Summer Is Over In The Arctic

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

105 Responses to Summer Is Over In The Arctic

  1. omnologos says:

    Wild swings in the winter, then an almost exact following of the average in the summer? Doesn’t sound plausible.

    • Summer temperatures are constrained by the latent heat of melting.

    • suyts says:

      Temps have little or nothing to do with ice loss. I would word it differently, but Steve’s right. But, as our friend Peter would say, melting ice always has a temp that is under 32 F. But, what is the ambient temp? Without wind or sea currents, what melt would be expected with the temps as shown above? Well, next to nothing.

      • julienne stroeve says:

        James, I think you are forgetting that melt still happens from ocean heat despite cooling air temperatures.

      • suyts says:

        Julienne, thanks….. I should have been more clear…. I was speaking towards the air temp of the arctic. But, yes, water circulating from more southern areas(via the currents) would cause some amount of melt….. depending upon the temp of the water.

  2. Scott says:

    Average extent loss in JAXA from here to the minimum is 906684 km^2. Average loss in CT area between now and it’s minimum is 659970 km^2.

    Note how much these numbers don’t jive with each other…with those losses extent would end up essentially equal to 2008 while area would crush the old 2007 record (though we’re slightly above 2007 now). As to which to believe comes down to what I’ve said the past few days – do you believe the area metric is representative or overly contaminated with melt pond interference this year?

    -Scott

    • If the ice extent and area (and even more tellingly the actual multi-year ice) isn’t less than every preceding year it becomes more and more difficult to claim a death spiral.

      Oddly, I would have figured out that the death-spiral was a load of obama by the second year that the predictions failed to materialize. Yet here we are, the 4th consecutive year of no death-spiral. I wonder if even one of them will step up and admit to being a fool by 2030.

    • suyts says:

      Note how much these numbers don’t jive with each other…….
      ================================================
      No, they don’t. The divergence of area, extent, and the different places to go to see both seems a bit unusual this year. It may be my perception, but…. things seem a bit off.

      That said, it is our climate, and ever since I’ve been paying attention, there is always one aspect or another that seems a bit off. In all other things, I can pick a trend out with just thinking about it, much less looking at the numbers……I think I’m not going to live long enough to do such with climate concerns. Things are the way they always were, but things are always different.

  3. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    My eyes playing trick on me? Julienne, you see this? 😉

    http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png

    • julienne stroeve says:

      Amino, no I hadn’t seen that one. I tend to look at the University of Bremen site for the AMSRE data.

    • Scott says:

      It’s area…it’s inherently noisy. CT’s area metric has shown a considerable gain the past two days…more than 60k+ for each of those days. Basically caused by differences in melt pond assignments I’d guess.

      But CT is also acting weird…they have two values listed for 08/16 now…I chose to use the lower one.

      -Scott

      • suyts says:

        lol….. can we vote on ice area now? Beautiful…..they could be on to something! Why spend time quibbling about how to interpret values when we can just have 2 separate values…… one for skeptics and another for alarmists!! That’s a hoot.

      • Mike Davis says:

        James:
        There is no consensus on which is the “Proper” method of reporting ice conditions so for each reporting group we have a different method and like the models they all have their error factors which technically makes all of them wrong. You could pull straws or even pull numbers out of thin air and have an equal chance of being right!

  4. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

    So who was it that bet the Northwest Passage would open this year?

    http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/Ice_Can/CMMBCTCA.gif

    • Ill wind blowing says:

      “So who was it that bet the Northwest Passage would open this year?”

      http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

    • Bruce says:

      This is as much fun as watching the Nenana Ice Classic.

      I wonder how Mr Broe is going? He’s the guy who for C$10 bought the port of Churchill in anticipation of the NW Passage opening,

    • Ill wind blowing says:

      “Not yet, hot-rod, there’s still a bit of blue in the way……… maybe a Russian ice breaker will come by ant make it so…..”

