Summer 2015 Shaping Up To Be A Complete Disaster For Alarmists

Arctic sea ice continues to track 2006, the year with the highest summer minimum of the past decade.

ScreenHunter_9550 Jun. 18 05.27

Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut

Temperatures near the North Pole are running far below normal again this summer.

ScreenHunter_9551 Jun. 18 05.28

Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut

Temperatures are forecast to remain very cold in the Beaufort Sea

ScreenHunter_9554 Jun. 18 05.4810-Day Temperature Outlook

Greenland’s surface has gained more than half a trillion tons of ice, it is still snowing, and less than eight possible weeks left to the melt season.

ScreenHunter_9553 Jun. 18 05.30

Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Budget: DMI

Greenland is having their slowest melt season on record.

ScreenHunter_9552 Jun. 18 05.29

Greenland’s capital still has winter snow on the ground.

arcticomm_webcam (4)

The Arctic melting story has completely collapsed, so government experts simply lie about it now to keep their scam alive.

About Tony Heller

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78 Responses to Summer 2015 Shaping Up To Be A Complete Disaster For Alarmists

  1. sabretoothed says:

    You forgot Antarctica 😛

    • Gail Combs says:

      From Pys.org

      Record Antarctic sea ice a logistic problem for scientists
      ….Rob Wooding said that resupplying Australia’s Mawson Station—the longest continuously operated outpost in Antarctica—relied on access to a bay, a task increasingly complicated by sea ice blocking the way.

      “We are noticing that the sea ice situation is becoming more difficult,” Wooding told a media briefing on Monday ahead of two days of meetings between top Antarctic science and logistics experts in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania.

      Wooding said that at Mawson, the ice typically only breaks up for one or two months of the summer, but in the last four to six years this has not happened every year, and some years only partially.

      “In the 2013-4 season we couldn’t get anywhere near Mawson due to the sea ice and we had to get fuel in there by helicopter which is inadequate for the long-term sustainability of the station,” he said, adding that the French and Japanese had similar problems.

      Wooding said Australia had not yet come close to shutting down a base because of sea ice, but had to look at “unusual measures” to keep operating…..

      The only thing the Alarmist have going for them is the ‘loopy jets’ (meridional jets) and blocking highs that give very cold and very hot weather. Of course this is the SAME weather pattern you see during glaciation but the propagandists are not about to tell the public that.

      North America
      http://www2.nau.edu/rcb7/namQ.jpg
      Wisconsin Ice Age Glacial Maximum – Artist’s rendition

      http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/NAL2215.gif
      Wisconsin Ice Age Glacial Maximum – geologist’s rendition

      Notice that Alaska and Californicate are warm while the east coast is cold. Sound familiar?

      Eurasia during most extreme part of full glacial conditions (17,000-15,000 14C y.a.). – geologist’s rendition
      http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/euras(2_.gif

      “This map concentrates on the time window slightly after the LGM, when aridity seems to have reached its most extreme point. Only slightly moister conditions prevailed for most of the period 22,000-14,000 14C y.a. (25,000-15,000 calendar years ago). A large area of extreme desert conditions existed across central Asia (dark red), surrounded by semi-desert (light red), under conditions much colder than the present-day. In the north, Siberia was colder and much more arid, with steppe-tundra (pink) and polar desert (grey). Ice masses (light grey) were present in north-western Siberia. In China, colder more arid conditions caused a retreat of forests, with grasslands (yellow) and open woodlands (medium green) in southern China and Japan. Forest steppe (violet) and conifer forest (blue green) may have predominated elsewhere. In south Asia, rainforest (darkest green) retreated and was replaced by grasslands (yellow) and monsoon forests and woodlands (lime-green). Scrub and open woodland (lighest green) probably existed in presently moist forest climates of Bangladesh and SW China.”
      …….

      Seems the Wisconsin Ice Age and the present weather system had the meridional pattern jet stream (negative Arctic Oscillation) in common! —OOOPS!

      http://frontierscientists.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/JetStream_Meridional.jpg

      “The Polar jet stream is pictured in this screencap of NASA video “Aerial Superhighway”. This image portrays a meridional jet stream, with winds meandering more slowly, predominantly north-to-south. The fastest winds are colored red; slower winds are blue. / Courtesy NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Goddard Space Flight Center”

  2. cfgj says:

    “Completely collapsed” due to some weather? LOL that is funny, report back when melting is at 1990’s levels again 🙂

    • AndyG55 says:

      Or maybe at levels during the LIA..

      Would that make you happy ???

      IDIOT !!!

    • AndyG55 says:

      You STILL don’t get it do you, you ignorant little twerp.

      High summer Arctic ice is NOT the normal for the last 10,000 years. The normal would have been sea ice free summers, and easy Arctic navigation, to the benefit of all far northern countries. Not any more.. those good, prosperous days are well behind them.

      The current level of Arctic sea ice is only normal for the LIA and the very short climb out of what was the COLDEST period in the whole of the Holocene.

      Unfortunately, Arctic sea ice levels are climbing again in the last few years after partially becoming navigable.

      This is NOT good for the world, particularly considering the massive amounts of sea ice in the Antarctic.

      The world is still perilously close to another ice age.
      You better just hope that it doesn’t arrive in you life time.

