Commercial Ships Sailing All Over The Arctic

The Arctic summer will end in about 10-12 weeks. Those ships better set sail now.

About Tony Heller

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40 Responses to Commercial Ships Sailing All Over The Arctic

  1. Paul H says:

    Apparently it is not even the magnetic pole, but the magnetic pole from 1995 when it was hundreds of miles closer to Canada.

  2. Andy WeissDC says:

    Is that the “small area of ice” north of Canada, Greenland and Alaska that will remain during the ice free summers that are soon to come?

  3. Travis says:

    In 10-12 weeks, less than half of that sea ice will still be there.

  4. Mike Davis says:

    It is obvious by this photo that the Eurasian coast is generally ice free. They painted the commercial ships white to fool everyone.

  5. Travis says:

    Mike Davis,

    It’s not so much a WAG as an incredibly reasonable expectation based on the fact that for the past decade, the September sea extent has been roughly half or less of the June sea ice extent. If I wanted to sound alarmist, I would point out that for the past four years, it has been closer to 40% of June’s extent than 50%.

    • “I never claimed you were a half-mad sodomite with green hair, I only stated that statistically it was fairly likely that you would at some point lose a percentage of your sanity, that you would engage in a torrid, if nonconsensual affair with a pony, and that Copper ions might be present in your hair follicles.. Only an idiot would think I was insulting you.”

    • suyts says:

      lol, incredibly and reasonable…..side by side……. is that like dramatically anticlimactic?

      “If I wanted to sound alarmist, I would point out that for the past four years, it has been closer to 40% of June’s extent than 50%”

      lol, and yes, that would be alarming until I showed you this.

      http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/minimum-ice-extent/

      I think we’re gonna be ok.

      • Travis says:

        So you folks think that 5.0-5.5 million km2 is not a conservative estimate for this September’s sea ice extent? What do you expect? 6.0 million? 7.0 million? Or are you not foolish enough to make a rough estimate until the melt season is over and there’s no possibility of being wrong?

        • I have no intention of making a prediction of extent. It is a flaky measure dependent on the wind.

          My prediction is that multi-year ice area will increase again this year, as it has done every year since 2008.

      • suyts says:

        Travis, like Steve, I don’t put much into this annual horse race. Between 5 or 6……it doesn’t make any difference. About the only thing we can draw from the whole ARCTIC MELTING!” experience, it that we can pretty much conclusively say, that the alleged temp regulator in the form of albedo was entirely overstated.

        Consider the ice extent in 79. Compare it to 2007 and all of the years in between, for instance, from 79 to 2000. This is suppose to cause a death spiral of ice (look at ice after 2007) and a dramatic increase in global temps……look at the lack of increase of global temps in over a decade.

      • Travis says:

        “Low ice cover in September allows heat to escape from the oceans into space. It is a negative feedback.”

        Except that the heat wouldn’t have been absorbed by the Arctic Ocean in the first place had the sea ice not melted to begin with. By what logic of yours is more heat escaping the system than is entering it? Explain to me how this negative feedback works.

        • Heat moves from the low latitudes where more is absorbed than radiated, to high latitudes where more is radiated. Do you understand what a negative feedback is?

      • suyts says:

        Travis, have you ever seen an igloo?

      • Mike Davis says:

        I get the impression that Travis does not know how the Equinox affects the Arctic region.

      • Travis says:

        “Heat moves from the low latitudes where more is absorbed than radiated, to high latitudes where more is radiated. Do you understand what a negative feedback is?”

        I’m familiar with global heat flow, but I still do not see how you get from there to a negative feedback. So in a world where the Arctic is covered with more sea ice than today, all that heat finds its way up to the Arctic and does…what? Sits there? Builds an igloo?

        If heat absorbed in the lower latitudes is “normal” then a “typical” amount of that heat makes its way to the Arctic and melts some ice from underneath. If less than the “normal” amount of heat is absorbed, then less of it will make it to the Arctic, where less ice will melt, thus resulting in thicker ice. If more heat is absorbed than “normal” at lower latitudes, then more of it will make it to the Arctic, where it melts more of the ice, creating larger stretches of water.

        Yes, these open stretches allow much more heat to be released into the atmosphere, but they also allow much more solar radiation to be absorbed by the Arctic Ocean for as long as the sun is above the horizon. This energy would have been reflected back into space before the ice melted. Instead, it’s being absorbed and making the open water even warmer. In turn, this means the ocean has to release all this extra heat before it can refreeze later in the autumn.

        So explain to me again: how is this a negative feedback?

      • Travis says:

        “I get the impression that Travis does not know how the Equinox affects the Arctic region.”

        I understand that when the sun dips below the horizon, the level of incoming solar radiation decreases to zero. How’s that?

    • Travis says:

      “When ice covers the water, heat can’t radiate into space. Areas of open water in September radiate a lot of heat away from the Earth.”

      How exactly do you expect ice to form when the ocean temperature is still above freezing?

  6. Mike Davis says:

    It is all based on regional weather and the current method of measuring has built in error rate of up to 85%. In other words It Don’t Mean Squat. There is ice in the Arctic region and it varies in concentration through time on scales of months, years, decades, centuries and longer periods. What we observe is natural fluctuations related to this years weather pattern.
    The numbers released by the researchers are only extrapolations based on what they consider “Best Guess Methods”.

    • Mike Davis says:

      That does not even take into consideration “improvements” in equipment and methods since they started taking satellite photos of the region. They have to release something to justify what taxpayers are paying for their “Research”.

  7. Mike Davis says:

    Travis:
    That is really Funny!
    Having spent time fishing at sunrise and sunset I can testify how reflective open water is. At that angle it is more reflective than dirty packed ice. From September through March more heat is released from the Arctic region than is absorbed.

    • suyts says:

      That point is never considered, even though most of us as children understood how reflective the water is the after the first sunburn of the swimming pool season.

  8. suyts says:

    @ Travis……. sorry, this appears to be behind a pay-wall, but you can get the general idea……
    http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010GL045698.shtml

  9. Andy WeissDC says:

    Sea ice at 75-90 degrees north latitude is probably not very important to weather in the US. The cold air masses that affects the US in winter normally builds up over snow covered land between 50 and 70 north. In the unlikely event the Arctic Ocean somehow became ice free for a few weeks in summer, it would not change that fact.

  10. Wermet says:

    Hello stevengoddard,

    Can you please provide the original source for the arctic sea ice image? I am interested in comparing images from different dates to get a more accurate understanding of how the arctic ice changes over time.

    Thanks!

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