      If you ever bother looking at those concentration images on a daily basis you’ll get an idea as to how fast the ice is declining. That strait was green with some yellow-70%-85%concentration-just days ago. When it turns to 50-30% (dark and pale blue) and shrinks dramatically then you know that it’s not going to last.

      You can already go through the NW Passage if you look carefully (Hint: zoom up to at least 800% magnification).

      I predict that those dark and baby blues (my favorite color) will be gone to the last pixel in that strait within a week. The Northeast Passage should also have a good amount of clearance by then.

      Look again and follow the decline on a daily basis:

      http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

      • Mike Davis says:

        IWB:
        You are getting all excited over a computer generated graphic and thinking it is something real. It is a virtual representation created by an al-gore-rhythm extrapolated for different satellite sources.
        In other words it is not real!

      • Paul H says:

        I wonder how many times in the past it has been open for a day or two before we had satellites?

      • Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

        Ill wind blowing (Mecago, Villabolo)

        Keep whistling past the cemetery.

      • glacierman says:

        And of course, if it does open up it is proof that we are doomed because this has never happened before……right?

        1944 – Schooner sails NW passage in 86 days along most northerly route. “The northwest passage is suitable for summer traffic by wooden vessels” according to Staff Seargant Henry Larson.

        http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=bidkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jHsNAAAAIBAJ&pg=968,1250469&dq=arctic+record+%7C+melt&hl=en

        And IWB, don’t even bother bringing up ice being visible. They sailed it with a wooden boat before GPS and satelite navigation.

      • Scott says:

        Ill wind blowing says:
        August 17, 2011 at 6:23 am

        Look again and follow the decline on a daily basis:

        http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png

        So my untrained eye, I’d estimate that over the last two days, there has been a net loss of -125200 km^2…making it a gain of 125200 km^2. That’s the beauty of CT’s area metric…super noisy and the noise always seems to reverse whenever you or Peter Ellis point out how poorly area is doing, specifically worse than 2007. By my evaluation, 2011 is worse than 2007 by approximately -150763 km^2 for the same day right now (putting 2011 halfway between 2007 and 2008). However, a more objective analysis realizes that both years have quite a bit of melt pond issues to work around and that those numbers could reverse almost overnight.

        -Scott

      • julienne stroeve says:

        IWB, I would caution trusting the passive microwave data for the NW Passage because of the course spatial resolution of the sensor. Best to look at the Canadian Ice Center ice charts. You can also look at NSIDC’s MASIE data set which is gridded ice data from the National Ice Center. In that you still see the NWP still contains sea ice, though Admundsen’s route looks open.

    • Billy Liar says:

      Which NW Passasge?

  5. NoMoreGore says:

    Sounds like the thaw is just in time for the freeze. Another uneventful year of watching a useless metric.

    • julienne stroeve says:

      Uneventful for some I suppose, but certainly no recovery in the summer ice cover. While you may feel the change in Arctic sea ice is useless, it does have important climate implications since more open water influences air temperatures, the moisture content of the atmosphere, cyclone and other weather patterns. It also has important implications for maritime activities in the Arctic.

  6. roger says:

    Ill wind blowing says:
    August 17, 2011 at 6:25 am
    Damn!!! I wish I knew about that port! I would have bought it!

    A fool and his money are soon parted.
    Can I sell you a bridge for your harbour?
    Euros no longer accepted.

  7. omnologos says:

    Paul H –

    I wonder how many times in the past it has been open for a day or two before we had satellites?

    Should be simple – if current Summer temperatures are “constrained by the latent heat of melting” all we need is evidence of “wild swings” in Summer temperatures…

  8. julienne stroeve says:

    Steve, if 2011 ends up at say the median of the SEARCH Outlook predictions, and you compute your trend, do you end up with a statistically significant trend?

    And if you read Maslanik’s 2011 GRL paper, you will note that while there was some recovery of MYI since 2008, it simply brought the MYI up to the negative linear trend line (so still in decline). There was also less 2nd year ice in spring 2011 than in spring of 2010 and 2009. Same with the 5+ year old ice. The recovery of MYI was mostly in terms of the 3 year old ice. I’m sure you have noticed the increase in transport out of Fram Strait since the high pressure moved back into the central Arctic combined with low pressure over Eurasia. That is transporting more the 3 year and 2 year ice out of the Arctic Basin at the moment.

