North pole to melt this year?
- Thread starter hornpharmd
- Start date
err...not sure what GT is talking about...he needs to go back and hide in his ivory tower until something related to his study of field comes up i guess.....
hornpharmd....why don't you explain why 9% per decade loss over 3 decades is a big deal and why we should be worried about it. also.....since we only have 3 decades of good data.....on what basis would we let this alarm us?
hornpharmd....why don't you explain why 9% per decade loss over 3 decades is a big deal and why we should be worried about it. also.....since we only have 3 decades of good data.....on what basis would we let this alarm us?
ok...so the update is this....it SEEMS (not sure yet) that we have reached our arctic sea ice minimum about 2 days ago. the past 2 days we have seen a 50,000 square kilometer uptick in ice. now.....in the past we have certainly seen this happen and then the ice fade again. in fact, in 2007 the low didn't come until the 24th of September, so i am admittedly calling it a bit early. i will continue to update you.
IF this is the low, it means we saw a decline from 2009's low of about 300,000 square kilometers. 2010 is still above 2008's low by about 250,000 square kilometers and about 700,000 square kilometers above 2007's "lowest on record" (bearing in mind our record on IJIS only goes back about 9 years.). All told we have an overall 30 years' downtrend with a 4 years' uptrend of 700,000 square kilometers. Still we see that the downtrend continues until we see something to break out of this trend.
This year's La Nina should be interesting as temperatures are expected to be significantly lower than we have seen in the Arctic in quite some time and it seems most experts (on both sides of the AGW debate) are expecting some ice increase on the minimum over the next few melt seasons.
I will of course keep you posted as to whether or not this year has actually reached its minimum and from time to time i will report back to let you know how the refreeze is comparing to other years.
IF this is the low, it means we saw a decline from 2009's low of about 300,000 square kilometers. 2010 is still above 2008's low by about 250,000 square kilometers and about 700,000 square kilometers above 2007's "lowest on record" (bearing in mind our record on IJIS only goes back about 9 years.). All told we have an overall 30 years' downtrend with a 4 years' uptrend of 700,000 square kilometers. Still we see that the downtrend continues until we see something to break out of this trend.
This year's La Nina should be interesting as temperatures are expected to be significantly lower than we have seen in the Arctic in quite some time and it seems most experts (on both sides of the AGW debate) are expecting some ice increase on the minimum over the next few melt seasons.
I will of course keep you posted as to whether or not this year has actually reached its minimum and from time to time i will report back to let you know how the refreeze is comparing to other years.
hornpharmd
5,000+ Posts
No need MOP, I'll give you an update and complete beakdowns in a week or 2 after we know the minimum has been reached.
quick update...we aren't out of the woods yet....while the low is still September 9th (or was it the 10th?) today did go backwards about 10,000. we are still above the low by about 45,000 but it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that we could see a dip below that. nonetheless, with each passing day that becomes less likely as it is quickly growing colder and the Arctic Oscillation is negative. All in all, i still suspect the low is behind us.
another quick update....the ice continues to sort of go up and then down, but is still 50,000 above it's minimum. with each passing day it becomes considerably more unlikely that we will reach a new low this year....but we haven't exactly hit a clear uptrend this year either. i suspect we will see it in a few days, but 2007's low was as late as the 24th so using that as a precedent i suppose we have until then to see a new low. however, that was an outlier and is unlikely this year considering the other weather events happening currently (i.e. low temperatures and a modest AO would suggest that is not going to happen.
well..in a strange and unexpected surprise (even NSIDC stated this season's melt was probably over) the ice suddenly went backwards by about 110,000 in the past 2 days of meltoff and achieved a new annual low by about 60,000. well, there is a chance this might be corrected upwards this morning at 10:00, but unlikely. i will continue to monitor and give updates.
ok, so after cautiously declaring the end to the melt season to be september the 9th after 3 follow up days of rising ice, the melt season (at this point it is probably more accurate to call it a "compaction" season because the drop is no longer due to melting....but ice compaction due to winds) the season continued on downward rather dramatically......today it seems much safer to say we are done.