      • cfgj says:

        Ok so please post links to peer-reviewed studies that argue we’re currently just rebounding from LIA, which BTW only started a few centuries ago.

        Meanwhile here’s an analysis of proxies indicating that the current Arctic sea ice summer extent is at it’s lowest for at least 1450 years, i.e. for a period way longer than the LIA:

        http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/abs/nature10581.html

        No reason to get angry, just post the studies (or shut up).

        • Hugh says:

          ”Prof Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, said the ice that forms over the Arctic sea is shrinking so rapidly that it could vanish altogether in as little as four years’ time.”

          Cows could fly as well. Lol.

        • Gail Combs says:

          Jim Steele, head of a research station (You can contact and ask for the URLs of the actual studies at http://landscapesandcycles.net/ ) said on August 29, 2013

          Trees are very resilient but cold is more deadly. About 9000 years ago trees reached the Arctic Ocean coastline and remained during the Holocene Optimum. As temperatures began to cool the trees retreated and are now several hundred kilometers further south.

          HIking the high elevation in the Sierra Nevada you can see ancient tree remnants. A 1997 study in Sequoia National Park found that “Tree-line elevation was higher than at present throughout most of the last 3500 years.

          …In the Ural Mountains (which divides Asia from Europe), researchers found thousands of more than 500-year-old dead trees that grew before the LIA struck. In contrast, remnants of any new trees that could have sprouted during the LIA were almost entirely absent. However the ancient rootstocks often remain and allow trees to suddenly emerge whenever local conditions are mild enough to promote growth. For example the world’s oldest-known living tree, a Norway Spruce, was recently discovered in Sweden. Although the living 13-foot high trunk emerged relatively recently, it had sprouted from the same rootstock that has persisted for nearly 10,000 years. Scientists found four different “generations” of above-ground remains with ages that dated 375, 5660, 9000 and 9550 years old. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080414-oldest-tree.html

          “Retreating Alaskan Glacier Reveals Remains Of Medieval Forest”
          “….Park Service personnel recently discovered evidence of a buried forest dating back to at least 1170 AD high in the Forelands near the current glacier’s edge….”

          Holocene temperature history at the western Greenland Ice Sheet margin reconstructed from lake sediments – Axford et al. (2012)

          ….As summer insolation declined through the late Holocene, summer temperatures cooled and the local ice sheet margin expanded. Gradual, insolation-driven millennial-scale temperature trends in the study area were punctuated by several abrupt climate changes, including a major transient event recorded in all five lakes between 4.3 and 3.2 ka, which overlaps in timing with abrupt climate changes previously documented around the North Atlantic region and farther afield at ?4.2 ka…..
          (wwwDOT)sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379112004209

          Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception (2007)

          ….Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP 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. Our findings support the Ruddiman hypothesis [Ruddiman, W., 2003. The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago. Climate Change 61, 261–293], which proposes that early anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission prevented the inception of a glacial that would otherwise already have started….
          (wwwDOT)sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379107002715

          Abrupt Temperature Changes in the Western Mediterranean over the Past 250,000 Years

          ….Predictable orbital variations led to insolation changes, which triggered less frequent but very intense oscillations. Accordingly, the last glacial inception (substage 5d) has been attributed to a connection between orbital forcing and thermohaline circulation beyond a freshwater threshold within the ocean-atmosphere-sea-ice system…

          the Holocene shows a stable SST trend similar to those in previous interstadial stages, tending toward progressively cooler climate conditions in accordance with the slow decrease in summer insolation in the Northern Hemisphere and the minimal eccentricity of the Earth_s orbit. Within the frame-work of ODP-977A data, this orbitalconfiguration suggests that the present warm period could be more prone to abrupt oscillations than MISs 5 and 7. In turn, the next bifurcation of the climate system may appear as an extremely intense cooling if the future natural climate is going to develop as an analog of some of the preceding warm periods….
          (wwwDOT)sandiego.edu/~sgray/MARS350/pleist2.pdf

        • gator69 says:

          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.

        • gator69 says:

          Arctic Ice Loss Has Been Much Worse Historically

          The meltdown underway in the Arctic is remarkable, but an international team of beachcombers has uncovered evidence it’s been much worse before.

          Driftwood from Canada, Alaska and Siberia picked up on the planet’s most northern beaches indicates that, for several thousand of the past 10,000 years, there was at least 50 per cent less sea ice in the Arctic than there is today, the team reports Friday in the journal Science.

          Open water used to crash ashore on Greenland’s northern beaches, which are now locked in ice year-round, say the scientists, who have weathered fierce summer snowstorms on their beachcombing expeditions.

          While the researchers say they expect global warming will eventually make the Arctic sea ice disappear, they say the dire warnings about its imminent demise have been overstated.

          “The bad news is that there is a clear connection between temperature and the amount of sea ice,” says lead author Svend Funder, at the University of Copenhagen, adding there is “no doubt” continued global warming will reduce Arctic summer sea ice.

          “The good news is that even with a reduction to less than 50 per cent of the current amount of sea ice, the ice will not reach a point of no return,” says Funder, who has headed several treks to the inhospitable north coast of Greenland to get a better read on how the ice waxes and wanes.