  9. Ill wind blowing says:

    Julienne

    “You can also look at NSIDC’s MASIE data set which is gridded ice data from the National Ice Center. In that you still see the NWP still contains sea ice, though Admundsen’s route looks open.”

    Julienne; I understand and appreciate your advise. However, crude as it may be, we still have about 3 weeks of melt to go. On the basis of that I assume-please correct me if I’m wrong-that even a crude data set can give an indication of whether or not those passages will open this year.

    This is the time of most rapid melt and I was guesstimating that the NW Passage would be open within a week. One of the posters claimed that it would not and another, on this thread, seems to be soft pedaling the issue by suggesting it will be open for “a day or two” (Paul H: August 17, 2011 at 11:33 am).

    I would be interested to know what your guess is on those passages clearing up. Maybe you can give the posters here some perspective on why the openings of those passages today is more significant than yesteryear’s.

    I would also invite you to make any further corrections to anything else I say that may be incorrect. 🙂

  10. glacierman says:

    You should have seen the story that CNN just did on the Arctic Ice Melting away – which showed a comparison to 2006, then 1980, and ended with the news anchor saying “that is very alarming” with the meterologist replying “it sure is”.

    They made a big deal about being able to run ships along Russia. No mention of the icebreaker activity that is occuring on a non-stop basis there.

    I am sure their viewers will have no historical perspective at all, so mission accomplished.

  11. Ill wind blowing says:

    Glacierman:

    “And of course, if it does open up it is proof that we are doomed because this has never happened before……right?

    1944 – Schooner sails NW passage in 86 days along most northerly route. “The northwest passage is suitable for summer traffic by wooden vessels” according to Staff Seargant Henry Larson.
    [-SNIP-]
    And IWB, don’t even bother bringing up ice being visible. They sailed it with a wooden boat before GPS and satelite navigation.”

    Glacierman; either you or another poster quoted that same newspaper arctic and my answer is still the same.

    When you compare the event mentioned in the article with what has been happening in the past ten years, there is simply no comparison whatsoever. The Calgary article you quoted reports the following:

    “The passage, the third successful voyage in history through the treacherous Arctic route . . .was made in the record-breaking time of 86 days . . .

    It also says:

    Heading: ICE ALL THE WAY
    ””The route through the Northwest Passage is suitable for summer traffic by wooden vessel . . .””

    The sentence that follows shows why the previous sentence does not indicate that the present day situation is comparable.

    “He encountered heavy fog and ice floes all the way through the passage.”

    This is obviously not a description of the present situation for the following reasons.

    1. The “third successful voyage in history, through the treacherous Arctic route . . .”, was made within a 43 year time period, starting with Amundsen’s first success. Today, the same schooner can make the exact same voyage in far less time than 86 days since the last 4 years.

    2. The reason such a voyage could be made by the same schooner, much faster, more often, and without “treacherous” conditions, is obvious. The passage has been TOTALLY ICE FREE multiple since in the past 4 years. Compare that with the newspaper article you quoted. It clearly states that the same passage had “ICE ALL THE WAY” and again, “. . . ice floes all the way”.

    The “open” situation of today does not compare to the barely “passable” conditions of yesteryear.

    No wonder you didn’t want me to point out the presence of the massive amounts of ice. When the facts are presented, in full context, there is simply no comparison between ice free events of today and the ice cluttered events of the past. This entire argument is a “false balance”.

    3. Also, although this is not the most important point, the voyages of today can be made by larger ships (even wooden ones).

    All of the points above indicate the radical difference between the Arctic of today and the Arctic of yesteryear.

    • glacierman says:

      Blow says:

      “No wonder you didn’t want me to point out the presence of the massive amounts of ice.”

      No where in that article does it say that. You made it up. Compare that to your comparison of how “ice free” the passage is today:

      “You can already go through the NW Passage if you look carefully (Hint: zoom up to at least 800% magnification).”

