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The problem with D_C_S's argument is that the atmosphere isn't in equilibrium.
If we ignore the long term effects, then the oceanic CO2 absorption rate at any point in time is driven by the current CO2 concentration. In other words, I agree with the other posters who don't see how the rate of emissions affects CO2 absorption at all in the short-run.
Global warming 2016: Arctic spin
Here's a great blog post by Tamino that tells this year's Arctic sea ice story and how a few cowards continuously lie(d) about it to their fellow men: Global Warming 2016: Arctic Spin The useful thing about a canary in a coal mine is that it warns you of danger before the danger kills you. When...
I agree with John Christensen, but also want to point out that what AnotherJourney is saying sounds like an excellent idea for a new thread on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum (see link at the top of this page).
Arctic sea ice minimum volume 1979-2016
Andy Lee Robinson has updated his PIOMAS sea ice volume minimum video:
I will, as usual, be taking my annual virtual trip to the North Pole.
Thanks, Captain Neven!
The Arctic is not an adventure playground
Some of you may already have heard about how this year a cruise ship called Crystal Serenity is going to sail the Northwest Passage with more than 1000 guests. Prices range from $22,000 to $121,000 dollars per passenger (drinks included). Here's how the journey is being advertized: Follow in t...
A correction to the clarifications:
What you are describing could be called "Degree Days".
But we are talking about "Degree Days Freezing" which means that only temperatures below zero count. I.e. while "-10C" adds 10 to the cumulative total, "+2C" leaves the total unchanged.
On Neven's Sea Ice Graph Page, there is also a "Degree Days Thawing" (and its associate anomaly), in which all negative temperatures have been replaced with 0.
Winter analysis addendum
A couple of things were missing from the 2015/2016 winter analysis posted a few days ago, and so I've decided to present them in this separate blog post. Most of these images come from the website of NSIDC research scientist Andrew Slater. Another way to express how warm or not-cold the Arctic ...
I would like to completely disagree about the possible effectiveness of a carbon tax.
When gasoline hit $5.00 / gallon in California a few years ago, bus ridership skyrocketed, especially during the commute hours. Where two busses per hour were all that were needed to pick up everyone on my route before that (and they were only 50% full), they were able to run 6 SRO busses per hour for over a month (until gas prices fell again).
I have no doubt that $10.00 / gallon would further increase the use of public transit.
And while people may not trade in their SUVs immediately, they tend not to replace them when gas prices are high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/03/AR2005100301657.html
If the atmosphere gets cleaned up...
Everybody wants clean air. We in the West do, the Chinese do, and it'll also be high on the wish list of Indians and people from other developing nations, once their living standards go up. But good things can also have drawbacks. And in this case it could be a drawback that a place like the Arc...
Hi, Rob. I enjoyed seeing your hindcast above, and was particularly impressed by the delta=-0.09 for 2012.
I have an idea for correcting for the "data point in the training set" bias you refer to:
Calculate your parameters by deleting the year you are calculating.
(I.e. if you are using 1992-2012 as the baseline, then when calculating 2006, you'd use 1992-2005 union 2007-2012, but not 2006)
My guess is that it would still be fairly darn good and would allow you to more accurately determine of the correct confidence interval, etc.
2015 SIPN Sea Ice Outlook: June report
The first Sea Ice Outlook of this year has been published. The SIO is organized by the Sea Ice Prediction Network (as part of the Arctic research program 'Study of Environmental Arctic Change', or SEARCH), and is a compilation of projections for the September 2015 Arctic sea ice extent, based o...
Did anyone else notice that Climate Change was the front page story on the New York Times?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html?_r=0
PIOMAS January 2015
A new year, a new volume. Here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: Relatively warm temperatures in the Arctic in the past couple of weeks, and an increase in Fram Strait tran...
The PIOMAS graph has been updated for August.
Ever sailed to 85N?
Despite this being the second melting season that rebounds from the spectacular sea ice loss event of 2012, there have been some notable events that characterize this melting season. We may have already become used to these events, but may do well to remember that they were much rarer before 20...