          Satellite records showing how the ice grows and retreats only go back to early 1979 — and suggest 2011 could see another record ice loss.

          But the Greenland north coast provides valuable long-term perspective, with the driftwood and sand on the beaches recording ice trends that go back 10,000 years.
          Between 8,000 to 5,000 years ago, when the temperatures were warmer than today, Funder and his colleagues report, there was probably less than 50 per cent of the summer 2007 ice coverage, which was the lowest in 30-year satellite record.

          During the pre-historic warm period, they say, the southern limit of Greenland’s year-round sea ice was about 1,000 kilometres north of where it is today.

          The data was gathered on beaches, which are now locked behind ice that lasts all year on the northern coast of Greenland. But ridges along the beaches, dating back thousands of years, show that waves used to break along the coast, indicating plenty of open water, report the scientists, who mapped beach ridges extending 500 kilometres along the coast.

          The driftwood is even more telling, revealing when the ice returned and how it moved around.

          Funder said the wood had to have been carried in on ice. That’s because it would take several years for wood to make it across the Arctic Ocean and “driftwood would not be able to stay afloat for that long.”

          The most direct route is from central Siberia, with larch from the Siberian forest arriving in Greenland after a trip on the ice lasting two to five years.

          “The voyage form North America is more precarious,” the researchers say, because the wood had to go from the Beaufort Sea and then make a detour around past Siberia, increasing the travel time to six years or more. (Ice travels around the Arctic counter-clockwise.)

          Spruce from Canada and Alaska started showing up on the Greenland beaches about 6,000 years ago, and increased with the climatic cooling that then occurred, Funder said via email.

          He said spruce makes up about 40 per cent of all the driftwood, “which at first glance is surprising” considering that the travel route is much longer than from Siberia.

          “The reason is probably that with its longer residence time in the Arctic Ocean the American ice grows to be very thick and therefore a more robust wood-carrier than the thinner Siberian ice with its much shorter passage,” he said.

          Funder said the results support the idea that sea ice could regenerate even if it’s reduced to half its current amount.

        • Gail Combs says:

          WHERE THE DEBATE REALLY IS:
          1.) Most scientists on both sides of the debate agree with the Milankovitch cycles. Gerard Roe did a recent modification that took care of the objections SEE: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-milankovitch-by-gerard.html and http://culter.colorado.edu/~saelias/glacier.html

          2. ) Most scientists on both sides agree we are near the half precession point and solar energy at the earth surface in high summer at 65N is declining.

          3.) The sticking point is what minimum level of solar energy in summer at 65N is the threshold for the descent into an ice age.

          4.) The fourth point that no one is talking about is how unstable the weather becomes near that threshold. The general point of view is the climate has two stable states, warm and cold. That is it is bi-stable like a sail boat that is right side up or upside down. When it is in the in-between state the climate can swing wildly. This means approaching that threshold point can be as bad as crossing it. Note the steep declines in temperature in the geologic record.

          http://climateclash.com/files/2010/10/Jouzel-science2007-crop640.jpg

          I can not post a link to the original because of wordpress censorship, but a very interesting graph of Northern Hemisphere Solar Insolation vs the Vostok and Greenland Ice core temps is at Annoying Lead Time Graph along with a graph of the Milancovitch Orbital Parameters and resultant W/m2 N.H. over several interglacials.

          The earth is certainly not going to warm catastrophically for another 65 kyr.

          A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic D18O records
          Lisiecki & Raymo (2005)
          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….

          Will the earth descend into glaciation or be a ‘‘double precession cycle’’ interglacial? That is still being argued although the above paper carries a lot of weight. A newer paper from the fall of 2012 a href=”http://www.clim-past.net/8/1473/2012/cp-8-1473-2012.pdf”>Can we predict the duration of an interglacial? agrees and gives the calculated solar insolation values @ 65N on June 22 for several glacial inceptions:

          Current value – insolation = 479W m?2 (from that paper)

          MIS 7e – insolation = 463 W m?2,
          MIS 11c – insolation = 466 W m?2,
          MIS 13a – insolation = 500 W m?2,
          MIS 15a – insolation = 480 W m?2,
          MIS 17 – insolation = 477 W m?2

          The Holocene is 11,700 years so the earth came out of Ice age when the insolation was 522.5 Wm?2 (12,000 years ago) The depth of the last ice age was 464 Wm?2 (23,000 years ago) so the insolation changed 58.5Wm?2 (@ 60°N June insolation from NOAA )

          The ClimAstrologists are saying that solar insolation change is going to be trumped by CO2 forcing when the entire CO2 forcing is 32 to 44 W m–2 [cf., Reid, 1997]. and all but 5 to 6 W m–2 of that forcing occurs in the first 200 ppm CO2 (modtran) A CO2 concentration where plants barely survive.

          Some how 60 W m–2 trumps 6 W m–2 in my book and that is using THEIR numbers!

        • Caleb says:

          Gator,

          If you can get your hands on one of those old Danish ice-extent-maps from August., 1938, it will be some handy proof there were years of low ice-extent before 1978. Maybe they didn’t have satellites back then, but they did have fishermen sailing north, and they reported open water north of Norway well past Franz Josef Land and past 80° latitude towards the Pole.