      They didn’t have satelite images that they could zoom in 800% to chart their course, yet they made it through, that is all that matters.

      • Ill wind blowing says:

        Glacier melting:

        In response to my statement about the amounts of ice mentioned in that article, you said:

        “No where in that article does it say that. You made it up. Compare that to your comparison of how “ice free” the passage is today:

        I quoted the article verbatim. If you read it again, it clearly quotes the article:

        ““He encountered heavy fog and ice floes all the way through the passage.”

        Then there is the very visible heading, in all caps, that reads:

        “ICE ALL THE WAY”

        As for your quotation of what I said, you are taking it out of context. This is the statement that follows:

        “I predict that those dark and baby blues (my favorite color) will be gone to the last pixel in that strait within a week. The Northeast Passage should also have a good amount of clearance by then.”

        You make it sound like I was claiming that the ice in the NWP was totally gone on that day. I clearly stated that the last pixel would be gone “within a week” (reference being to the Perry channel). Julienne indicated that it may be 2 weeks. It doesn’t really matter when you take into account what Paul H said:

        “I wonder how many times in the past it has been open for a day or two before we had satellites?” (August 17, 2011 at 11:33 am)

        I was indicating how obvious it was that the present situation concerns a passage that is navigable for a week or more.

        Furthermore, it is you who has gotten caught up with the issue of the NWP without keeping the bigger picture in mind. You simply did not have the low extent and thickness that you have today. That is what indicates what is happening to the Arctic.

        What’s more, regardless of whether it’s accepted or not by the posters here, open water creates a different weather dynamic than ice. The Northern Hemisphere including the North American continent, with 360 million people, cannot afford heavy crop losses and infrastructure damage.

        And no, there is no comparison to the past. We simply did not have a dense population with a fragile infrastructure back then. Due to the mobility and low population density of hunter/gatherers, it was much easier then for people to adapt to altered weather conditions.

        The importance of the Arctic ice cap in its entirety is not merely that it serves as a barometer to Global Warming; but that it presents a danger to the well being of the human population in the Northern Hemisphere.

      • glacierman says:

        Blow:

        Only you could make the statement that you quoted the article verbatim and equate:

        “Massive amounts of ice”-from IWB = “ice flows all the way” from the article. Not.

        Keep talking though you are helping the cause significantly.

    • suyts says:

      lol, yep, the ice has moved…….. You hear of the “row to the pole” exercise?

      There’s plenty of evidence the ice moves about the arctic, and looking at one spot and saying….this never(or almost never) happened before!! Is silly. Then, to attach any significance to it, is even sillier, much less attach some human catastrophe……

      Things change….. even in the arctic, and nothing has changed about that.

      • glacierman says:

        Apparently if you can see ice during your journey, it somehow negates the fact (in some peoples mind) that someone made the journey 67 years ago. It”s as if we should deny that it happened. But if we can find open water on satelite images zoomed in 800% today it is proof of….something.

      • suyts says:

        Yeh, he gets frustrated at the comparisons but makes the same illogical comparisons with navigational abilities…… weird.

        IWB, here’s something for you to chew on

        http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/driftwood-ice

        How in the world did driftwood get stuck in our ice?

      • glacierman says:

        They are seeing lots of ice on the row to the (formerly magnetic, hundreds of miles from the geographic) North Pole, but in the post-normal world ice being present means open water…..in 1944 it meant “massive amounts of ice”.

        Oh, and in 1944 the sailors were in much more danger from ice flows being in wooden boats and all, and not having satelite images to plan their routes.

  12. omnologos says:

    If it wasn’t yesteryear, it was the year before yesteryear. And the year before the year before yesteryear, it was icy all the way down to the Alps.

  13. julienne stroeve says:

    IWB, I believe sometime around 2030 is plausible…but that doesn’t mean completely ice free, I still expect some ice to be around, but that it will be less than 1 million sq-km.

