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Arctic sea ice area is the highest in seven years. Many scientists fear their own shadows.
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you have to give Suzanne credit, Steven, for her great literary skills …
the title on the Guardian main page, “Arctic sea ice shrinks to record low”, is indeed a lie, but she will argue that that title is the webmaster’s initiative …
she herself, on the page itself, leaves it at “Arctic sea ice shrinks to sixth-lowest extent on record” which might be true …
on the other hand, I would like to consult with Suzanne more often as to my investments … she has 35 data points, and knows what will happen 5/10/20 years from now … great !
The article now reads:
“Arctic sea ice shrinks to sixth-lowest extent on record
Sea ice recovers from record low of 2012 but long-term trend continues towards an ice-free Arctic during the summer months”
I hope you kept a copy!
Still an extremely biased spin on the situation, with the followings:
“Sea ice cover in the Arctic shrank to one of its smallest extents on record this week, bringing forward the days of an entirely ice-free Arctic during the summer.”
And a graph which only compares 2013 with 2012 and not other previous years which were lower.
2012 was the lowest sea ice area/extent/volume on record. There has been no year that has had lower sea ice by any measure. It doesn’t seem biased to me, after all it was the 6th lowest on record, and of course the 7 lowest sea ice minima all occurred in the last 7 years. To claim any recovery based on 1 year, is far more biased. The synoptic profile this year was truly exceptional, in fact it was most likely the best ice retention year meterologically since 1996. Despite this we are still only about at the same levels as 2009, a year incidentally that was not conductive to ice retention. I don’t know how anyone can claim the sea ice is going to recover, perhaps we should wait until we even manage to hit the long term average!
You will be crying in your beer soon.
Steven just last year, it was you that lost the bet, not me. I don’t even know how you can say that given that we are only 1 year on from the lowest sea ice extent/area/volume on record! In 2008 you did the exact same thing, going on about recovery e.c.t. and then look what happened 4 years later. I don’t want the arctic to melt, but its obviously happening. The fact you find the 6th lowest sea ice extent on record a comfort is astounding. And note that while 2012 was an average year meterologically, 2013 was excellent for sea ice retention. What will your reaction be when another 2007 comes along?
The western Arctic is full of thick ice and winter is just beginning. You are screwed.
So what if it does? Who the hell cares? It has done it before. I can do it again, and again, and again. Exactly what do you think will happen? Will Santieclause drown? Will Rudolph take up SCUBA?
Even with the apparent large area of ice, one can’t forget that volume is more important than area. The volume/mass of the Arctic is down by two thirds. This issue is a good example how the science denial crowd continues to get it wrong.
ROFL PIOMAS shows a 46% increase in volume this year
Yes and its still 2 standard deviations below the mean. The trend is still down steven, but of course natural variability means not every year will be lower than the last one. In 2008 you were going on about gnashing of alarmist teeth. Look what happened 4 years later, in 4 years time what will you be saying?
I don’t think anyone is arguing against the facts.
However, it is misleading to say:
“Sea ice cover in the Arctic has shrunk to one of its smallest extents on record, bringing the days of an entirely ice-free Arctic during the summer a step closer.”
Actually it INCREASED relative to last year and several recent years. I think that by “shrunk”, they are referring to the normal decline in ice in summer, which is misleading.
Also, what does this mean?:
“This year’s minimum was reached despite cooler temperatures in some areas that slowed melting, Stroeve said. Air temperatures in the central Arctic were 1-4C colder than in the past six years.”
The sea ice ALWAYS reaches a minimum at this time of the year. Is this implying that because temperatures were below normal, there should have been no minimum?
I guess the prodigal son has returned to explain how he chastised the IPCC for their incest.
The Guardian article refers to extent, not volume.
Stop trying to move the goal posts … you lost this round and sea ice increased significantly both in extent and VOLUME and so if as you say “volume is more important” then it should be obvious to even the most foolish observer that the Arctic sea ice increased by the most important factor and also increased by the second most important factor … now crawl back under your rock!
Yes, The Grauniad needs to travel to the Arctic for nonexistent stories, because there is no crisis at home about which to write.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzCPDMf7vAQ
It is interesting to consider the annual loss of ice extent from March Max to September Min. Using the NIC data, the average difference Max-Min over the last seven years is 10.69 M Sq. Km.
But this mean hides a dumbell distribution. There are 3 high years (2007, 2008, 2012), all over 11 M averaging 11.40 M extent loss. The other 4 (including 2013) are all more than 1M lower in extent loss, averaging 10.15 M for the yearly Max-Min.
It seems normal in recent years for the Arctic to fluctuate more than 1M up and down in ice extent loss. And since the Max only varys slightly, it’s due to differences in the summer melt. Natural variability, anyone?