        • Dave1billion says:

          Leaving everything else aside, giving that the article to which you link is dated from 2011, the concept of “current” must mean something different than you think it means.

        • AndyG55 says:

          roflmao.

          I assume you have read Gator’s and Gail’s posts.

          Temperature proxies clearly show that the Arctic is just a tiny bump above the temperatures of the LIA, the coldest period of the Holocene, and nowhere near as warm as the previous 90%+ of the Holocene.

          Even the Nature study by rabid alarmists says there was less ice 1450 years ago.
          (I suspect they have their dates wrong as they continue to try to get rid of the MWP, ala Mann)

          But their study is still confirmation that low Arctic sea ice is the NORM for the Holocene.

          That is a fact you need to get into your brain-washed skull.

          I suggest you admit that fact, (or STFU, yourself) 😉

        • AndyG55 says:

          Furthermore, IF this study is correct and not just yet another attempt to blank out the MWP, (they certainly trying on the rabid alarmista anthropogenic rant)…. then IF there was not a drop in sea ice levels during the much warmer MWP, it shows that temperature is not the main driver of Arctic sea ice levels.

          Maybe the return to Holocene normals of Arctic sea ice is NOT down to human’s not warming the planet.

        • Ted says:

          “Here we use a network of high-resolution terrestrial proxies from the circum-Arctic region to reconstruct past extents of summer sea ice, and show that—although extensive uncertainties remain, especially before the sixteenth century—both the duration and magnitude of the current decline in sea ice seem to be unprecedented for the past 1,450 years.”

          Aside from the extensive uncertainties, that seems like solid, irrefutable proof that certain terrestrial proxies are consistent with the possibility that some aspects of the current ice extent constitute a full one sigma outlier. I guess the debate is over.
          Did anyone pay to read the full study? I’m very curious as to what their proxies were. Not curious enough to pay them, however. If you look in to their funding, I expect that we’ve already paid for that study through taxes. Why do they want more of our money for the privilege of reading it?
          And the fact that they opened with a blatant lie, doesn’t inspire confidence. Arctic ice has been shrinking for less than 40 years, as established by their own satellite observations. 1979 was the high point.

        • Here you go, sir:
          http://dehavelle.com/papers/2011__Kinnard__Reconstructed_changes_in_Arctic_sea_ice_over_the_past_1,450_years.pdf

          Here is a description of the proxies:

          We used a circum-Arctic array of 69 proxies primarily derived from ice core records (n552), but also including some long tree-ring chronologies (11), lake sediments (4) and two historical series of sea ice observations (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 1). The ice-core proxies are the stable isotope ratio of oxygen (d18O), an indicator of air temperature and/or water vapour source and transport history; the percentage of infiltration ice, a proxy for summer warmth, and the concentrations of sea-salt ions (Na1 or Cl2) and oceanic methanesulphonate, which are linked to sea ice openness and/or sea surface windiness13. Tree-ring widths are largely used to infer past summer temperatures, as are lake varve thicknesses13. Historical data include the reconstructed ice severity index for Iceland and the mean position of the August ice edge in the Barents Sea.

          They conclude that the recent drop in ice coverage dramatically exceeds anything in the past 1,450 years. Of course they smoothed out the low ice values in the 1940s and even 1970s. They don’t even appear as a blip.

          Their smoothing was interesting:

          “All records with a time resolution smaller than 40 years were interpolated to 1 year and then smoothed with a 40-year lowpass filter.”

          Some of their proxies have only 100-year resolution. But later, they say:

          “The reconstruction and observational record were smoothed with a 40-year lowpass filter to highlight the best-resolved frequencies (Fig. 2b).”

          And under “Proxy pre-processing” they have:

          “All proxies were interpolated to a resolution of 1 year then smoothed to 5-year resolution with a lowpass filter. Extreme proxy values (±4 s.d. around the mean) were deleted and interpolated linearly. Both the proxies and the sea ice series were mean-centred over the calibration interval, and the proxies were also standardized to unit variance over the same interval.”

          A lot went on with that proxy data, including different weights based upon rationales:

          “Iceland differs somewhat from the other reconstructions,with a markedly low incidence of sea ice before AD 1200 and a general increase afterwards (Fig. 3e). Accordingly, the Iceland ice severity index is well correlated with the Iceland IP25 record, but not with the Arctic-wide historical ice extent record, and it has a small weight in the reconstruction (Supplementary Table 1).”

          Despite all this talk of smoothing, the ice extent endpoint is approximately the actual value for August 2007, the low point to date, of between 7m and 8m km². They note that they have few proxies after 1995.

          And they use August because that was the only historical observation data they could get from Russia.

          ===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

        • Ted says:

          Thanks for the link. I’ll get started reading as soon as I’m done typing.

          I’ve always thought their smoothing techniques were absurd. They start with a series of incomplete point clouds, each with it’s own inherent inaccuracies, representing something they believe correlates with what they want to reconstruct, usually with a theoretical maximum resolution of one year. (in this particular case, most of the proxies are only for temperature, which itself is only a weak proxy for sea ice extent) They throw out the outliers off the top. Then they smooth each point cloud, and throw out the outliers among the smoothed series. Then they average the remaining smoothed series with weightings that are little more than guesses. Then they smooth that average. Finally, they compare this product of repeated homogenization and outlier dumping to current data, with daily resolution, and claim it as proof that today’s conditions are unprecedented. It’s no different than averaging every number from 1 to 100, then claiming 53 is an unprecedented outlier. If they’d properly carried the error bars through the calculations, we’d see a very different conclusion.