  14. Latitude says:

    I just found out that Obambi’s buses cost $2 1/2 million, were made in Canada…
    ….and we paid for them
    He has the solution to all of our problems, but won’t tell us until he gets back from vacation in September……

    …I must be living in Seahaven

    • suyts says:

      Made in Canada………very nice…..

      …. he is on tour to tell us he’s going to tell us how he’s going to fix our problems…. in September…. can anyone say violation of campaign laws?

      And he stays in a hotel…..while on the bus tour.

      I really hope he encourages us to buy American in September when he fixes all of our problems.

      You know what it is, its that we raised the debt ceiling and all of that extra debt is just burning a hole in his pocket…… so he’s going to take a month to figure out how to spend it before the next president gets sworn in.

    • DEEBEE says:

      Dunce-y-man you must think Bush’s presidency is the touchstone of all presidencies. Your continued lamentation at the lack of his third term makes one teary.

  15. omnologos says:

    IWB

    We simply did not have a dense population with a fragile infrastructure back then.

    History denial at its worst…the “fragile infrastructure” has meant how many peacetime famines in the developed world in the past 100 years, exactly?

    What I agree with, it’s that we didn’t have so many “dense” persons in the past!!

    • suyts says:

      Oh my, you prompted me to read his….. rant…… lol, people were more adaptable back then! oh my

    • Ill wind blowing says:

      Dunning Kruger:

      “History denial at its worst…the “fragile infrastructure” has meant how many peacetime famines in the developed world in the past 100 years, exactly?”

      An earthquake has not happened in the past 100 years. Therefore it will never happen.

      You have no understanding of how the infrastructure of a major city works and how easily it can be disrupted. Just imagine the electricity being gone for 2 weeks in a large metropolitan area of 10 million.

  16. Andy WeissDC says:

    Just suppose Julienne is right and the Arctic becomes ice-free for a few weeks during summer in 2030. Is that necessarily bad for humanity? Could there actually be a net upside (such as longer growing seasons further north)? Why does change have to be bad? Climate has never been a constant anyhow. It changes no matter what you do sooner or later.

    • suyts says:

      The new shipping routes alone would be a benefit to international commerce. It could perhaps even open up new food sources. There really isn’t a down-side.

    • Latitude says:

      the Russians, Canadians, Alaskans, etc would be jumping for joy………………..

      Even if it’s “ice free” for a few weeks, it’s entirely too undependable for shipping…..
      …oil and gas is another story

      The Russians have the most and most advanced icebreakers, and they don’t believe it….
      ….they are building a new highway to Pevek

    • Ill wind blowing says:

      “Why does change have to be bad?”

      Tell that to the flooded crops and cities and the people who eat the crops and live in the towns and cities.

      “Climate has never been a constant anyhow.”

      If it weren’t for the reckless burning of fossil fuels it would have been constant enough for the next several thousands of years. But with your blasé, shoulder shrugging, attitude you are justifying the collapse of civilization in the century to come.

      “It changes no matter what you do sooner or later.”

      Forests burn all the time, no matter what we do, so why not deliberately burn them now?

    • julienne stroeve says:

      It doesn’t necessarily imply a bad thing. But it will have climate/ecological/biological/economical impacts that will need to be addressed. Some will gain, some will lose. I’m interested in understanding the implications of an Arctic Ocean with significantly less sea ice cover on our climate, mostly in terms of temperature and precipitation.

      • Ill wind blowing says:

        Julienne; just minor climatological changes can make for major impacts on a densely populated world with mass agriculture. Regardless of whether other regions might prosper, most of the earth’s population simply do not live in those regions.

        Assuming that Siberia becomes fit for agriculture (former permafrost turned to swampland excluded) such changes could happen in just a few decades. Can mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people from adversely effected areas, be expected to go smoothly within that time frame?

        Let me put it this way, and I’m not being facetious, Do your grandchildren-or anybody else’s grandchildren-have their Russian passports ready?

      • DEEBEE says:

        IWB you are totally wrong. WHat is you assert is incorrect and I will prove it to you as soon as you are able to prove your assertions.