No one knows what’s happening with Arctic Ice.
Except maybe the polar bears.
But they are not talking.
Except of course to the admen from Coca-Cola.
maybe Fuku Flu will warm things up a wee bit – this should be the headline every damn day until someone solves this engineering disaster – Peace – Sept 18 13
“The western Arctic is full of thick ice and winter is just beginning. You are screwed.” Heard it all before in 2008. One good winter means very little in the long run, and of course that’s assuming this winter will be excellent for ice building. I’m screwed? No the arctic is. We are still at 2 SDs below the mean for ice volume! An average year next summer will send 2014 below 2013, and another 2007 will send us close to, if not below 2012. laugh at me when the sea ice volume hits the same levels it had in the 90s.
In 2008, the ice was in the eastern Arctic where it all got flushed out into the North Atlantic over the winter. Not going to happen this year.
Yes but we have no where near the ice age and thickness we had in 2008. You talk about ‘thick ice’ in the western arctic. The buoy recording the highest thickness in the W arctic is in the CAA currently and is reading 259cm. 2013F which has just recently been deployed in the western arctic is only 140cm thick.
The ice age in the western Arctic was zero, because there wasn’t any,
Yes there was in the CAA, and it was much older and thicker back then than it is now.
Ice melts, big freaking deal. Let’s look at an actual long term average.
“Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Paper: Current Arctic Sea Ice is More Extensive than Most of the past 9000 Years
A peer-reviewed paper published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences finds that Arctic sea ice extent at the end of the 20th century was more extensive than most of the past 9000 years. The paper also finds that Arctic sea ice extent was on a declining trend over the past 9000 years, but recovered beginning sometime over the past 1000 years and has been relatively stable and extensive since.
Although it seems like a day doesn’t go by without an alarmist headline or blog posting obsessing over the daily Arctic sea ice statistics (and never about Antarctic sea ice extent which reached a record high this year), this paleo-climate perspective takes all the wind out of alarmist sails. Satellite assessment of sea ice conditions is only available beginning in 1979 (around the time the global cooling scare ended), with only sparse data available prior to 1979. The alarmists at the NRDC fraudulently claim in a new video that due to “climate destruction,” Arctic sea ice reached the lowest in history in 2010 (actually the low since 1979 was in 2007 and 2010 was the 3rd or 4th lowest depending on the source). Probably wouldn’t bring in many donations if they mentioned the truth: the 21st century has some of the highest annual Arctic sea ice extents over the past 9000 years.
The figure below comes from the paper, but has been modified with the red notations and rotated clockwise. The number of months the sea ice extent is greater than 50% is shown on the y axis. Time is on the x axis starting over 9000 years ago up to the present. Warming periods are shown in gray with the Roman and Medieval warming periods (RWP/MWP) notated, the Minoan Warming Period about 5000 years ago, and another other older unnamed warming period. The last dot on the graph is the end of the 20th century and represents one of the highest annual sea ice extents.
Holocene fluctuations in Arctic sea-ice cover: dinocyst-based reconstructions for the eastern Chukchi Sea Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 45: 1377-1397
Authors: J.L. McKay, A. de Vernal, C. Hillaire-Marcel, C. Not, L. Polyak, and D. Darby
Abstract: Cores from site HLY0501-05 on the Alaskan margin in the eastern Chukchi Sea were analyzed for their geochemical (organic carbon, d13Corg, Corg/N, and CaCO3) and palynological (dinocyst, pollen, and spores) content to document oceanographic changes during the Holocene. The chronology of the cores was established from 210Pb dating of near- surface sediments and 14C dating of bivalve shells. The sediments span the last 9000 years, possibly more, but with a gap between the base of the trigger core and top of the piston core. Sedimentation rates are very high (*156 cm/ka), allowing analyses with a decadal to centennial resolution. The data suggest a shift from a dominantly terrigenous to marine input from the early to late Holocene. Dinocyst assemblages are characterized by relatively high concentrations (600–7200 cysts/cm3) and high species diversity, allowing the use of the modern analogue technique for the reconstruction of sea-ice cover, summer temperature, and salinity. Results indicate a decrease in sea-ice cover and a corresponding, albeit much smaller, increase in summer sea-surface temperature over the past 9000 years. Superimposed on these long-term trends are millennial-scale fluctuations characterized by periods of low sea-ice and high sea-surface temperature and salinity that appear quasi-cyclic with a frequency of about one every 2500–3000 years. The results of this study clearly show that sea-ice cover in the western Arctic Ocean has varied throughout the Holocene. More importantly, there have been times when sea-ice cover was less extensive than at the end of the 20th century.
Arctic summer sea surface temperatures are also currently lower than much of the past 9000 years.”
Panic.