          This is is why even random numbers always produced hockey sticks, when run through Mann’s algorithms.

      • Brian H says:

        Alarmists hope for warm disasters, not cold ones. But the worst effects they imagine of warmth are actually cold-caused (violent weather, drought). So they’re truly up fecal creek.

    • Caleb says:

      Yes, it has “completely collapsed”, because the stated idea was that low-ice-extent years such as 2012 would have an immediate and devastating effect. The “albedo” would be less, and the open water would absorb so much sunlight that the Arctic Sea could not refreeze to the same thickness. So we watched carefully. It didn’t happen. In fact the ice is thicker in the central arctic. I’d say that shoots a hole through the theory that you could drive a truck through.

      It is also troubling that the second graph our host posted has been below normal the past two summers. If you go to the DMI site you can check back through the graphs all the way to 1958:
      http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
      What you see is that there are always 60 days of slush up there. You say, “Report back when melting is at 1990’s levels again,” but in terms of temperature those summers were warmer. Only 1996 comes close to being as cold. The past two summers are the coldest, in terms of temperature.

      If the DMI graph shows that it stays colder than normal up there for a third consecutive summer, I’d say there is a cause for concern, (if you are inclined to fretting about such things), even if the warm PDO melts ice on the Pacific side and the wind flushes ice south through Fram Strait on the Atlantic side. I’ll be watching with interest.

      https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/arctic-sea-ice-klyuchi-and-the-quietude/

      Last but not least, there is this odd NOAA forecast for a greater ice-extent than normal, (which may be reason to assume there will be less, judging from some of their long-term forecasts.)

      http://origin.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfsv2fcst/imagesInd3/sieMon.gif

      • James Strom says:

        Caleb, thanks for the link to the DMI graphs. Summers have been a bit cold recently, but not so much winters. I assume this has to do with the recent displacements of the polar vortex during winters. Would you suggest that summer temperatures have a more significant impact on Arctic ice extent than those in winter?

        • Caleb says:

          Good question. I don’t know the answer, but here are some guesses:

          DMI winter temperatures are largely a reaction to other factors during the winter. When the winter DMI graph shows a lot of warm spikes it usually means windy conditions and many storms with surges of warm air up towards the Pole and cold air down to sub-polar areas. When it is windy up at the Pole it breaks up the ice and can create wide leads, sometimes many miles across, which further warms the air, and also exposes more water to be frozen and cools the water more. Therefore you wind up with a counter-intuitive result of more ice resulting from warm winter DMI graphs.

          When the ice is thick and unbroken it insulates the water from the cold, and when the pattern is zonal the cold stays up at the Pole and it is often calmer. Then, when the water beneath the ice is never churned, it can stratify to a remarkable degree, both in terms of temperature and salinity, and you can have flat layers of warmer water sliding in beneath the ice like a playing card into a deck. Warmer water under the ice has more to do with the decrease of ice thickness than air temperatures above the ice.

          Temperatures actually come in third place, after winds that can flush lots of ice south. There are reports our host knows about from back in 1816 of an extraordinary amount of ice being flushed south into the Atlantic, cooling all of Europe even as the arctic was more ice-free than usual.

          Once waters are ice-free they keep air temperatures milder until the water refreezes. During the MWP some arctic areas may have had a maritime climate until the Arctic Sea froze over, at a later date in the early winter than it does now.

          I suppose what I am saying is that temperature is not the best measure of arctic conditions, as it depends on other factors. However the DMI graph is of interest, as it only measures north of 80 degrees, and other factors don’t have so much of an influence up there during the summer calm, where the sea is usually shifting floes of ice, summer after summer.

          The fact it is measurably colder the past few years may have something to do with a climate shift, (perhaps due to the Quiet Sun). (It also may be due to DMI changing how they measured in 2002.)

          While cooler summer temperatures might slow the summer melt slightly, I tend to think most of the melt continues to be due to warmer water below and also winds pushing the ice south through Fram Strait.

        • James Strom says:

          Replying to Caleb.

          Thanks. Lots of stuff to ponder. To simplify your speculation, winds breaking up the ice sheets may make it easier for the polar region to radiate heat out to space–which has in fact been suggested by various commenters. If the vortex displacement is also associated with greater storminess in the Arctic seas, it could actually cool the Arctic despite the coldest air masses being relocated to Canada or Siberia.

          All speculation, of course.

  3. Marsh says:

    With the prolonged Cold, delaying the melt season ; logic tells me that the Arctic Sea Ice will trend even larger than the Summer minimum of 2006. This will be a disaster for the UN CC Conference in Paris with all those failed predictions. The IPCC is audacious to hold it in December ; with all probability of it being Snow bound & postponed… that would be like icing on a fruit cake!

    • AndyG55 says:

      At least in Paris, they will still have electricity from nuclear power available.

      Not so sure they would want to hold it in the UK or Germany in this coming December. !