  17. sunsettommy says:

    New paper says total loss of Arctic sea ice might not cause any warming

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-paper-says-total-loss-of-arctic-sea.html

    A model free science paper.

    • Ill wind blowing says:

      So how is it that the Arctic ice free in the past? Would not the increased clouds have refrozen it? Duh.

    • suyts says:

      I think this has become fairly well-known.(Not the study, but the over-emphasis of the icecap albedo.) It simply defies logic to assume the polar cap is some sort of heat shield for the rest of the world. I haven’t looked to see if there has been a change on how people estimate the albedo of the ice cap lately, but…….

      The percentage of area is quite small relative to the rest of the world and solar absorption….. given the angle of direct sunlight, solar absorption isn’t as great…… water also reflects …. the duration of ice free conditions isn’t expected to be for a long duration…….. the albedo only occurs half the time. The loss of ice will allow for more energy release from the open water…..we could expect a net increase in clouds. Which seem to more and more look like a negative forcing ……. well only for those that can’t conduct physical tests……. I did.

      I once had a cloud pass overhead on a warm day and noticed the cooling effect. (Strange I know, but it gets weirder!!) I then had a cloud pass overhead on a cool moonlit night. The radiative energy bouncing back and forth from the ground to cloud and back to the ground several times over literally put me in a microwave!!!!! The snow on the ground started to melt…… I noted the temp difference was even more than the temp difference of the summer cloud but in the opposite manner!!!

      — 😐 ———————— No, not really…….that reality only exists in the minds of climate crazed alarmists. Some supposedly educated pinheads actually believe there is a net increase in temps because of clouds…….it isn’t even close, clouds cool the earth.

      I would like to see the authors methods and reasoning, but anyone that has considered the ice cap for more than just a few moments, would know the albedo is entirely overstated.

      Thanks for the link Tommy!!

      • Ill wind blowing says:

        The “rest of the world” is irrelevant for two reasons.

        The US and Canada; England and Europe; Russia and Siberia; are right underneath the Arctic region.

        Simplistic arithmetical comparisons (the smallness of the Arctic) have no meaning in the real world. A major change in a particular region could cause a chain reaction leading to major changes in a much larger region.

        Just think of the effects to an entire car if one cylinder goes bad.

        This is one dimensional thinking at its worse.

      • suyts says:

        lol, Ill, you pick up on just one of my reasons why the albedo is completely over stated and you state my thinking is one dimensional……..beautiful.

        But, you should at least finish the sentence when your attempting to rebut my points……“…relative to the rest of the world and solar absorption.

        I was referring to the total solar absorption of the world compared to the arctic……. (Energy input to surface area of icecap/Energy input to total surface area.) Trick, I know, but very relevant to as to why the albedo isn’t important. It is the start point for figuring the albedo relevance…… or using your auto analogy, just think of the effects of an oil case losing a mm of oil. —— yep, its panic time!!!

  18. Ill wind blowing says:

    Suyts:

    “How in the world did driftwood get stuck in our ice?”

    Suyts; you think you’re so savvy.

    When the Northern Hemisphere was warmer, during the Holocene Thermal Maximum, it was due to the Earth’s tilt allowing more sunlight to fall on the northern most areas. The ice cap was partially melted; about 50% of what it is now.

    The heat distribution was different back then compared to Global Warming from increased greenhouse gases.

    When the NH was receiving more warmth the SH was actually cooler (keep in mind that the Global average was about 1C which is much less than the average in the Arctic). That means that all the oceans in their entirety, were not as warm as they are today with AGW. It’s those warmer ocean currents that have contributed to the thinning and shrinking of the ice cap.

    So in the Holocene a warmer atmosphere in the NH caused a portion of earth’s oceans to be warmer. When ocean currents reached the Arctic ice cap, it shrunk but not entirely.

    In our present situation, all oceans are warmer, not just a portion of them or the atmosphere in the NH. That allows more melting to occur (by means of the ocean currents that flow into the Arctic) with AGW. The melting has not progressed as far as the Holocene’s yet..

