2011 vs 2007

In 2007, the East Siberian Sea was in rapid retreat. Green shows 2011 ice not present in 2007, and red is the opposite.  The red areas are shrinking, while the green areas are growing very fast.

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5 Responses to 2011 vs 2007

  1. AndyW says:

    Well the largest red area on the above map never melted out in 2007 so that will tend to stay red, where as the green has a chance of reducing because it is looking more and more crumbly on that side in 2011.

    http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png

    However I think a victory for the green this year is highly likely.

    Andy

  2. Paul H says:

    Julienne was having an interesting debate with Latitude yesterday about the prospect of ships sailing across the Arctic in future.

    And yet Julienne admits we cannot forecast ice conditions more than a week in advance cos “it is weather”. I can’t see shipping companies sending fleets of ships up there so they can wait around until they get a decent week’s weather.

    • Julienne Stroeve says:

      Paul, perhaps I didn’t explain it very well. The chaotic nature of weather makes it unpredictable beyond a few days. So saying what the ice conditions will be regionally from one year to the next (i.e. will the NSR or the NWP be open) will depend in part on what the winds are doing (i.e. in 2007 circulation pushed ice against Siberia, blocking the NSR from opening). Similarly, trying to determine whether a particular year will be a new record low or not is also not possible. However, projecting long-term average changes in the summer ice cover based on a warmer world is a very different issue, and that’s what companies are using for ramping up their shipping operations. As an analogy, while we cannot predict the age at which any particular man will die, we can say with high confidence that the average age of death for a man in industrialized countries is ~75.

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