  4. Climatism says:

    Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
    I thought the planet was meant to be warming. Will the people in Paris who want it to warm question why it isn’t? Will they question the sensitivity of CO2 based on the fact that the arctic, based on the most fundamental metrics, is likely cooling instead of melting?

  5. AndyG55 says:

    As SG has predicted, Arctic sea ice area is trending with less melting than previous years.

    It is now well above 2010 and 2011.

    Antarctic sea ice is tracking very slightly below the 2014 extremes

    Global sea ice is tracking 2009 very closely.

  6. Fred says:

    The Russian science is saying another ice age imminent
    http://thermalscience.vinca.rs/pdfs/papers-2015/TSCI140902018A.pdf

    • Marsh says:

      Yes Fred, the Russian’s may well be right given the trends in recent years. I have also seen similar predictions, from some UK Scientists on a “little ice age” ; that’s possible…

    • James Strom says:

      Fred Singer has been posting a few articles suggesting that it might be worthwhile to do some research on how to deal with a new glaciation.

    • Gail Combs says:

      So Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory has “… a time delay of 20±8 years defined by the thermal inertia of the Ocean…” That is in the same ball park as Dr Evans and Dr Page estimate of the delay (11 to 12 years) between changes in the sun and changes in earth’s temperature/climate.

      Looks like more validation.

      Expect a really big push to get the treaty giving the Banksters*** control of CO2 in Paris this year. They know they are on a very short clock.

      *** Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak

      …The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

      The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks”….

      The banksters REALLY REALLY want to control CO2 so they can control entire economies.

  7. Aphan says:

    Where did cfgj go? I’m hoping he/she is reading the papers listed, but I’m not holding my breath.

    • Gail Combs says:

      Neither am I. Tthe information is for the fence sitters who may view this blog.

      The Alarmists know they do not have scientific facts on their side, that is why true scientists were labeled ‘Deniers’ and barred from commenting at many prominent papers and websites.

      When the facts are against you ATTACK the person. That is what Obummer and senator Whitehouse are doing. The more vicious the attack the closer the person is to the real facts. – What a sorry state of affairs for this country and the world.

  8. gator69 says:

    Caleb says:
    June 18, 2015 at 3:17 pm
    Gator,
    If you can get your hands on one of those old Danish ice-extent-maps from August., 1938, it will be some handy proof there were years of low ice-extent before 1978.

    The map can be found here…

    http://brunnur.vedur.is/pub/trausti/Iskort/Pdf/1938/1938.pdf

    But the map only shows the melting that occurred after 65 years of no LIA. It has now been 185 years (or nearly three times the melt time) since the LIA ended, so one would expect there to be less ice now than 1938. This is what alarmists just do not get. They do not understannd logic, or nature.

  9. cfgj says:

    So when was the latest time there was less summer sea ice than now? According the the study in Nature probably not in at least the past 1450 years. Was there less ice in the Roman Warm Period – any proxy-data about that?

    • gator69 says:

      You do realize that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, right? Even if the last time summer sea ice was at its current level was 1450 years ago, what does that prove? You are yammering on about nothing.

      One would expect sea ice to continue to decline during an interglacial.

      • cfgj says:

        If AGW is true at some point we will have an anomalously fast/big reduction in ice. Only past statistics can tell us what is “anomalous” and here we need statistics from after the recovery from the previous ice age and not something millions or billions of years old.

        • gator69 says:

          More blathering. We should expect the ice to continue to melt right up to the next ice age. That is what has happened before, and that is what will happen again.

          You are all mouth.

        • Gail Combs says:

          LEAP ( Late Eemian Aridity Pulse) is the last thermal pulse (warm period) of the Eemain. The late Eemian aridity pulse lasted 468 years with dust storms, aridity and bushfires There was a decline of thermophilous trees at the time of glacial inception. (At the end of the four hundred years.)

          ….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 glacial inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again…..”
          http://www.particle-analysis.info/LEAP_Nature__Sirocko+Seelos.pdf

          Of course the threshold is NOT necessarily as low as 416 Wm2 as the fall 2012 paper, Can we predict the duration of an interglacial? showed.

          It varies.
          Current value – insolation = 479W m?2 (from that paper)

          MIS 7e – insolation = 463 W m?2,
          MIS 11c – insolation = 466 W m?2,
          MIS 13a – insolation = 500 W m?2,
          MIS 15a – insolation = 480 W m?2,
          MIS 17 – insolation = 477 W m?2

        • Gail Combs says:

          John Kehr had a good graph of the Eemain, (temperature CO2 and Solar insolation at 65N) but WordPress is still censoring his site.
          Here is the link with several * added to allow me to post it.
          h*ttp:/*/the*inco*nve*nients*keptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Chap_6-Illustration_45.png

        • Ted says:

          Any guesses on how long we need to wait for “some point” to come around? I predict that, at some point, there will be no ice at the north pole. I also predict that, at some point, there will be glaciers covering much of Canada. Lastly, I predict that none of us will live to see either of my first predictions. This is easy. I should have been a climate scientist.

