Climate Gate's Phillip Jones Admits no Global Warming Since 1995

Professor Phil Jones has bowed to the inevitable and accepted the reality that the data was showing him for fifteen years.  Fifteen years is a long time to go without creditable evidence of global warming.  This at least ends the spurious debate over the validity of supposed ongoing warming.

The climate warmed modestly over perhaps-s two decades leading up to 1995, at which point it peaked and settled back rather gently.  That is noteworthy, because known cooling events are quite abrupt.

I have been arguing recently that the evidence supports an increase in Atlantic heat distribution that we know little about.  We suffer from almost no data points but the two that I have are powerful.

The first is that the velocity of the Gulf Stream slowed sharply or something significant happened.  Again we have too little data.

The second is the discovery that during the Bronze Age, when temperatures were warm and constant for millennia or two in Northern Europe, the temperature of the Atlantic surface waters was an astonishing two degrees warmer!

Those are my two data points.  It tells me that the most likely forcer of warming in the northern hemisphere is changes in the Atlantic heat machine.  The evidence to date supports exactly that interpretation.

The Arctic sea ice continues to disintegrate and should be largely gone in 2012.  Even the scientists up there are now saying that this is true in a tone that suggests that they cannot believe their eyes.  The press has not quite woken up yet and more troublesome, they are still attached to the anthropogenic theory which is simply inadequate to now explain what is happening in the Arctic.

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

By JONATHAN PETRE

Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010

Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing

There has been no global warming since 1995

Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. 

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organizational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory. 

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by skeptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that skeptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analyzed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

     

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realized that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organization in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not. 

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Skeptics’ said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticized those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the skeptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, skeptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

Mid July Sea Ice

As of the 15 July the sea ice looks generally weaker and we have weeks of melting left. There is no sign of any strong winds which would hugely shift much of this material.

On the other hand the prevalence of sixty percent coverage throughout is saying a lot.

http://www.socc.ca/cms/en/socc/seaIce/currentSeaIce.aspx


We have possibly another eight weeks of net melting to contend with and this looks like a lot of open areas are coming.

The western part of Lancaster Sound is still plugged, but this should go now. If all is similar to last year we should have an open North West Passage. That would be a remarkable three years straight. The message to shippers is that unless winter drops another half degree, this channel is open and likely open every year with a moderate risk of closing. In other words it is subject to bad weather.

We will not be sailing the north coast of Greenland yet but I think that opening up along the north coast of the Arctic islands is becoming possible with the right wind conditions.

In fact, this is showing us that we are on the last stage of the breakup of the Arctic sea ice pack. Nothing looks stable and there is now scant multiyear ice. A strong wind can reshape it all at will as surprisingly as 2007.

We are very much on schedule for essentially clear seas in 2012. Ice loss this year will be heavy and we can no longer expect any change over the next two. The sea ice will establish a new equilibrium between new winter ice and the summer melt out. Multi year ice will become insignificant and we will simply get a carry over from the past year that naturally rotates into warmer waters every year.

El Niño Arrives

The early return of El Nino cannot be good news when the previous one happened in 2006 and was followed by the 2007 sea ice reduction. If we make the conjecture that this signals a pending heat release into the Northern hemisphere, then this presages a blow out in the Arctic during 2011. Aren’t I getting brave?

I like the idea of El Nino been the necessary heat pump. It solves a few issues, but the conjecture is bit premature. If right though, then the predicted sea ice collapse which has already begun in earnest this past four years will be easily completed by 2012 as I predicted two full years ago when everyone else was saying seventy years. Right now, Mother Nature is winding up to bat it out of the park.

Once all the ice is gone, the arctic surface water will warm up slightly over several years and have the effect of maximizing the open water season. I may actually get to sail the high Arctic fairly soon.

El Niño Arrives; Expected to Persist through Winter 2009-10

July 9, 2009
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090709_elnino.html

NOAA scientists today announced the arrival of El Niño, a climate phenomenon with a significant influence on global weather, ocean conditions and marine fisheries. El Niño, the periodic warming of central and eastern tropical Pacific waters, occurs on average every two to five years and typically lasts about 12 months.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/images/surfacetemp_lastweek_300.jpg


Sea surface temperatures along the equatorial Eastern Pacific, as of July 1, are at least one degree above average — a sign of El Niño. Animation.

