The Alaskan waters could be very risky.
But the true believers ‘know’ that the Arctic has all been decreed melted by the Ordained Ones of the Church of CO2, and therefore this page is now deemed heretical by them.
Sleight of hand… brace for the “ozone hole” fear mongering in a few days…
At the same time… when I checked the sea ice page at WUWT the total anomaly, arctic and antarctic, for the first time this year exceeded MINUS 300 thou.
Far from getting better all the time (me used to be an angry young man, me hiding me head in the sand) things are getting measurably “worse.”
The problem is that you’ve let the Nuttycellis and Romms and Trenberths trick you into taking up an indefensible position. You’re staking your reputation and your argument on sea ice extent. Who knows what the sea ice is going to do? The warmists certainly don’t know and it’s courting disaster for you to claim that you do.
I don’t care if arctic sea ice vanishes completely. I would care if this resulted in extreme weather, but it might equally well result in milder weather. I haven’t nailed my flag to the sea ice mast and I don’t think you should either.
I agree with your ideas, and linked to this post in my string of observations about the scene through the The “North Pole Camera.” (It is at the bottom of http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/the-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-a-september-surprise/) I added a few ideas to yours.
Rather than heading south past 80 degrees latitude to be flushed out Fram Strait, the camera nudged north of 84 degrees yet again today. That is the third time it has crossed 84 degrees heading north, (not counting the time they shipped it up there.)
Even if the camera is only north of 84 degrees for an hour or so, it is indicative of the way the ice is failing to flush south and exit through Fram Strait. All the ice is instead being pushed towards Alaska and Canada, which tends to replenish the Beaufort Gyre. The ice-extent maps show ice-cover is actually bulging towards the Canadian coast at one place in a manner that is “above normal.”
The place where ice is “below normal” is Fram Strait, (which represents missing ice that isn’t being flushed out, and therefore isn’t being lost to the arctic,) and also warm-AMO-melted-ice north of Scandinavia and Siberia. Rather than “absorbing more sunlight,” as some suggest, this ice-free-water is losing heat very efficiently.
When water is free of chips of ice to act as seeds for ice to grow on, the chilled water sinks and is replaced by rising warm water from below, and the water stays ice free until the entire column of water from the surface to the pycnocline is near freezing. The pycnocline is 300-400 feet down, so we are talking about the creation of a very thick layer of cold water, rather than a thin layer of ice with warmer currents beneath. Therefore the open water towards the north coast of Eurasia may actually be an important part of regrowing ice, during what seems to be a sixty-or-so year cycle. The thick layer of colder water, created by ice-free-seas exposed to bitter winds, will reverse the effect of the warm AMO, and allow ice to regrow more swiftly during the winter and melt more slowly during the summer. (This thick layer of colder water may have been the reason actic temperatures were colder last summer.)
The ice-free ocean will turn out to have the exact opposite effect than the effect that Alarmists expected. If an increase in sea-ice is truly an Alarmist nightmare, then the nightmare will truly only get worse.
Nice comment Caleb, I was wondering what could have caused the almost reversal of the trends from PDO-/AMO+ last year to a nearly PDO+/AMO- this year, and your explanation really makes sense.
The very geography of the Arctic region is IMO one of the factors of the stabilization of the ice extent, over longer periods.
The pattern of winds may be favorable, when pushing the ice away from the Fram Strait or unfavorable when in the opposite direction, but on the average of many seasons the MYI tends naturally to accumulate over Canada.
This is due to the large relative extent of land in that region in comparison with the area over Europe and Asia, where on the contrary the large gap of open water is unfavorable for ice accumulation.
Once the MYI accumulates above a “certain amount” over Canada, as I presume it happened this year, the recovery of ice greatly accelerates with cooling of the ocean waters, as you explained, and even more accumulation of ice on the West Arctic. The recovery then goes from West to East, and the oscillations in the opposite direction.
This “recovery mode” remains until strong unfavorable winds or highly positive AMO or PDO destroy the balance again.
Having in sight the present very low level of solar radiation I believe we are in for a long period of recovery of the Arctic ice, which could be above average again in a couple of years if the wind conditions remain favorable.
