Little Change In Arctic Ice Over The Past 24 Years

Ice was nearly as far away from Alaska 24 years ago as it is now. How did the Walruses survive?

Week391990vs2014

About Tony Heller

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29 Responses to Little Change In Arctic Ice Over The Past 24 Years

  1. Gail Combs says:

    ren, over at tallbloke’s has some interesting maps showing:

    temperature of the polar circle is below average.

    The distribution of ozone in September and October over the polar circle defines the shape of the polar vortex and circulation in winter.

    And predicts: “….once again the lock the circulation of the Bering Strait and the harsh winter in the north-eastern North America.” link
    ren’s english is not too good but he is a great source for information.

    We will have to see if his prediction is correct, although I am sure the Warmists will blame a harsh winter on the increase in volcanic activity.

    A tragic Volcano in Japan took hikers and authorities by complete surprise and killed ~48
    Two different Indonesian volcanoes have recently been active
    Ecuadoran Tunguarahua volcano spewed ash 28,000 feet (five miles) into the sky
    Shiveluch volcano in Kamchatka (Russia) was active in July and a gain this last week.
    Aleutian area had five volcanoes active this summer.
    A Philippines Mayon volcano is threatening to erupt

    And of course there is Iceland’s Bárðarbunga volcano whose SO2 fumes are being detected as far away as France.

    list from June 26, 2014 @ Iceagenow:
    ? Stromboli (Eolian Islands, Italy)
    ? Kilauea (Hawai’i)
    ? Bagana (Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea)
    ? Manam (Papua New Guinea)
    ? Yasur (Tanna Island, Vanuatu)
    ? Ambrym (Vanuatu)
    ? Colima (Western Mexico)
    ? Santa María / Santiaguito (Guatemala)
    ? Fuego (Guatemala)
    ? Ol Doinyo Lengai (Tanzania)
    ? Erta Ale (Ethiopia)
    ? Barren Island (Indian Ocean)
    ? Nyiragongo (DRCongo)
    ? Sinabung (Sumatra, Indonesia)
    ? Dukono (Halmahera, Indonesia)
    ? Ibu (Halmahera, Indonesia)
    ? Lokon-Empung (North Sulawesi, Indonesia)
    ? Sangeang Api (Indonesia)
    ? Semeru (East Java, Indonesia)
    ? Batu Tara (Sunda Islands, Indonesia)
    ? Slamet (Central Java, Indonesia)
    ? Marapi (Western Sumatra, Indonesia)
    ? Ubinas (Peru)
    ? Reventador (Ecuador)
    ? Shiveluch (Kamchatka)
    ? Karymsky (Kamchatka)
    ? Zhupanovsky (Kamchatka, Russia)
    ? Sakurajima (Kyushu, Japan)
    ? Suwanose-jima (Ryukyu Islands, Japan)
    ? Nishino-shima (Volcano Islands, Japan)
    ? Erebus (Antarctica)

    map at: http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/erupting_volcanoes.html

    So the warmists have plenty of ammunition for their next round of obfuscation.

    Speaking of volcanoes, remember that missing Malaysia airliner? In looking for the plane they found a chain of undersea volcanoes west of Australia.. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-27/deep-sea-volcanoes-discovered-in-search-for-mh370/5774122

    The Southeast Indian Ridge – marking the boundary between the Antarctic and Australasian tectonic plates — runs along the floor of the Indian Ocean in the general area of the search. The UK Telegraph has images:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11125953/An-undersea-world-of-peaks-canyons-and-volcanoes.html

    (More number inflation looks like it is one volcano plus mountains depending on the news source.)

    • rah says:

      I think the SO2 levels are more than being just detected. I read last weekend that they were 4x higher than normal in Northern France.

  2. tom0mason says:

    Arctic ice comes, Arctic ice goes – NO BIG DEAL!

    • rah says:

      In the larger scheme of things I agree. That is unless is really keeps coming over a number of years. But quite frankly on a human level I’m very happy when about anything happens that falsifies the alamrists predictions. I love to see the skeptics rub their noses in it.

      • tom0mason says:

        In the larger scheme of things we do not have enough measured data to make a clear and honest assessment of what is happening.
        Sure there are plenty of inferences and speculation but not much else.
        So till we have a significant amount of data all that can be said accurately is that the ice goes and it returns again.

        • mjc says:

          Actually, we do have enough data to see that it isn’t static. Much more than the arbitrary 30 yr ‘minimum’ data period they insist on. We don’t need hourly/daily data to show that there are more than seasonal changes occurring and we do have at least 50 yrs worth of weekly/monthly satellite pictures of the Arctic, coupled with upward looking SONAR data going back to the 1950s. And that’s the big thing.

          The ‘true believers’ claim that skeptics are denying the change, while they are the ones who believe that before humanity mucked everything up, the climate and therefore Arctic ice levels were pretty much static and unchanging.