I just noticed that nsidc has posted a mid-month update:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2014/07/melting-in-the-north-freezing-in-the-south/
ASI 2014 update 5: low times
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Central to these updates are the daily Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) and IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2013 period (NSIDC has...
This is slightly OT, but has anyone heard from Jim Pettit?
ASI 2014 update 4: high times
During the melting season I'm writing (bi-)weekly updates on the current situation with regards to Arctic sea ice (ASI). Central to these updates are the daily Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) and IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2013 period (NSIDC has...
A4R, I noticed a typo in your blog, please correct:
"global mean methane topping 398 ppm on March 11 2014 12-24 hrs UTC at 945 mb"
Should obviously be global CO2.
PIOMAS March 2014
Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: During the month of February the gap between this year and the other years from the post-2010 period ...
I hope you are right, Hans. However, my fear is that, as oil gets harder to find, we will switch to fuels with worse and worse carbon footprints.
The Alberta tar sands are definitely a giant leap in this direction..
Decreasing Arctic albedo boosts global warming
A new paper in PNAS, called Observational determination of albedo caused by vanishing sea ice, reminds me of scientific work Peter Wadhams published a year and a half ago wherein he showed Arctic ice melt is 'like adding 20 years of CO2 emissions'. He based this assertion on calculations, as ca...
Forgive me for going off-topic, but I feel the need to point out that an Eulerian Path visits each EDGE once, not each VERTEX once:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulerian_path
Collaborative Arctic Sea Ice Presentation Project
Last week I received an e-mail from commenter Terry Moran, also know as Twemoran or TerryM. In the past couple of weeks he has been working on a talk called The Demise of Arctic Sea Ice that he recently held for a small audience in Canada (here is the original presentation on Google Docs, and ...
At the risk of getting more egg on my face, I'd like to point out two minor typos in Kevin McKinney's otherwise excellent paper:
One, You typed "namy" instead of "many".
Two, Each water molecule has only one oxygen atom, not two.
When the Arctic was 8 °C warmer
You won't see it in any travel guides, probably because of its name, but Lake El'gygytgyn offers many wonders. Lately it's been in the news because of fascinating paleoclimatic data the lake has yielded to researchers drilling its bottom. They managed to extend the climatic chronology of northern...
Facepalm!
Kevin McKenney was completely correct. Everyone else labeled theirs mean versus min, and I somehow read his backwards.
Sorry for any confusion.
Crowd-Source Prediction of Minimum Arctic Sea Ice
How does the collective wisdom of Arctic Sea Ice blog participants compare with expert scientific analysis in forecasting the September sea ice extent? This question seems worth exploring with a crowd-source experiment. You are all invited to submit, as comments to this post, your best guess for...
I'm curious at the difference that some people have between their "Mean" and "Min" September values:
Name Mean Min Diff
Kevin O'Neill 2.9 2.5 14%
DoomComesSoon 1.7 1.478 13%
NLPatents 3.0 < 3.0 At least 0%
Kevin McKinney 3.24 3.43 -6%
wili 1.5 0.9 40%
Noting that the historical difference is between 1.0% and 7.5% (with an average of 3.4%) -- although admittedly it has been trending upwards, though not by that much.
I am most concerned by Kevin McKinney, who raised his estimate. I'd guess that he applied his correction in the wrong direction, since 6% seems not unreasonable.
Note that NLPatents makes sense, I am including it only for completeness.
Crowd-Source Prediction of Minimum Arctic Sea Ice
How does the collective wisdom of Arctic Sea Ice blog participants compare with expert scientific analysis in forecasting the September sea ice extent? This question seems worth exploring with a crowd-source experiment. You are all invited to submit, as comments to this post, your best guess for...
2.8 Mkm2 +- 0.7 Mkm2
Trying to estimate where the trend is going by eyeball.
Crowd-Source Prediction of Minimum Arctic Sea Ice
How does the collective wisdom of Arctic Sea Ice blog participants compare with expert scientific analysis in forecasting the September sea ice extent? This question seems worth exploring with a crowd-source experiment. You are all invited to submit, as comments to this post, your best guess for...
@Chris Reynolds
Thanks for that analysis on our shrinking volume.
However, I spent a few minutes scratching my head over one line before realizing that it was just a typo:
And for comparison...