ice concentrations have actually been increasing rather dramatically since around the 9th, but the actual area extent decreased until a few days ago. even the NSIDC cautiously declared the melt season was over on the 15th before it began dropping rather dramatically for a few days. regardless, at this point, the temperatures, the angle of the sun in the sky and the Arctic Oscillation would all say that it is fairly safe to say we won't see much more (if any) melt/compaction this year. now we await the arctic fall and winter with an impending la nina to assist in what should be a fairly dramatic refreeze season. some expect the La Nina to go well into 2011 so this could be a very interesting 12 months.....I will continue to update, but i wanted to give this 2nd attempt at a declaration of the end of the season! we will see if i am right this time or wrong again (that's going to be such a fun quote for one of my AGW opponents to use!).
ice concentrations have actually been increasing rather dramatically since around the 9th, but the actual area extent decreased until a few days ago. even the NSIDC cautiously declared the melt season was over on the 15th before it began dropping rather dramatically for a few days. regardless, at this point, the temperatures, the angle of the sun in the sky and the Arctic Oscillation would all say that it is fairly safe to say we won't see much more (if any) melt/compaction this year. now we await the arctic fall and winter with an impending la nina to assist in what should be a fairly dramatic refreeze season. some expect the La Nina to go well into 2011 so this could be a very interesting 12 months.....I will continue to update, but i wanted to give this 2nd attempt at a declaration of the end of the season! we will see if i am right this time or wrong again (that's going to be such a fun quote for one of my AGW opponents to use!).
well....the ice has now grown 140,000 square kilometers past its low which fell on the 18th of september. we now await the refreeze season. some interesting omens suggest that this could be quite a winter up there......we are already seeing crazy freezes hitting all across europe and even in parts of the US even though fall has just begun. this follows the fact that we still see a falling nino 3.4. that means we have entered a La Nina and several scientists are predicting it could be reasonably dramatic. let's see if they are correct.
pasotex
2,500+ Posts
What is ENSO and what is its net (meaning overall) impact on regional and world temperature trends? Is the increase in El Nino events a cause or an effect of ocean warming?
You keep posting about La Nina like it will have some impact on the ice trend. In the thirty years for which we have really good data on ice extent, there have been probably 8-12 El Nino and/or La Nina events (depending on how you want to count them.
This is from wiki:
You keep posting about La Nina like it will have some impact on the ice trend. In the thirty years for which we have really good data on ice extent, there have been probably 8-12 El Nino and/or La Nina events (depending on how you want to count them.
This is from wiki:
hornpharmd
5,000+ Posts
Paso, data is not important. What is important is what MOP predicts will happen.
here you go paso....you can read the Wikipedia article if you want to educate yourself on the ENSO:
wikipedia ENSO article
as for your next question, you don't seem to understand that the PDO has shifted in the last few years. after about 30 years of a primarily positive PDO leading to more frequent El Ninos and therefore warmer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, we can now reasonably expect more frequent La Ninas which lead to colder temperatures (generally speaking) in the northern hemisphere. this will lead to increased ice build up and an overall increase in the Arctic Ice but will simultaneously lead to a drop in Antarctic Ice levels. actually...if you look at cryosphere today, you will see JUST that! while the arctic reached a low mark for extent in 2007, the Antarctic reached it's peak. both have gone slightly in the other direction in the ensuing 3 years.
wikipedia ENSO article
as for your next question, you don't seem to understand that the PDO has shifted in the last few years. after about 30 years of a primarily positive PDO leading to more frequent El Ninos and therefore warmer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, we can now reasonably expect more frequent La Ninas which lead to colder temperatures (generally speaking) in the northern hemisphere. this will lead to increased ice build up and an overall increase in the Arctic Ice but will simultaneously lead to a drop in Antarctic Ice levels. actually...if you look at cryosphere today, you will see JUST that! while the arctic reached a low mark for extent in 2007, the Antarctic reached it's peak. both have gone slightly in the other direction in the ensuing 3 years.
oh...and while we are at it....there is a new peer reviewed study released in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences which shows that Arctic Ice at the end of the 20th Century was above the average of the past 9,000 years. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that although the ice has been lower throughout much of the past 9,000 years, this has failed to cause a tipping point in global warming as is frequently suggested will happen if the ice extent gets much lower.
Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
oh...and paso...for an interesting discussion on the la nina that is coming on, you should read the NOAA boards where some are discussing this being one of the most severe La Ninas in 50 years. of course this is something that Joe Bastardi has been predicting since about February, but the models didn't catch on until this summer. now we are watching the bottom drop out on this. consider these graphs from the NOAA discussion:
darn! why does the image sometimes not show up even if you save it as the image address as it asks? well here is a link to the most important image i was trying to show:
notice that the ENSO is close to dropping below all of the other top la nina's since 1949 except for 1954. It is reasonable to say that it will probably only be topped by 1954 but it has a chance to even top that la nina in intensity. actually, 1954 didn't reach the record plunge until its second year in existence, so currently 2010's La Nina is topping all of the previous top 6 strongest La Ninas....all that remains to be seen is whether it will have the staying power of those La Ninas. regardless...it is VERY reasonable of me to mention these and point out the very distinct possibility that the sea ice minimum should increase significantly over the next 12 months if not over the next couple of years and beyond. this is why this matters and this is why i report it. of course weather and climate (the collection of weather events over time obviously) are very strange things so this thing could reverse course in the coming months and be the "huge la nina that wasn't." i do realize this....but currently there is good reason to think it may be surprisingly intense.
link to a graph of the current La Nina
darn! why does the image sometimes not show up even if you save it as the image address as it asks? well here is a link to the most important image i was trying to show:
notice that the ENSO is close to dropping below all of the other top la nina's since 1949 except for 1954. It is reasonable to say that it will probably only be topped by 1954 but it has a chance to even top that la nina in intensity. actually, 1954 didn't reach the record plunge until its second year in existence, so currently 2010's La Nina is topping all of the previous top 6 strongest La Ninas....all that remains to be seen is whether it will have the staying power of those La Ninas. regardless...it is VERY reasonable of me to mention these and point out the very distinct possibility that the sea ice minimum should increase significantly over the next 12 months if not over the next couple of years and beyond. this is why this matters and this is why i report it. of course weather and climate (the collection of weather events over time obviously) are very strange things so this thing could reverse course in the coming months and be the "huge la nina that wasn't." i do realize this....but currently there is good reason to think it may be surprisingly intense.
Paso...are you really having this hard of a time understanding the point? the point is that when the PDO is positive (as it has mostly been for the past 30 years until 2007 when it seems to have switched) there are more frequent El Ninos which lead to more warmth in the Arctic....when the PDO shifts negative (which to repeat myself, appears to have happened around 2007) then we can count on more frequent La Ninas.......leading to colder weather in the northern hemisphere and more increase in ice in the Arctic. it's not that both phases of the PDO don't have both El Ninos and La Ninas...it's just that El Ninos are more dominant (in frequency and intensity) when the PDO is positive, while La Ninas are more dominant (in frequency and intensity) when the PDO is negative.
understand now? it doesn't mean you have to agree, but you keep putting forth most ridiculous strawman presentations of my posts. at least represent my post fairly before trying to dismantle it.
understand now? it doesn't mean you have to agree, but you keep putting forth most ridiculous strawman presentations of my posts. at least represent my post fairly before trying to dismantle it.
pasotex
2,500+ Posts
You don't understand that ENSO has no net impact on trend. ENSO is an effect not a cause. It cycles making a wobble (up and down) in the trend that most climate scientists just remove. The overall trend is not going to be impacted by ENSO. It is ok, Watts doesn't understand ENSO either. Look at the ocean heat retention trend or the atmospheric heat retention trend. This is not some magic change. The cookie monster deal was kind of rude, but as GT points out above you really are posting things that do not support your position.
i am suggesting that the particular manifestations of the ENSO is largely a result of the status of the PDO......i think you are mistaken my conclusion with one of my premises. needless to say, i realize i could be wrong, but you aren't representing my argument so to date, you have not responded to my point.
yeah...the reality that there may be a connection between multi-decadal oscillations and global temperatures....check this out:
that's the PDO and AMO averaged to create a new PDO/AMO average. now look at this:
that's the new PDO/AMO average overlaid on top of the temperature record from the past century. notice the correlation? now...i know correlation does not imply causation, but the interesting thing here is that there are known mechanisms in play that we know vary in terms of heating and cooling and we see a direct connection to the history of the climate for the past 100 years. coincidence? possibly....but it deserves some consideration don't you think?
that's the PDO and AMO averaged to create a new PDO/AMO average. now look at this:
that's the new PDO/AMO average overlaid on top of the temperature record from the past century. notice the correlation? now...i know correlation does not imply causation, but the interesting thing here is that there are known mechanisms in play that we know vary in terms of heating and cooling and we see a direct connection to the history of the climate for the past 100 years. coincidence? possibly....but it deserves some consideration don't you think?
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