        • tom0mason says:

          Very much with you there in which it is to appreciate how much the Arctic changes that is lacking from the warmist view; certainly when historical levels (before, during, or after glaciation) are debated. They seem to think that it was almost static back then when actually it was still very dynamic.
          Even the sketchy evidence of the last few hundred years shows a very complex dynamic system at work.

        • rah says:

          Unless were entering a mini ice age or worse. Then it stays. From what I have read in those circumstances the ice accumulates more due to lack of melt rather than extensive new freezing.

        • tom0mason says:

          I hope you are correct, but as I said we can not be sure as the record is too short.
          I know some seem to think that ice-ages can overtake the normal conditions quite quickly (decade or less) Gail Combs often refers to this, I hope she is wrong but…

        • mjc says:

          The idea that the ice ages come about slowly, over many hundreds of years, is a left over from when the idea that there even was a thing as massive glaciation that covered large portions of the planet was in its infancy. That was the only way anyone could even comprehend it happening. The ‘settled science’ of the day denied the very existence of such a thing as an ice age.

  3. rhysr says:

    I see on your hurricane graph that hurricanes under Obama are 1/5 the hurricanes under Bush, proving it is Bush’s fault and Obama has healed the planet.

  4. Ron C. says:

    Analysis of NOAA Arctic Sea Ice extent since 1979

    For climate analysis we consider the average extents for March and for September of each year in the satellite record, and the differences (the melt extent). Though we would prefer a longer record, these are the reliable data. Several observations:

    March averages (annual maximums) do not vary greatly: 15.48 M Km2 is the average extent, with a range of 16.45 to 14.43 M Km2. 2/3 of the years are between 15 and 16M.

    September averages (annual minimums) vary much more: 6.40 M Km2 is the average, with a range of 7.88 to 3.63 M Km2. Standard deviation is +/- 1.07 M Km2.

    Note: The largest September extent (7.88) in the record occurred in 1996, the same year of the smallest melt extent: 7.25. And the smallest September extent (3.63) occurred in 2012, due to the largest melt in the record, 11.8M. The March extents of those two years were nearly the same.

    The Arctic ice extent time series appears to consist of three periods:
    ??1979 to 1996 Annual minimums mostly above average
    ??1997 to 2006 Annual minimums around average
    ??2007 to 2014 Annual minimums below average

    Averages March Sept. Diff (Melt)
    1979 to 1996 15.8 7.2 8.6
    1997 to 2006 15.3 6.2 9.0
    2007 to 2014 15.0 4.7 10.3

    Since 2005 the combination of below average March extents, combined with above average melts has produced September extents below 6 M Km2 each year.

    It is now evident that 2012 was an outlier (probably due to the unusual storm activity). That year’s melt of 11.8 was 28% above the average melt of 9.09 and more than 1 M km2 larger than the second largest melt in 2008.

    The pivotal decade was 1997 to 2006, preceded by slightly declining extents, and followed by much lower extents. What any of this has to do with CO2 and air temperatures is not obvious.

    Data is here:
    ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Mar/N_03_area.txt
    ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Sep/N_09_area.txt

    • Gail Combs says:

      “Analysis of NOAA Arctic Sea Ice extent since 1979

      For climate analysis we consider the average extents for March and for September of each year in the satellite record, and the differences (the melt extent). Though we would prefer a longer record, these are the reliable Politically Correct data….”

      There now it reflects reality. 1979 was cherry picked because it was the highest extent.

      • Ron C. says:

        That’s the beginning of the satellite record. I didn’t pick it, and I wish there were equivalent records going earlier to have a longer statistical analysis.

        Even so, it is interesting that the peak in this record is in 1996

        • No It is not the beginning of the satellite record. You have fallen victim to one of NASAs many traps. They set many, but to win, they only need a person to fall for one of them.

          RTF

        • mjc says:

          The satellite data, from the same satellite used for the 1979 ‘beginning of time’, extends back to at least the start of the fall freeze season in 1978, There is data from other satellites going back, at least on a weekly basis (probably daily) to the early 70s. There are also weekly/monthly views going back to the 60s. Some of that data was thought to be ‘lost’ (keeping company with Lerner’s emails I suppose) and the rest needs to be put in a ‘modern’ digital format (or so they say). So, basically, there is more data than is being used and what it shows is a picture of a very variable and probably cyclic Arctic, very different from the supposed ‘static’ ice with a sudden plunge.

  5. stpaulchuck says:

    It certainly looks like a significant loss of sea ice since 1990. Having said that it also appears that the ice is growing again. Hmmmm, a cycle it appears to be. I wonder if that ever occurred before?

  6. Ron C. says:

    Gail, or anyone: I would love to analyze a longer time series on arctic ice extent.
    Just point me to the database so I can.