        • Marsh says:

          No Ted, you are too smart to be a climate scientist ; your IQ is over 130…

      • One subtlety is the sort of “unnaturalness” of summer sea ice in the Arctic at all. During the period of plant and animal life on Earth’s continents, on the order of 600 million years, it has only been in the past few million (after the gap between North and South America was filled by volcanic activity) that the Gulf Stream was directed northward and ice ages began. We had Milankovitch cycles all that time, of course, but they did not result in glaciations. This then represents only about one-half of one percent of the time of life on land. There had been “snowball Earths” long before — and nothing about those past times could be considered beneficial to any but certain marine life forms, most of which are hundreds of millions of years extinct.

        For the first couple of million years of the current “ice age,” the cycles were around 40,000 years — lots of little glaciations, and growing gradually colder each time. For the past million years, the cycle has been about 100,000 years, still getting colder on average. Most recently the cycle seems to be lengthening again, which is not good news as glaciation is the norm during these cycles and the current retreat has historically been a brief respite between unceasing ice ages.

        The pattern has shown, for the past few hundred thousand years, signs of instability once again, seeming to grow longer yet. Would that CO2 worked as advertised, as it would help to prolong the brief warm Holocene before we plunge back into the bitter cold! But the impact of the increased carbon dioxide, while greatly beneficial to plants, is evidently too small to have much effect upon temperatures.

        ===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

        • Gail Combs says:

          You are correct Keith, the Holocene is really rather cool compared to say the Eemain as shown in the graph I can not post. The Eemain never got as cold as now until AFTER 118 kyrs, that is after glacial inception. Glacial inception according to the Sirocko and Seelos paper was 118 kyrs before present and the Eemain finaly got to present temperatures ~116 kyrs before present. So by that metric (temperature) we are already passed glacial inception which is about right since the timing of the Milancovitch cycles puts glacial inception during the little ice age. Our lives are too short for us to really tell.

          You can see how hot the Eemain was in this graph.

          http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/files/2013/01/vostok_back_to_eemian.jpg

      • Gail Combs says:

        Actually low level of sea ice wasn’t 1450 years ago (before the Little Ice Age) according to another study on the glaciers in Norway. That study wasn’t a conglomeration of mutilated proxies where ” extensive uncertainties remain, especially before the sixteenth century”
        A new approach for reconstructing glacier variability based on lake sediments recording input from more than one glacier January 2012

        …. 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 [growth] 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….

        So that study shows “significantly reduced glacier extent… ~ 900 cal yr BP” and the highest growth in glaciers that reformed after the Holocene Optimum “around 600 and 200 cal yr BP.”

        The Little Ice Age wasn’t just one long cold spell although that is what the Alarmist who wrote the paper are hoping people think.

        http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c019b003de856970d-500wi

        (Same graph)
        http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DEoXwnPzSVg/Umb4quSAX8I/AAAAAAAAFdo/Fdvv9sSIqNo/s400/Fullscreen%2Bcapture%2B10222013%2B31241%2BPM.jpg

        From: Testing long-term summer temperature reconstruction based on maximum density chronologies obtained by reanalysis of tree-ring datasets from northernmost Sweden and Finland

        Abstract. Here we analysed the maximum latewood density (MXD) chronologies of two published tree-ring datasets: from Torneträsk region in northernmost Sweden (TORN, Melvin et al., 2013) and from northern Fennoscandia (FENN, Esper et al., 2012). We paid particular attention to the MXD low-frequency variations to reconstruct long-term summer (June–August, JJA) temperature history….

        In TORN, the RC1SF chronology shows higher correlation with summer temperature (JJA) than RC1SFC, whereas in FENN the temperature signals of RC1SF chronology is improved by correction implementation (RC1SFC). The highest correlation between differently standardized chronologies for two datasets is obtained using FENN-RC2SFC and TORN-RC1 chronologies. Focusing on lowest frequencies, the importance of correction becomes obvious as the chronologies become progressively more correlative with RC1SFC and RC2SFC implementations. Subsampling the FENN data (which presents a higher number of samples than TORN dataset) to the chronology sample size of TORN data shows that the chronologies consistently bifurcate during the 7th, 9th, 17th and 20th centuries. We used the two MXD datasets to reconstruct summer temperature variations over the period ?48–2010 calendar years. Our new reconstruction shows multi-decadal to multi-centennial variability with changes in the amplitude of the summer temperature of 2.6 °C in average during the Common Era.

        Two Millennia of Climate Change on the Northern Tibetan Plateau Reference
        He, Y.-X., Liu, W.-G., Zhao, C., Wang, Z., Wang, H.-Y., Liu, Y., Qin, X.-Y., Hu, Q.-H., An, Z.-S. and Liu, Z.-H. 2013. Solar influenced late Holocene temperature changes on the northern Tibetan Plateau. Chinese Science Bulletin 58: 1053-1059.

        Background
        The authors write that “numerous paleoclimatic studies have extended the instrumental data to the past ~2000 years in various parts of the world,” confirming that “global temperatures have varied between relative cold (i.e. the Little Ice Age, LIA) and warm (i.e. the Medieval Warm Period, MWP) conditions,” additionally noting that in the pre-industrial era, “natural climate variability has been mainly linked to solar irradiance changes.” But they say that “substantial scientific uncertainty exists on whether temperatures at the current warm stage are equal to or higher than those during the MWP, the most recent natural warm interval before the industrial period.” And, therefore, they set out to further explore this significant scientific question….