    However, it will reach and surpass that point in the next 10-20 years. That is approximately when we will get an ice free Arctic, for a few days at first, in the summer.

    • Latitude says:

      “The researchers found a climate record that is in good agreement with previous histories, including such events as the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Holocene Thermal Maximum.”

      “When the ice was at its minimum in northern Greenland, it greatly increased at Ellesmere Island to the west. The lack of uniformity in past sea-ice changes, which is probably related to large-scale atmospheric anomalies such as the Arctic Oscillation, is not well reproduced in models.”

      “their findings repudiate claims that climate events such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did not occur.”

      “A larch-dominated peak at ~1100 to 1400 indicates a strong TPD and a weak BG during the Medieval Warm Period, whereas the woodless periods and the increase in spruce after 1400 show that situations with large BG input became increasingly frequent during the Little Ice Age (LIA), as shown also in the western Arctic Ocean.”

      “It is not hotter now than at any time in the last 10,000 years, it was hotter by as much as 4°C around 6,000 years ago”….over 7F average

    • suyts says:

      So, the driftwood is from the Holocene Climate Optimum? I’d look for a more recent event…..

  19. omnologos says:

    Having a Climate Optimum when the Sun warms the lands of the NH instead of the seas of the SH is almost as physically impossible as making the oceans acidic. Who’s this IWB and why can’t we get a decent reply from him/her? I’d say, we don’t need another regurgitator of dubious scientific hypotheses.

    • suyts says:

      Well, it makes for some good humor. But I hear you on the reply thing…….Its like having a conversation about how to properly fit tires and he wants to start talking about rubber production……….

    • Mike Davis says:

      omnologos:
      You give to much credit to Chicken Little. A scientific Hypothesis is testable whether dubious or not. What we ave from Chicken Little /IPCC are assumptions and suppositions, Basically Wild A$$ Guesses that are not testable!

      • Ill wind blowing says:

        “A scientific Hypothesis is testable whether dubious or not.”

        People don’t even test their ‘facts’ on this site, let alone their hypothesis.

  20. slimething says:

    IWB,
    Have you bothered to ever check OHC in the Arctic and North Atlantic region? Both are dropping like a stone.

    • Ill wind blowing says:

      Go ahead and fantasize about ponding because you had ponding in 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.

      http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png

      • Mike Davis says:

        IWB:
        You are the one providing fabricated images (CGI) that were created by the groups own secret recipe and may or may not reflect reality to any degree of accuracy!
        In real life ICE is white or even discolored by particulate matter but is definitely not all the colors of the rainbow.
        Remember that greater than 15% equals 100%, up to 85% error. Some use greater than 30% which leaves up to 70% error in the end results. Sounds really accurate to me!

      • Ill wind blowing says:

        So what if extent is the same, slightly lower or somewhat more than 2007? 2011 did not have the winds and sunnier days than this year. If it did, we would have a much lower extent than 2007.

        http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

      • Ill wind blowing says:

        Mike Davis, in his conspiratorial paranoia, says:

        “You are the one providing fabricated images (CGI) that were created by the groups own secret recipe and may or may not reflect reality to any degree of accuracy!”

        Anything you say Dunning Kruger. Those “fabricated”, “secret recipe” images are the products of a Socialist conspiracy cooked up by the Kenyan branch of the Reptilian Illuminati to sap the children of light of their precious bodily fluids.

        By the way, not that you care to look into your self contradictions, you said those images were fabricated. Yet you said they “may or may not reflect reality”. Why would a fabricated image be allowed to reflect reality if its purpose is to deceive? It’s either counterfeit or it’s not.

        And how amazing it is that whatever ‘proof’ you offer comes from the “uncorrupted” scientists (the ones who wear white suits) who just happen to be the same ones who provide us with evil, ‘fabricated’ evidence. I guess they change into their dark suits when they provide us with their ‘fabrications’.