    • tom0mason says:

      So would we all, but the short time record is all we have and no amount of fancy fudging of the figures will change that. Records ain’t long enough to prove jack all.

    • Here are a few links from Steven just from a quick search of his blog. He’s actually covered this issue probably a couple dozen times, slicing and dicing it in his usually thorough way. But as mentioned, we don’t have data. There is a “project” for the Team to digitize old work and create a dataset, but they are using very low resolution so their results will probably be no more useful than what we already have. And of course this ignores that they have already produced graphs, which must mean that they had a dataset, but once they realized it contained a very inconvenient little truth, they probably shredded the data.

      http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/rewriting-the-history-of-the-arctic/
      http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/the-1979-satellite-disaster/

    • Gail Combs says:

      Well sort of:
      Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic It says: “Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ~11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3°C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present.”

      Another, more recent study in Norway agrees:

      A new approach for reconstructing glacier variability based on lake sediments recording input from more than one glacier January 2012
      Kristian Vasskoga Øyvind Paaschec, Atle Nesjea, John F. Boyled, H.J.B. Birks

      …. A multi-proxy numerical analysis demonstrates that it is possible to distinguish a glacier component in the ~ 8000-yr-long record, based on distinct changes in grain size, geochemistry, and magnetic composition…. This signal is …independently tested through a mineral magnetic provenance analysis of catchment samples. Minimum glacier input is indicated between 6700–5700 cal yr BP, probably reflecting a situation when most glaciers in the catchment had melted away, whereas the highest glacier activity is observed around 600 and 200 cal yr BP. During the local Neoglacial interval (~ 4200 cal yr BP until present), five individual periods of significantly reduced glacier extent are identified at ~ 3400, 3000–2700, 2100–2000, 1700–1500, and ~ 900 cal yr BP….

      The authors of these papers simply state that most small glaciers likely didn’t exist 6,000 years ago, and the highest period of the glacial increase has been in the past 600 years.

      Then there is the collaborating evidence of sea-levels falling.

      Holocene sea-level change and ice-sheet history in the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica
      Dan Zwartz ) , Michael Bird, John Stone, Kurt Lambeck

      Abstract
      A new Holocene sea-level record from the Vestfold Hills, Antarctica, has been obtained by dating the lacustrine–marine and marine–lacustrine transitions that occur in sediment cores from lakes which were formerly connected to the sea. From an elevation of ; 7.5 m 8000 yr ago, relative sea-level rose to a maximum ; 9 m above present sea-level 6200 yr ago. Since then, sea-level has fallen monotonically until the present….
      (wwwDOT)sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X97002045

      The Holocene sea level Highstand was also ~ 1.5 meter above todays sea-level 6,000 years ago in geologically stable South Vietnam.

      Southeast Vietnam beachrocks reveal that the mid-Holocene sea-level highstand slightly above + 1.4 m was reached between 6.7 and 5.0 ka, with a peak value close to + 1.5 m around 6.0 ka….
      (wwwDOT)ciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818113001859

      • David A says:

        Curious data. On the one hand this time frame appears to be more inline with the old temperature graphs showing a continues decline through the last three or four warming periods, before Hansen and company erased the past.

        On the other hand Gail, you have one study showing sea levels 9 meters higher 6200 years ago, and another showing sea levels 1.5meters higher 6000 years ago. I do not think sea levels dropped 7.5 meters in two hundred years. So perhaps scientist have always been inclined to think they no more then they do.

        • Gail Combs says:

          You also have to consider post glaciation rebound. I think that maybe a large part of the 9 meters higher 6200 years ago in Antarctic.

          The Southeast Vietnam was geologically stable and therefore closer to the ‘true value’

    • Gail Combs says:

      The critical question is not whether the earth will warm or the Arctic sea ice is melting but how cold it will get going forward. During the only post-MPT interglacial to make it past about half a precession cycle it got awfully cold between MIS-11?s two insolation peaks and the earth is now at or slightly past half a precession cycle. The other option is full glaciation. Those two options are where the actual scientific argument is today.

      On one side of the argument, – Sirocko et al (2005):

      …Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate…..

      The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again. folk(DOT)uib.no/abo007/share/papers/eemian_and_lgi/sirocko_seelos05.nat.pdf

      On the other side of the argument:

      ….Because the intensities of the 397kaBP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial…. folk(DOT)uib.no/abo007/share/papers/eemian_and_lgi/mueller_pross07.qsr.pdf

      And of course there is a third side: to the argument:
      Loutre and Berger (2003) forms the backbone of predictions about the course of present interglacial over at Wikipedia. It is also in line with Steve Goddard’s position. The Loutre and Berger (2003) paper was based on a model run.