High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

NOAA expects this El Niño to continue developing during the next several months, with further strengthening possible. The event is expected to last through winter 2009-10.

“Advanced climate science allows us to alert industries, governments and emergency managers about the weather conditions El Niño may bring so these can be factored into decision-making and ultimately protect life, property and the economy,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator.

El Niño's impacts depend on a variety of factors, such as intensity and extent of ocean warming, and the time of year. Contrary to popular belief, not all effects are negative. On the positive side, El Niño can help to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity. In the United States, it typically brings beneficial winter precipitation to the arid Southwest, less wintry weather across the North, and a reduced risk of Florida wildfires.

El Niño’s negative impacts have included damaging winter storms in California and increased storminess across the southern United States. Some past El Niños have also produced severe flooding and mudslides in Central and South America, and drought in Indonesia.

An El Niño event may significantly diminish ocean productivity off the west coast by limiting weather patterns that cause upwelling, or nutrient circulation in the ocean. These nutrients are the foundation of a vibrant marine food web and could negatively impact food sources for several types of birds, fish and marine mammals.

In its monthly El Niño diagnostics discussion today, scientists with the NOAA National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center noted weekly eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures were at least 1.0 degree C above average at the end of June. The most recent El Niño occurred in 2006.

El Niño includes weaker trade winds, increased rainfall over the central tropical Pacific, and decreased rainfall in Indonesia. These vast rainfall patterns in the tropics are responsible for many of El Niño’s global effects on weather patterns.

NOAA will continue to monitor the rapidly evolving situation in the tropical Pacific, and will provide more detailed information on possible Atlantic hurricane impacts in its updated Seasonal Hurricane Outlook scheduled for release on August 6, 2009.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

Arctic Sea Ice Collapse Beginning

For some reason this is my week for sea ice. This report is additional confirmation of the present rapidity of the ice loss. They still talk of averages which misleads. Understanding that the ice reduction is best modeled on the basis of a constant size withdrawal, you get an accelerating effect that is now beginning to be very noticeable.

Simple calculation led me to project clear summer seas as early as 2012 back in 2007. NASA woke up and followed suit a few months later. We were all ignored since the press is never going to understand a non linear behavior.

Any way if the average loss has been seven inches a year over the past four years, then the present decline rate is likely around nine inches for this year. Figure ten or so next year and a foot thereafter and we are ice free in 2012. We simply do not have enough multi year ice left to make an iota of difference.

After all the ice has been cleared, we will see a new regime in which winter ice will go through a spring breakup and a swift removal that could be complete as early as mid July. This would provide a comfortable two month sailing season over the top.

Present indications suggest that we are in fact on our way to possibly losing all our multi year sea ice within the next five years. This report and others tell us we can not waffle anymore. In fact this report waffles by not pointing out that this loss is huge by any comparison.

Satellite survey reveals dramatic Arctic sea-ice thinning

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/39779

Scientists have evaluated for the first time how much the thickness and volume of Arctic sea ice, not just the ice's surface area, have shrunk since 2004 across the Arctic Ocean basin. Even where the sea ice cover persists despite climate change in the region, a vast portion of the remaining ice layer has become thinner than it used to be, the new study finds.

"Even in years when the overall extent of sea ice remains stable or grows slightly, the thickness and volume of the ice cover is continuing to decline, making the ice more vulnerable to continued shrinkage," says Ron Kwok, senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and leader of the study.

Kwok and colleagues at NASA and the University of Washington, in Seattle, report that Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick, older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record.

Using ICESat measurements, scientists found that overall Arctic sea ice thinned about 17.8 centimeters (7 inches) a year, for a total of 67 cm (2.2 feet) over four winters. The total area covered by the thicker, older, multi-year ice that survives one or more summers shrank by more than 40 percent.

The team's findings were published today, Tuesday 7 July, in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The researchers used measurements from NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to generate the first basin-wide estimate of the thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean's ice cover. The data covers the period from the fall of 2003 through the winter of 2008.

Kwok says the results offer a better understanding of the regional distribution of thick and thin ice in the Arctic, presenting a much more telling picture of what's going on in the Arctic than measurements of how much of the Arctic Ocean is covered in ice alone can.