In fact, if the present positive annual variation repeats in 2014, we will have above average ice extent next summer… I’m crossing my fingers!:-)
It is interesting how both the PDO and AMO moderated this year. Neither went all the way to an opposite phase, but they both were much less dramatic than last year. One chart I looked at had last year’s AMO the third highest, behind 1998, and 1878(?) (which beat 1998 by far.)
The AMO does not exactly work like clockwork. During the last warm cycle they had one spike that did make it to the opposite phase. I think it was 1939-1940, and the sea ice came back in a dramatic fashion.
If the AMO follows the last cycle, the warm phase should end in eight years or so. However I think a “quiet sun” is a wrench in the works, and could perturb the sixty-year-pattern in some manner we don’t expect.
.
Here is another piece of the puzzle. Some experts say that AMO and PDO are in fact aspects of a greater anomaly that should be called N. Hemisphere anomaly (NHO)
“.. the dipole anomaly [DA, Arctic] and “AMO” are connected to the same meridional overturning modes. In reality the AMO SST fluctuations also manifest in the North Pacific and Indian Ocean Dipole regions very well..which makes sense given the hemispheric Hadley/Ferrel Cell migrations seem to pace with the AMO, if not precede them.
I think the AMO should be renamed as the NHO (Northern Hemispheric Oscillation)..because that is technically what it is. We see the effects range from shifts in tropical convection/cloud cover, to angular momentum/Rossby waves, to the latitude/strength of various Hadley Cells, to hemispheric SSTs and temperature…”
http://westernusawx.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=33725&p=651909
Here we have the PDO series
http://www.climate4you.com/images/PDO%20AnnualIndexSince1900%20With7yearRunningAverage.gif
and the AMO (detrended)
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ARCTIC10.jpg
Note how the deep plunge of the PDO at the end of WWII pulled the positive AMO down big time and, according to “hidethedecline.eu” blog,
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/arctic-sea-ice-data-collected-by-dmi-1893-1961-259.php
in 1952 the Arctic ice extent was back to the levels of the beginning of the XX century, just few years after a (probable) very low level during the years of the WWII.
The big difference I see now, as you said, is the Sun.
In the 1950’s we were having two of the largest cycles ever recorded (18 and 19) and now we’re at the beginning of a solar grand minimum.
It’ll be interesting to watch and learn how this formidable system of forces evolves in the next couple of years.
No one knows the answer for sure, but my guess is the Sun will lead the way as usual.
But when that super duper exponential heating in pipeline gets going around 2070, we will have hell to pay. We must think of our grandchildren and great grand children and great, great grand children. We expert climate scientists knows what is best. That is why we cook the books and rig thermometers.
Don’t forget to compare that 1973 map to this years min, Steve. Be good to see how close this season is to that map.
Ice problem http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/08/global-warming-expedition-foiled-by-ice.php
RE: Mike Mellor says:
September 4, 2013 at 10:29 pm
“At the same time… when I checked the sea ice page at WUWT the total anomaly, arctic and antarctic, for the first time this year exceeded MINUS 300 thou….”
I’m not sure what you’re looking at, Mike. You had me rushing to check for myself, but it looks to me like the anomaly is right around zero. Are you messing with my head? Good job, if you were.
There’s been a couple times recently the total sea ice anomaly has been on the PLUS side. That’s why I was so taken aback by your information.
Personally I feel the arctic had to be more ice-free than most suspect, in order for the Vikings to grow what they grew in Greenland. (An ice-free Arctic would mean that, until baby-ice formed, their north winds would have held maritime air rather than arctic air; something like a 40 degree difference in December.) I think it would be fine to have such weather return, but doubt the “quiet sun” will allow it to, for a while at least.
I don’t see that we are sticking our necks out, by pointing out what actually is going on. We are not “betting on a colder arctic;” we are simply pointing out the dynamics as they exist, and also pointing out that the actual reality is nothing like the “future” Alarmists promised us. Facts trump fantasy every time.
It is the Alarmists who have “bet the farm” on the arctic becoming ice-free. This is their last, best hope, and it is bouncing down the runway and not getting off the ground. The end of the runway is getting near.
Steve am I not reading Noaa’s temps right on this map. http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_sst_NPS_ophi0.png
and here
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmp_01.fnl.html
compare them to the buoy reading and Noaa is much warmer. look.
http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/newdata.htm