      Chronis Tzedakis, took an exhaustive look at the MIS-1/MIS-11/MIS-19 conundrum, and said the following:

      While the astronomical analogy between MIS 1 and MIS11 has been incorporated in mainstream literature, there is a distinct difference between the two intervals: the Holocene contains one insolation peak so far, while the MIS 11 interval of full interglacial conditions (Substage 11c of the marine isotopic stratigraphy) extends over two insolation peaks. Thus an interesting situation has arisen with regard to the precise alignment of the two intervals.

      The two schemes lead to very different conclusions about the length of the current interglacial, in the absence of anthropogenic forcing, …

      With the end of MIS 11 full interglacial conditions and the start of ice accumulation estimated to have occurred at 395 kyr BP (de Abreu et al., 2005; Ruddiman 2005a, 2007), the precessional alignment would suggest that the Holocene is nearing its end, while the obliquity alignment would suggest it has another 12,000 years to run its course…

      On balance, what emerges is that projections on the natural duration of the current interglacial depend on the choice of analogue, while corroboration or refutation of the “early anthropogenic hypothesis” on the basis of comparisons with earlier interglacials remains irritatingly inconclusive.
      (wwwDOT)clim-past.net/6/131/2010/cp-6-131-2010.pdf

      Observational data put Loutre and Berger (2003) to rest just 2 years later. Lisieki and Raymo (Oceanography, 2005) was an exhaustive look at 57 globally distributed deep ocean cores.
      (See Excerpt Below)

      The other spanner in the works for the IPCC and Wiki’s super duper article adjusting warmist editor, W. Connelly, is the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. During full glaciation you get abrupt warmings. Between this interglacial and the last one back, the Greenland ice cores show 24 Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations. These abrupt warmings occurred from just a few years to mere decades that average between 8-10C rises (D-O 19 scored 16C). The nominal difference between earth’s cold (glacial) and warm (interglacial) states being on the order of 20C.

      Dr Robert Brown (physicist Duke Univ) made a comment about climate, chaos theory and bistable/multi-stable strange attractors
      that applies not only to interglacial terminations but to Dansgaard-Oeschger events.

      This paper actually looks at the Dansgaard-Oeschger events, bimodality of the system and ‘tipping’ points.


      Dansgaard-Oeschger events: tipping points in the climate system ( 2012 )

      ABSTRACT
      The largest variability in temperature over the last sixty thousand years is connected with Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
      Various prototype models have been proposed to explain these rapid climate fluctuations, but until now no observational constraint has been forwarded to choose between different theories. We assess the bimodality of the system reconstructing the topology of the multidimensional attractor over which the climate system evolves. Furthermore, we show that Dansgaard-Oeschger events are compatible with the crossing of a tipping point in the climate system. We use high-resolution ice core isotope data to investigate the statistical properties of the climate fluctuations in the period before the onset of the abrupt change. We find that the statistics are consistent with the switches between two different climate equilibrium states in response to a changing external forcing.

      In the first part of the paper, we discuss the bimodality of the time series. In particular, we establish that bimodality is a robust feature of the climate system that produced it, and not an artifact of the projection of complex dynamics onto a scalar quantity. …

      Despite limitations of the available data, we find that the statistics are most compatible with a system that switches between two different climate equilibrium states in response to a changing external forcing.

      Until the Warmists can explain what is causing the switches between the two different climate equilibrium states, they are just baying at the moon.
      ……………

      Excerpts from the Lisieki and Raymo Paper (Oceanography, 2005)

      A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic D18O records
      Lisiecki
      & Raymo
      ABSTRACT
      We present a 5.3-Myr stack (the ‘‘LR04’’ stack) of benthic d18O records from 57 globally distributed sites aligned by an automated graphic correlation algorithm. This is the first benthic d18O stack composed of more than three records to extend beyond 850 ka,…

      RESULTS
      Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA Community Members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with d18O values below 3.6% for 20 kyr, from 398 – 418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6% for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398– 418 ka as from 250–650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the 21 June insolation minimum at 65°N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘‘double precession cycle’’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence.

      {For Steve}
      The stack’s phase relative to precession in this interval demonstrates that northern hemisphere insolation was the major driver of benthic d18O change by at least 4.1 Ma, perhaps through northern deep-water formation or the growth of small northern glaciers. Precession response is not significantly coherent prior to 4.1 Ma, presumably due to weaker d18O response, but our phase estimates are still indicative of northern hemisphere forcing……
      http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/Lisiecki_Raymo_2005_Pal.pdf

      • rishrac says:

        good article.. Gail.
        I think in one of your replies that you’ve mentioned that the watts/m^2 is already below or at a level that would send us into a colder era. You’re preaching to the choir here. However, I am glad to see new info. Not that I am looking forward to a much colder conditions.

        • Gail Combs says:

          I am trying to make sure all of us have lots of information to hand to defeat any Warmist we may encounter live or in print.

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