2013 3.261 actual
That would be "2012 3.261 actual", right?
2013 Open thread #1
I was planning on writing posts more regularly, but reality forbids. So here's an open thread for all of your off-topic banter. source: Space Daily Will be back next week when I get an Internet connection in our new apartment. There's plenty to write about: that science report, the lower albe...
@Boa05att
It may not be as much of a shock as you claim, as they also say:
"The general view that the ice-cap is not at risk of a summer collapse in the next few years may need to be revisited and revised."
PIOMAS January 2013
Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: 2012 has ended the year with a total volume that's around 1000 km3 less than 2010 and 2011, but ther...
Just pointing out that crandles didn't disprove the paper. The paper said "increased area" and crandles demonstrated "near-constant volume".
I bet both are correct.
PIOMAS January 2013
Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: 2012 has ended the year with a total volume that's around 1000 km3 less than 2010 and 2011, but ther...
I don't know what Kris means by "twice as high" (given that the temperatures are below 0 Celcius) but the average of the average values is -1.85C and the average of the normal values is -6.57C.
Record dominoes 13: CT global SIA maximum
I doubt this is the end of the record streak, but as we approach the end of the year, this will probably be the final record domino of 2012. And what a fitting number to end it with! The record fell over three weeks ago (see data). The reason I'm reporting it now is not just because I'm lazy o...
Oh, discussing nits reminds me, on the Rob's Masie spaghetti plot there is an extraneous "13) Baltic Sea" in the lower left hand corner of the map.
Record dominoes 3: Cryosphere Today SIA
There are several scientific organisations that keep an eye on the Arctic sea ice cover and put out graphs to inform us of the amount of ice that is left. You can see most, if not all, of them on the ASI Graphs webpage. I expect the record on most of these graphs to be broken in weeks to come. -...
The "shining star" is the area where not enough sunlight falls for MODIS to capture an image. (Also called the "Pole hole" on this blog if you want to search for it.)
I am pretty sure that the green is real, and it seems likely to be algae or something similar (though I am no expert).
Minimum open thread
The reports of my return are greatly exaggerated. I'm still at my holiday address, on the wretched 56K modem. As I'm going to be realy offline now for 2-3 days to visit my 97 year old grandfather and his 400 litre wine cask, I thought an open thread would be a good idea. Can we start speculatin...
@Wayne Kernochan
In other words, 2 1/2-5 meters may be a low estimate.
Actually, I believe that it is similar to "Moore's Law" (the prediction of the doubling of computer processor capabilities every 18 months). Hanson isn't specifying "why" the doubling should continue, and it is possible that this is simply one of the unknown unknowns that will cause it.
@Peter Ellis
Sorry, that's plain wrong. Assuming a constant doubling time is simply projecting an unbounded exponential, which is not just physically implausible, but literally impossible. Any exponential increase will stop, what matters is when.
Well, of course the doubling would stop when there is no more ice to melt. :(
With that said, however, some people on this blog prefer a Gompertz curve because the last little bit will be the bit that is most resistant to melting.
Only the future knows for sure, but any scenario of runaway ice loss is a very bad thing.
Models are improving, but can they catch up?
All models are wrong, but some are useful, as the saying goes. However, when looking at how Arctic sea ice decline is modeled, one might be tempted to say that all sayings are useful, but some are wrong. To be fair, I should be the last person taking a piss at climate models. Hundreds of brill...
@George Phillies
I think the answer is "instantly" (given your rather magical assumptions).
The volume of the Antarctic Ice Cap is ~25M km2 and the volume of the ocean is @1.3B km2. That's a ratio of over 40:1. Since the heat of fusion of ice is roughly 80cal/g, the average temperature of the ocean would need to be about 2C. Looking at this graph and noting that the average depth of the ocean is only 4000m, I'd say there's probably enough heat right there.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/temp.html
Models are improving, but can they catch up?
All models are wrong, but some are useful, as the saying goes. However, when looking at how Arctic sea ice decline is modeled, one might be tempted to say that all sayings are useful, but some are wrong. To be fair, I should be the last person taking a piss at climate models. Hundreds of brill...
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