"Ice volume allows us to calculate annual ice production and gives us an inventory of the freshwater and total ice mass stored in Arctic sea ice," he notes. "Our data will help scientists better understand how fast the volume of Arctic ice is decreasing and how soon we might see a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer."
The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and intense cold sets in. In the summer, driven by wind and ocean currents, some of that ice naturally flows out of the Arctic, while much of it melts in place. But not all of the Arctic ice thaws each summer: the thicker, older ice is more likely to survive. Seasonal sea ice usually reaches about 1.83 meters (6 feet) in thickness, while multi-year ice averages 2.74 m (9 ft).

In recent years, however, the amount of ice replaced in the winter has not been sufficient to replace summer ice losses. This leads to more open water in summer, which then absorbs more heat, warming the ocean and further melting the ice. Between 2004 and 2008, multi-year ice cover shrank 42 percent, or 1.54 million square kilometers (595,000 square miles) – nearly the size of Alaska's land area.

During the study period, the relative contributions of the two ice types to the total volume of the Arctic's ice cover did a complete flip-flop. In 2003, 62 percent of the Arctic's total ice volume was stored in multi-year ice, with 38 percent stored in first-year seasonal ice. By 2008, 68 percent of the total ice volume was first-year ice, with 32 percent multi-year.

Study co-author and ICESat Project Scientist Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., says ICESat makes it possible to monitor ice thickness and volume changes over the entire Arctic Ocean for the first time.

"One of the main things that has been missing from information about what is happening with sea ice is comprehensive data about ice thickness," says Zwally. "U.S. Navy submarines provide a long-term, high-resolution record of ice thickness over only parts of the Arctic. The submarine data agree with the ICESat measurements, giving us great confidence in satellites as a way of monitoring thickness across the whole Arctic Basin."

The authors attribute the changes in the overall thickness and volume of Arctic Ocean sea ice to the recent warming and anomalies in patterns of sea ice circulation. "The near-zero replenishment of the multi-year ice cover, combined with unusual exports of ice out of the Arctic after the summers of 2005 and 2007, have both played significant roles in the loss of Arctic sea ice volume over the ICESat record," says Kwok.

Sea Ice July 2009

The areal extent of the sea ice was around a half million square kilometers larger this year than it was over the past four years. However that has abruptly changed and it is almost as low now as 2007. Most interesting this year is that Davis Strait is wide open already and it is also way ahead on the Eastern side by Russia.

http://www.socc.ca/cms/en/socc/seaIce/currentSeaIce.aspx

What appears different this year to this observer is that the polar ice seems more intact for the moment. That means to me that the Northwest Passage may stay sealed. No bets yet.

The period of maximum attack on the ice has begun and it will be interesting to see just how much it opens up.

Do recall that it was reported much thinner than expected earlier this spring, so these pictures may be misleading.

I will say however, that it is very vulnerable to wind activity.

I notice that I can sail deep along the north coast of Greenland for the first time and that Lancaster is already wide open until you hit the end of Ellesmere.

The attached report is important because it discounts the extent of sea ice decline during the medieval warm period. That may be because of proxy failure rather than reality. However, the strong warming in the early part of the twentieth century kicked of an ongoing cycle of ice retreat with modest recoveries. Therefore the net loss over each cycle is positive for one century.

Up to this point, I was only comfortable that that held true for the past three decades or so. Our present decade is only slightly cooler than the past decade, but it is apparent that the trend line on ice loss is still positive.

We are set up right now, should weather cooperate, for another sharp decline in ice thickness this year, at a time in which there is much less to work with. Again the remarkable and unexpected thinness this spring is remarked.

I hate to say this, but we are on track for open water around the pole in 2012. Nothing has reversed the established trend, and this item has established that the condition has persisted over a whole century and losses now are quite visible and reflect expectations of final breakup.

The Least Sea Ice In 800 Years

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/The_Least_Sea_Ice_In_800_Years_999.html

by Staff Writers
Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Jul 03, 2009

New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics.

There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own 'archive' of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years - such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.

Modern research and historic records

"We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate" explains Aslak Grinsted, geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

In order to determine how much sea ice there has been, the researchers needed to turn to data from the logbooks of ships, which whalers and fisherman kept of their expeditions to the boundary of the sea ice. The ship logbooks are very precise and go all the way back to the 16th century.

They relate at which geographical position the ice was found. Another source of information about the ice are records from harbours in Iceland, where the severity of the winters have been recorded since the end of the 18th century.

By combining the curve of the climate with the actual historical records of the distribution of the ice, researchers have been able to reconstruct the extent of the sea ice all the way back to the 13th century. Even though the 13th century was a warm period, the calculations show that there has never been so little sea ice as in the 20th century.

In the middle of the 17th century there was also a sharp decline in sea ice, but it lastet only a very brief period. The greatest cover of sea ice was in a period around 1700-1800, which is also called the 'Little Ice Age'.

"There was a sharp change in the ice cover at the start of the 20th century," explains Aslak Grinsted. He explains, that the ice shrank by 300.000 km2 in the space of ten years from 1910-1920. So you can see that there have been sudden changes throughout time, but here during the last few years we have had some record years with very little ice extent.

"We see that the sea ice is shrinking to a level which has not been seen in more than 800 years", concludes Aslak Grinsted.

Current Sea Ice May 2009 new web site

They have launched a new web site so we have a new address for the map on current sea ice. Be sure to check the second map to compare present levels with the twenty year average.

http://www.socc.ca/cms/en/socc/seaIce/currentSeaIce.aspx

They also have a useful list of related links including the following:

http://www.polardata.ca/login.ccin

Anyway the retreat has begun and it looks like we will get a reduction similar to last year. What is more troubling, are reports from the ice observing a lack of multiyear ice. We do not know if that is observational luck of the winds putting the wrong ice in the right place or if the losses of the past two years are way more general than anticipated. A satellite map will not help there until late summer when an accelerating collapse cannot be ignored.

It is plausible that the chronic ice loss of the past decade has not ended at all and is continuing unabated. 2007 was dramatic because wind systems revealed just how much had already been lost. We are now discovering that multi year ice appears to be largely gone.

We still have a couple of years of sea ice reduction to go through, but a clear sea by 2012 continues to look plausible. A few have actually accepted the possibility and have said as much to avoid been made fools of by Mother Nature.

We may start getting some serious surprises in large stretches of open sea already this fall.

For those unfamiliar with earlier posts by myself on this subject, it is apparent that the arctic has been subject to an incremental warming action for at least thirty years that is much the same year after year. We have now entered the collapse phase that should possibly see all the ice removed as early as 2012. This is obviously a nonlinear behavior.

The cause may be an unobserved current change or a consistent unobserved atmospheric shift. It appears to be uniform which supports a current shift.

2008 Winter Sea Ice Data

This catches us up on the apparent total impact generated by the warming that took place in 2007. It was hardly obvious at the time, but all that warm water ripped into the ability of the sea ice to accrete. A lot less than normal was thus produced this past winter.

Those conditions do not exist this winter, and we are been subjected to a full press arctic chill. It is reasonable to anticipate a full season’s ice production this winter, if not even an increase. 2007 showed us just how quickly the sea ice can be reduced with the right conditions. Had the conditions of 2007 continued, then all the ice would have been easily removed by 2012, as then projected. Once again the weather has changed. Expect to complain about cold winters for a decade at least.

Of course diehards are already claiming that global warming is now preventing the next ice age.

Right now, the right question should be how much further this sudden cooling downswing has to go before it plateaus. Notice I did not say rebound. Rising seems to take a very long time and likely averages less than a tenth of a degree per year, and there is no assurance that it will climb as high as this time.

It would be nice to link this process directly to solar radiation with a high degree of real certainty. That way it would become possible to model other effects properly including CO2. This time around, it looks like the CO2 enthusiasts jumped on the wrong trend and are now having it thrown back in their faces.

http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=2031

Arctic Sea Ice Is Suddenly Getting Thinner As Well As Receding

Posted on December 19th, 2008

ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2008) — Last winter, the thickness of sea ice in large parts of the Arctic fell by nearly half a metre (19 per cent) compared with the average thickness of the previous five winters. This followed the dramatic 2007 summer low when Arctic ice extent dropped to its lowest level since records began.

Up until last winter, the thickness of Arctic sea ice showed a slow downward trend during the previous five winters, but after the summer 2007 record low extent, the thickness of the ice also nose-dived. What is concerning is that sea ice is not just receding but it is also thinning.

Some scientists blamed the record summer 2007 ice extent low on unusually warm weather conditions over the Arctic, but this summer, sea ice extent reached the second lowest level since records began, even though the Arctic had a relatively cool summer. Dr Katharine Giles, who led the study and is based at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London – part of the National Centre for Earth Observation, says: “This summer’s low ice extent doesn’t seem to have been driven by warm weather, so the question is, was last winter’s thinning behind it?”

The team of researchers, including Dr Seymour Laxon and Andy Ridout, used satellites to measure sea ice thickness over the Arctic from 2002 to 2008. Winter sea ice in the Arctic is around two and half metres thick on average. Ice thickness can be calculated from the time it takes a radar pulse to travel from a satellite to the surface of the ice and back again.

The research - reported in Geophysical Research Letters - showed that last winter the average thickness of sea ice over the whole Arctic fell by 26cm (10 per cent) compared with the average thickness of the previous five winters, but sea ice in the western Arctic lost around 49cm of thickness. This region of the Arctic saw the North-West passage become ice free and open to shipping for the first time in 30 years during the summer of 2007.

The team is the first to measure ice thickness throughout the Arctic winter, from October to March, over more than half of the Arctic, using the European Space Agency’s Envisat satellite. Before this, Christian Haas of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, had discovered thinner ice in a small region around the North Pole. Whilst the overall loss of older, thicker ice led researchers to speculate that Arctic sea ice had probably thinned, this is the first time scientists have been able to say for definite that the ice thinning was widespread and occurred in areas of both young and old ice.

“The extent of sea ice in the Arctic is down to a number of factors, including warm weather melting it as well as currents and the wind blowing it around, so it’s important to know how ice thickness is changing as well as the extent of the ice,” added Giles.

Final Sea Ice

Needless to say, I am no longer alone in recognizing that the perennial sea ice will be gone in five years. When I posted the aggressive 2012 prediction late last summer, the consensus was many decades. This item shows that most are now bowing to the inevitable. The areal extent was slightly larger than last year, but the unusual winds of 2007 did not come along and perhaps compress it more.

We have no way of knowing for sure, but I expect that this year’s actual ice loss was significant though not as large as last years. It is still a loss rather than a gain and what is now obvious to everyone is that we are observing the dissolution of the perennial Arctic sea ice. As I posted in the past, the average loss per year is linear inasmuch as roughly the same value M will be extracted from the total. But now the exposed area of the Arctic is increasing sharply, the value of M can even be expected to modestly increase as more solar energy is absorbed.

All this adds up to an accelerating collapse of the ice over the next four years. I have yet to see a reason to back of my 2012 prediction. It is necessary to have a much colder and much longer winter than last year’s.

As I pointed out to my readers last year, this decline is all about the effect of a small incremental increase M in available heat to the Arctic. As the total ice mass declines, the effect of m steadily increases, until it becomes the dominant factor when there is little of the original ice left. We are obviously there and it can only get worse now until the long term ice is all gone over the next four years or so.

This summer, the melting and warming of the ice mass continued. Major parts of the super thick floating ice sheets broke free confirming the ongoing weakening and warming of even this ice. And this item reports that new ice that is visible is weak and thin.

I would like to believe that the apparent slight reduction in solar energy is sufficient to induce a cooling of the Northern Hemisphere. Right now the evidence is pretty sketchy and not obvious, reports to the contrary.

We have also just had a lively hurricane season which shows that the equatorial heat engine is not shut down and is winding up again. Maybe with this blow out, we will now get a couple of quiet years.

Last year proved that none of this helped in predicting the upcoming winter. However a mild winter seems to presage a warm summer in the Arctic.

Arctic Sea Ice Season Underscores Accelerating Decline
Written by Dana Nuccitelli

Published on September 17th, 2008

Posted in Environmental & Climate Science

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the second-lowest extent recorded since the dawn of the satellite era.

While above the record minimum Arctic sea ice extent set on September 16, 2007, this year further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years.