      • Mike Davis says:

        We actually do not know what the extent was or is so your question is meaningless. Ice conditions in the polar regions are constantly changing on time scales up to millions of years so the current watching ice melt fascination is like someone on drugs watching the smoke rise from the candle or the joint they are smoking!
        Wow man watch this strange $hit! GROOVEY!!

      • Mike Davis says:

        IWB:
        Apparently the researchers that create these images think they represent something.
        Just like the GISS surface temperature records are loosely based on real world measurements. I should not specifically pick on GISS because all the reporting groups have their special process that they think has some value.
        If you want to call research for the purpose of doing research a conspiracy, so be it. I just think they are attempting to justify the money spent chasing illusions and find more money for additional research! But them I worked around academics for a good part of my career.

  21. Ill wind blowing says:

    “It is not hotter now than at any time in the last 10,000 years, it was hotter by as much as 4°C around 6,000 years ago”….over 7F average

    I already mentioned the great difference in heat distribution between the Holocene Thermal Maximum and that of AGW. You are referring to those temperatures as if they were the global average. They were not. The global average was much lower, about 2F

    The Southern Hemisphere was colder and the temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped off sharply with changes in Latitude. Also, as I’ve explained in previous posts, there were differences between summer and winter average temperatures. Nights would not remain as warm as with current day AGW.

    The bottom line is that you cannot use the HTM as a proxy to what’s happening today. What happened back then was not an increase of global temperatures but a redistribution of temperatures. What is happening with AGW is an increase in temperature throughout the earth due to the increased insulation of the sun’s energy.

    The HTM was a different situation altogether with different heat distribution to the Arctic than the present day situation.

    • Mike Davis says:

      IWB:
      There is no way to make those claims to any degree of accuracy. There were no thermometers in place during the HTO. The MAXIMUM was short lived as was the maximum in the 30s and in the 90s, if that period was more than an artifact of processes.
      Any warming or cooling would be most obvious at the poles and changes would be reduced to minimum towards the Tropics. The other issue is the changes are not equal between the hemispheres and even between regions in the hemispheres. By smoothing the proxy data most of the signal was lost.
      The assumption is that AGW causes different patterns but those patterns have not been observed so they are ignored!

    • mkelly says:

      So you admit temperatures have been cooling for 1000’s of years. I agree.

  22. Scott says:

    I came across this post by Lubos and thought people here should read it, it’s pretty interesting:

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/08/co2-and-ice-free-arctic-summer-2100.html

    -Scott

  23. Bill Illis says:

    The change required to result in the sea ice melting out completely by a typical minimum day (or even less than 1 million km2) is a massive change compared to the current trends. This is an exaggeration. It is far, far into the future at best.

    http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/4008/nhseimeltout2.png

  24. Andy WeissDC says:

    Based on climate history, there is no guarantee that the climate would ever stay stable for thousands of year. For all we know, the extra GHG emission may be preventing an Ice Age (that some scientists say we are due for), which would have far more serious consequences of humanity than the Arctic being ice free for a few weeks. Humanity should not be deceived that there will never be climate change just because we don’t drive our cars or produce anything. We had to adapt to mile thick ice down to NYC and Chicago long before the first SUV. Same goes for the mega droughts between 1200 and 1500.

    I’m all for conservation and clean fuels, but to avoid a major worldwide economic depression, it can’t involve huge taxes or be done overnight.

  25. omnologos says:

    IWB is actually a good example of when half a knowledge is worse than none. The link between the Holocene Climate Optimum and the Milankovitch cycles is a good scientific hypothesis full of caveats and unexplained details, like the warming of the Southern Hemisphere immediately before the HCO and the delay between the arrival of Norther Summer near perihelion and the onset of the HCO (a delay that pretty much invalidates the whole thing IMHO).

    Now, all of those caveats and details magically disappear in IWB’s mind, and the prose coming out states hypotheses as facts, as if the founders of Jericho had been building their own weather satellites (thus crucially neglecting the reinforcing of the walls).

    Where have we heard such a broken telephone? Why, thousands of times in blog posts, news reports, and parts of the IPCC (eg the Solar contribution to climate change). Yawn.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *