North pole to melt this year?

i don't know if it is thin new ice GT, but i would say that maybe the same thing is going to happen next summer that has happened the past 2 summer.....meaning that the extent will grow and you will continue to be disappointed in good news? of course i don't know if that will be the case....perhaps it will resume shrinkage?

I read about that article weeks ago if i recall it was linked to a Watts blog in one of the comments or something (you really ought to check out Anthony's site so you aren't posting stuff so late!) but the article is not terribly surprising to me. tell you what, i will answer your question as soon as you satisfactorily answer my 3 simple questions which you have been avoiding for weeks.
 
johnny, i am aware that this 2 year hiatus may mean nothing. i think it will only get interesting if we recover again next year. we were SO low in 2007 that anything above that for now is just mildly interesting. if this continues for another year or two, then we will be back to where things were 5, 6 and 7 years ago. then it will get very interesting indeed. but i realize that may not happen at all.
 
Here are the facts:
The Link

Arctic ice this year was the third lowest ever recorded, well below natural climate variation standards. Celebrating the fact there were two other years worse...pretty lame. There are always going to be climate variations from day to day, month to month and year to year.
The global warming problem continues.
Mop hates polar bears.
 
accurate....that response was so painfully predictable that i wish i had published it on another site first and then pointed you to it after you posted it. i could have told you that would be the response months ago if this year experienced another huge recovery. yet, i even pointed these same facts out in my reporting. yes this was the 3rd lowest "ever recorded" (which is a very pitiful qualifier because we have only been "recording" for 30 years but nonetheless it is technically true). i have said that if next year recovers then we have a bit of a trend. currently we just have a 24 month trend in the "right" direction.......but i will point out that this year was MUCH closer to 2005 (below it by 75,000 kilometers approximately) than to 2008 (above it by well over 500,000 square kilometers).....so this year has brought us back in line with the 5 or 6 years before 2007's "record" low event.
 
every now and then i like to bring this to the top to keep it in front of us....currently the Arctic ice extent is just below middle of the pack for this time of year from the last 9 years of records. it is ahead of 2007, 2005, and 2006, but behind 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2003. We won't see a maximum until somewhere near late March so we have a ways to go, but hey...that's only 2 months away!

arctic sea ice extent
 
here is the latest update...we are coming to the end so i will want to watch this more closely over the next 2 months before the downward melt....

arctic update
 
not terribly significant i think....if cycles are 30 to 60 years in length.....30 years of downtrend isn't such a surprise...it isn't as if this has stayed consistent forever....besides, we know that there were times in the 30's and 40's when the ice seems to have been even less than now because boats were traversing it back then. so why is it a big deal when we are not even to that point yet?
 
I think he is basing it on the January chart you posted showing a decline of about 1.5 million square kilometers over 30 years which would translate into about 300 years to lose 15 million square kilometers.

The only problem is that this is January ice extent not September. An ice free North Pole in January would be a really bad thing imo.

The September chart shows a decline from 8 to 5.5 million square kilometers in 30 years which would project to losing the entire ice cap by about 2078 (roughly 70 years from 2008).
 
paso....i understand what you are saying, but i would also say that the rate of decline will slow (even if the conditions remain) as you move towards the North pole.....if only because it is colder there. in other words, i wouldn't think that the rate of loss would remain constant as ice loss moves deeper into the arctic.

having said that, the past 2 years we have seen a million square kilometer recovery.......this summer will be very interesting. on the one hand, the graph is currently in the middle of the pack, on the other hand the AO has been decidedly lower than in a long time so the movement of ice into the warmer waters seems less likely. if this remains true, we may see far less melt off once again and another year of "recovery" over last year.......this is only speculation obviously and time will be the true truth-teller.
 
I am watching the AO (Arctic Oscillation) fairly closely and am intrigued by what has happened the last couple of months. after years of being largely positive in its anomaly...it has now been very negative for 2 months. this is particularly interesting because it means less ice will be pushed out into warmer waters to melt as in 2007 when the AO was very high and lots of ice melt occurred. while the extent build up is only average for the last 9 years and below the 30 years average....we may see another significant recovery if this has allowed ice to grow thicker and more mature in the Arctic Ocean.


here is the graph going back a few decades

month.ao.gif


but here is the past few months:

ao.obs.gif
 
"a) Since both those graphs had a linear curve fit, I extrapolated. "

Thus not based on anything scientific. There are many other factors at play that could lead to escalation.

"b) I suppose the rate of melt could increase."

It could and this is the scary part.

"c) When the ice is gone, we'll finally be done with this pesky ice age...then it will start cooling again... "

Nothing pesky about it. Significant ice loss such as the major loss of ice in arctic could spell dire consequences and change the popullation of our planet drastically. It is not a good thing. If it happens over a very long time (thousands of years) then we have to time to adapt to it. But if it happens much quicker (50-100 years) then we are in real trouble.
 
interesting...we are near the end of the winter expansion of Arctic sea ice....currently this year is good for at no lower than 3rd lowest...it is VERY close to moving to 4th in that department (as in, if tomorrow sees as much freezing as today it will move into 4th, it is currently less than 20,000 behind 2005's winter peak) , but my guess is it won't climb much higher than that. typically the middle of March is the high mark for winter at the latest before it starts the long melting season.

ijis
 
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