Despite overall cooler summer temperatures, the 2008 minimum extent is only 390,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), or 9.4%, more than the record-setting 2007 minimum. The 2008 minimum extent is 15.0% less than the next-lowest minimum extent set in 2005 and 33.1% less than the average minimum extent from 1979 to 2000.

This season further reinforces the long-term downward trend of sea ice extent.

Even though the sea ice didn’t retreat this year as much as last summer, “there was no real sign of recovery,” said Walt Meier of NSIDC. This year was cooler and other weather conditions weren’t as bad, he said.

“We’re kind of in a new state of the Arctic basically, and it’s not a good one,” Meier said. “We’re definitely sliding towards a point where the summer sea ice will be gone.”

Scientists have predicted that the Arctic will become ice free in the summer by the year 2013, if not sooner. This also does not bode well for global warming, since ice reflects sunlight whereas dark oceans absorb it.

On top of that, the Arctic ice melting trend has shifted. Normally the ice would reach its minimum extent by early September, but after the record melt of 2007, much of the ice reformed with much less thickness, allowing it to continue to melt through mid-September this year.

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

The Arctic is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet, and can be considered a ‘canary in the coal mine’. Right now, that canary is not in good health.

2012 Arctic Sea Ice Minima

I have attached a copy of friday's NASA report on the current status of the annual sea ice melt in the Arctic.

This year we do not have the wind system driving the pack ice out of the western Arctic as occured last season. We can assume that this is because we had a much more conventional winter and that there was no surplus heat to dispose of.

In any event, there is scant perennial ice left in the Arctic today. I expect that the extent and volume of perennial sea ice is likely to reach a stable minima over the next five years. What I mean by his is that a natural cycle of creation and destruction will dominate in which a finite amount of ice created close to the arctic islands will travel perhaps three years accumulating more ice each season until pushed into Arctic Gyre and been broken up.

It is apparent that the ice caught in the Gyre is losing more mass than it is gaining during the winter and will eventually reach a mass minima.

Much as I would love to see a month of clear sailing in the Arctic, it is certainty not necessary.

Today the areal extent is still large for lack of wind packing, but it is also very obvious that the coverage is likely around fifty percent and it will melt for another six weeks.

As I have emphasized in the past, we are going to have a net loss of ice mass again this year. There has been no reversal of this very clear trend. The problem for observers has been that the apparent areal extent of the annual winter ice has totally obscured our ability to measure the actual sea ice mass.

That is why we woke up one morning in 2000 and discovered that sixty percent had disappeared over the past forty years, which had been the last time we checked. I think that we are a little better at it now.

And as I have pointed out last year, we are in the final collapse phase of this primary melt. The winds last year gave it all a good kick, but it was already primed. This is a normal year, so once again the losses are still obscured.

We are still very much on track for a minima been established by 2012 as the collapse is continuing and shows no sign of been even slowed down.

Daily image update

Sea ice data updated daily, with one-day lag: extent (left), time series (right). Orange line in extent image and gray line in timeseries show normal extent for the day shown from 1979 to 2000. Click for high-resolution versions. To learn more about the data used, see About the data.

—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the polar regions cool and moderating global climate. According to scientific measurements, Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically over at least the past thirty years, with the most extreme decline seen in the summer melt season.

Read timely scientific analysis year-round below. We provide an update during the first week of each month, or more frequently as conditions warrant.

Please credit the National Snow and Ice Data Center for image or content use unless otherwise noted beneath each image.

Have a question about sea ice? Visit our updated questions and answers page.

August 1, 2008

Race between waning sunlight and thin ice

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The Arctic sea ice is now at the peak of the melt season. Although ice extent is below average, it seems less likely that extent will approach last year’s record low.

The pace of summer decline is slower than last year’s record-shattering rate, and peak sunlight has passed with the summer solstice. However, at least six weeks of melt are left in the season and much of the remaining ice is thin and vulnerable to rapid loss. A race has developed between the waning sunlight and the weakened ice.

Note: Analysis updates, unless otherwise noted, now show a single-day extent value for Figure 1, as opposed to the standard monthly average. While monthly average extent images are more accurate in understanding long-term changes, the daily images are helpful in monitoring sea ice conditions in near-real time.

Figure 1. Daily Arctic sea ice extent for July 31, 2008 was 7.71 million square kilometers (3.98 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979-2000 average extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data.