        What was learned
        … ten Chinese researchers report that “relative warm/cold periods can be clearly identified, including the current warm period after AD 1850, the LIA between AD 1350-1850, the MWP between AD 700-1350, the Dark Ages Cold Period between AD 50-700, and the warm period before AD 50,” which is often referred to as the Roman Warm Period. In addition, they state that the two temperature records are “broadly consistent” with an alkenone-based record from Lake Qinghai (Liu et al., 2006), tree-ring-based temperature reconstructions from the mid-eastern Tibetan Plateau (Liu et al., 2009) and synthesized temperature reconstructions from the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (Yang et al., 2003) and the Northern Hemisphere (Moberg et al., 2005).” What is more, they say their records show that “the regional temperatures during the MWP exceeded those in the recent warm period,” noting that “the estimated warmth during the MWP optimum relative to the recent level could be bracketed by the ~1.9°C estimated from Lake Gahai and ~0.5°C from Lake Qinghai.” And in concluding their paper, they say that “the temperature variability appears to correspond to solar irradiance changes, suggesting a possible link between the two, at least on the northern Tibetan Plateau, during the late Holocene.”
        Link

        • gator69 says:

          Believe me Gail, I was only allowing 1450 as the last low point to illustrate the inanity of the comment, and study. Both are merely fools gold.

    • AndyG55 says:

      It was certainly warmer in the Arctic during the MWP and all the previous 8000 odd years.
      Proxy data for that is very solid. It is only the last few hundred years that have been anomalously cold in the Arctic for this interglacial.

      Are you saying there was not less sea ice during the warmer 90 odd percent of the Holocene, apart from this last few hundred frozen years?

  10. Barbara says:

    So many of you posting with absolutely excellent information/sources! I am grateful for your efforts. Gail, Gator- I’m so glad you are sharing again. Really, thanks to all of you ( only one exception : ). It is beginning to look like I’ll live long enough to see all of Steve/Tony’s efforts validated and, of course, the works of all the honest scientists who are so maligned.

  11. Barbara says:

    “Sent” happened before I was finished. I am grieved to learn today that Alan Carlin has died. It is a great loss to lose such an ethical, intelligent man. Final note: if I do pull off enough years, I’ll surely die before having to deal with too much cold! I hate cold! Love the myriad benefits of fossil fuels!

  12. omanuel says:

    May the summer of 2015 return society to SANITY (contact with reality):

    For the past 500 years, mankind has lived in FEAR OF REALITY.

    Selfishness – driven by fear – is the root of many other social problems today.

    E.g., the current AGW scare is a continuation of an irrational response almost 500 years ago to the report by Copernicus in 1543 that Earth and the other planets all orbit a giant fountain of energy at the gravitational center of the solar system.

    Precise measurements and observations on the Sun and other parts of the solar system have revealed that this fountain of energy is the creator, destroyer and sustainer of every atom, life and planet in the solar system [1].

    The fountain of energy in the Sun’s core is powered by neutron repulsion, the source of energy in cores of

    1. Atoms heavier than 150 amu, like Uranium
    2. Some planets like Jupiter
    3. Ordinary stars like the Sun
    4. Galaxies like the Milky Way
    5. The expanding Universe

    We cannot control, but need not fear or ignore, the pulsar at the core of the Sun that created and sustains every atom, life and world in the solar system today.

    References:

    1a. “Solar Energy,” Adv. Astron. (submitted 1 Sept 2104; published privately 17 Mar 2015)

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Solar_Energy.pdf

    1b. “Supplement for Teachers” (published 30 Mar 2015) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Supplement.pdf

    1c. “Intro: Science for Teachers” (published 23 May 2015)

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Introduction.pdf

  13. Billy Liar says:

    Ghastly weather in Nuuk, even now. More or less the same amount of snow but dismal rain too, temp 5°C, dewpoint 2°C:

    http://arcticomm.gl/webcam/arcticomm_webcam.jpg

    Temp/dewpoint 0°C/0°C in Upernavik.

    METARs for Greenland:
    http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/vejret/metar-og-taf/

  14. Gail Combs says:

    Dave1billion says @ June 18, 2015 at 6:42 pm

    Leaving everything else aside, giving that the article to which you link is dated from 2011, the concept of “current” must mean something different than you think it means.
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

    Current to many means the Holocene. Just depends on your perspective. That is why ClimAstrologists and their hobgoblin ‘climate’ scare stories are so down right funny. Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles can mean a temperature change of 8C – 10C and as much as 16C in dramatically short times like within a decade, so the ClimAlarmists hyperventilating over tenths of a degree over a similar period is really laughable especially since the error is greater than the measured change.

    https://media2.stickersmalin.com/produit/100/stickers-devil-smile-R1-143760-2.png

  15. rah says:

    Ah hell! Does it really matter? I mean after all the “eminent scientist” Frank Fenner, says that we will probably be extinct within the next 100 years! http://phys.org/news/2010-06-humans-extinct-years-eminent-scientist.html

  16. Pingback: ARCTIC SEA ICE —Klyuchi and the Quietude—(updated six times) | Sunrise's Swansong

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