—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

High-resolution image

Overview of conditions

Arctic sea ice extent on July 31 stood at 7.71 million square kilometers (3.98 million square miles). While extent was below the 1979 to 2000 average of 8.88 million square kilometers (3.43 million square miles), it was 0.89 million square kilometers (0.35 million square miles) above the value for July 31, 2007. As is normal for this time of year, melt is occurring throughout the Arctic, even at the North Pole.

Figure 2. Daily sea ice extent; the blue line indicates 2008; the gray line indicates extent from 1979 to 2000; the dotted green line shows extent for 2007. Sea Ice Index data.
—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

High-resolution Image

Conditions in context

Sea ice extent continues to decline, but we have not yet seen last July’s period of accelerated decline. Part of the explanation is that temperatures were cooler in the last two weeks of July, especially north of Alaska.

Because we are past the summer solstice, the amount of potential solar energy reaching the surface is waning. The rate of decline should soon start to slow, reducing the likelihood of breaking last year's record sea ice minimum.

Figure 3. Using average long-term decline rates is one way to project sea ice extent at the end of the 2008 season. The bottom dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation faster than normal, the middle dashed line shows decline at average rates, and the top dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation slower.

—Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

High-resolution image

Slower decline than 2007

To estimate the range of possibilities, we have used average long-term daily decline rates to project ice extent during the rest of the season (dashed blue lines). The bottom dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation faster than normal, the middle dashed line shows decline at average rates, and the top dashed line shows decline rate one standard deviation slower.

If the Arctic experiences a normal decline rate, the minimum extent will be between the second-lowest extent, which occurred in 2005, and the third-lowest extent, which occurred in 2002. Even at a rate one standard deviation faster than normal, the extent will not fall below last year’s minimum—so it appears unlikely that we will set a new record low.

Figure 4. Passive-microwave satellite data shows ice concentration on July 31, 2008. Widespread areas of low concentration ice exist, shown in yellows. NASA AMSR-E data.

—Credit:From National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy University of Bremen

High-resolution image

But a more vulnerable ice cover

Nevertheless, it is perhaps too soon to make a definitive pronouncement concerning this year’s probable extent at the summer minimum. The Arctic sea ice is in a condition we have not seen since satellites began taking measurements. As discussed in our April analysis, thin first-year ice dominated the Arctic early in the melt season. Thin ice is much more vulnerable to melting completely during the summer; it seems likely that we will see a faster-than-normal rate of decline through the rest of the summer.

Building on our July 17 analysis, the fragility of the current ice conditions is evident in the sea ice concentration fields produced at the University of Bremen using NASA Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer (AMSR) data. Widespread areas of reduced ice concentration exist, particularly in the Beaufort Sea. Even north of 85 degrees latitude, pockets of much-reduced ice cover appear. The passive microwave data used in Figure 4 tends to underestimate ice concentration during summer because melt water on the surface of the ice can be mistaken for open water. Nevertheless, such low concentrations indicate strong melt and a broken, thin ice cover that is potentially vulnerable to rapid melt.

Figure 5.Visible-band satellite imagery confirms the low-concentration ice cover seen in Figure 4. This view places NASA MODIS Aqua data in a perspective generated in Google Earth, simulating a view from far above Earth.

—Credit: From National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy NASA

High-resolution image

July Sea Ice

I want to show you these two trend lines for polar sea ice. It very much reflects what has been experienced. This year we have bounced back to norm and we can expect little this year that compares to last year’s drama. Then last year, almost no one else was watching while today it seems everyone is.

North Pole:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/n_plot.html

South Pole:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/s_plot.html

Without question, we have a very clear twenty year negative slope for the north whose explanation is a strict linear surplus of heat annually injected into the Arctic. Last year we saw that the annual melt is now starting to go non linear. This is hugely masked by the annual coverage of the one year ice, but rest assured that the long term ice is now shrinking very fast and will be all gone within the next several years and possibly as soon as 2012. This masking effect kept everyone asleep until submarine survey work in 2000 disclosed that sixty percent of the perennial ice had disappeared.

Now that we have this chart, it appears likely that the majority of the sixty percent loss actually took place during the decade of the nineties, rather than stretched out over the preceding forty years. The apparent rapid decline we are now witnessing fits this scenario very well and is well beyond my most conservative expectations.

An inspection of the current sea ice cover reveals that the extent of the Arctic Sea currently exhibiting one hundred percent ice cover is likely around a mere twenty percent. Even more curious, this concentration is scattered throughout the Arctic as a result of wind concentration. There are no apparent huge zones of embayment that I suspect was the expectation a couple of decades ago. Everything is floating and drifting.

In fact, it is possible to speculate that the right combination of winds could even open up the North Pole for shipping and even all sorts of alternative circumpolar routings. The lesson here though, is that this winter sea ice is ample enough to likely always represent a formidable barrier to actual summer shipping. Oh well, it was a nice idea.

This means that the perennial ice is warming up nicely as it circulates and is certainly disappearing very quickly. All things point to the Arctic in its equivalent of its spring breakup phase. And this season is not demonstrating any reversal of this activity. I think that essentially all long term ice will be gone by 2012. We will still have the annual ice cover and it’s melting to sort out and possibly understand.

Of course, if the sunspot theorists are right this is likely our very last warm Arctic summer for a long time. We are currently between cycles and the onset of sunspots is long overdue. That means that two popularized scientific theories, both based on far too incomplete data bordering on singular coincidence are holding diametrically opposed positions. Do you wonder why wise politicians are trying to keep their heads down?

I suppose that the most amusing scenario would be to see nothing much happen. That means that this modest warming matures and leaves us with a warm period not unlike many before and explained exactly the same way. That would allow both theories to be quietly forgotten while we reorganize industry away from burning fossil fuels anyway.

Duane Storey posts on fifty percent loss of sea ice voulme since 2004

Nice little story by Duane Storey on the Arctic Sea Ice. The new information that he refers to is that the actual volume of sea ice has halved since 2004. This is far more that I hade thought. My earlier postings on the mathematical effect of a constant annual supply of heat into the Arctic as experienced for the past thirty years or so informed us of the final collapse phenomena. It nothing changes, all the sea ice will thus clear in the next three to four years. It can only now be postponed by a bitter cold winter comparable to the winters of the late fifties. We actually need a string of very cold winters.

Do not hold your breathe. We are having a real winter this year but I am unconvinced as to its comparable coldness. Last year was anomalous and just plain weird. This winter is very normal in terms of the last decade. The high level of winter storms is actually releasing heat in the northeast corridor taking the edge of the Arctic air mass. I also have not heard any howls from the common super cold weather we catch out west from time to time. Of course, I simply may not have heard it and as yet I do not have data. The point is that the weather looks normal if you think 2005 was normal, but not necessarily normal as per 1995. I really want to hear that the pine beetle is in retreat.

January 10th, 2008 | By Duane Storey

Big Trouble In Little Arctic

I get a lot of notifications in my inbox daily about scientific rumblings going on in the world, but this one caught my eye this evening. Some recent NASA data in the arctic region seems to point to a huge acceleration in the melting rate of the ice — should the melting continue at its current rate, NASA scientists project that it’s only a matter of years before the arctic might be completely ice free in the summers.

An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.

Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”

So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?

“The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming,” said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. “Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”

…

The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.

Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004’s total.

In addition to changes in the arctic ice, there are also many changes going on with permafrost regions in the arctic, in particular with Greenland and Alaska:

Alaska’s frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, “it’s very significant,” said University of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.

Surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean this summer were the highest in 77 years of record-keeping, with some places 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to research to be released Wednesday by University of Washington’s Michael Steele.

Greenland, in particular, is a significant bellwether. Most of its surface is covered by ice. If it completely melted something key scientists think would likely take centuries, not decades it could add more than 22 feet to the world’s sea level.

However, for nearly the past 30 years, the data pattern of its ice sheet melt has zigzagged. A bad year, like 2005, would be followed by a couple of lesser years.

According to that pattern, 2007 shouldn’t have been a major melt year, but it was, said Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, which gathered the latest data.

“I’m quite concerned,” he said. “Now I look at 2008. Will it be even warmer than the past year?”

If you’ve followed any reports on global warming in the past few years, the main consensus with most of them is that we are really at a point of no return, something that this latest batch of data also seems to suggest.