May I add my compliments to the chorus! Haven't had time to participate actively this year as things have got too exciting in my own specialty for me to do much else (I went from crazy uncle in the attic to respected authority on tau protein secretion over the space of few months, which has been a bit dizzying as well as not really deserved). But I come and visit here every day in rather fearful anticipation of the day when nobody lives long enough to worry about getting AD anymore. The things that are discussed so intelligently here matter more than anything else I can think of to humanity, whether they know it or not. Neven (and all of you) are a wonderful resource for the interested but non-expert. Congratulations again on getting recognized for your work!

I fear that this is precisely what will happen when Homo sap finds him/herself in a real bind due to climate change 50 years of so down the road.....and really HAVE to do something. After all, why did we spend all that money on nukes anyway? We have done enough atmospheric nuclear air bursts since "Mike" at Eniwetok to know that the fallout won't be nearly as bad as climate change itself in the near term. I know, I know, but that's how humans think.......... So get ready for limited, controlled nuclear winter as the antidote for greenhouse warming - titrated by the bomb; delivered by missile to some agreed upon and unfortunate spot in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, or maybe Severnaya Zemlya. It will (I hope....gulp) stave off SLR by the meter due to GIS melting and will be cheaper than moving New York, Shanghai, London, Rio, Sydney, etc. etc. etc. And Florida, too. Did I mention Florida? And Holland, And Bangladesh, and.....................

That movie showing the fragmentation of Chukchi Sea ice in January made me think of how different the story of the Karluk would probably have been had it occurred a century later. A pretty good Wiki summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Karluk Really shocking how much has changed......

The Arctic is melting. You're next........

I prefer this solution to injecting stuff into the ground to make the Earth rise (won't that make the surface fall elsewhere - the way isostatic uplift does?) http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-architect-dreams-future-floating-cities-102930220--sector.html At least this way, surface area at the seacoasts that is lost to SLR could be replaced as needed........ The "islands" had better have good anchors, though, and plenty of Dramamine.......

Anthony, here's a link to the AmWx thread on Hudson Bay freeze-up last year http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/26831-hudson-bay-winter-of-2011-2012-tracking-thread/page__st__245 There are also links to Environment Canada's ice cover sites for HB that you might find useful

You mean ebullient-thermophile ranids?

http://www.americanwx.com/bb/index.php/topic/37053-climate-sensitivity-and-timing/ When it comes to tuning out the significance of the Arctic changes, nobody beats some of the characters here. I feel like I've been wrestling with a bunch of unusually stubborn alligators.............

Well, at least you have an actual track record of predictions that match reality, which puts you ahead of all of the modelers. As you say this is naive - which is (apparently) a plus. It implies that the models which keep the summer SI until 2040 are missing something critical. I must say that I still don't know where the negative feedback item implied by a Gompertz curve would come from, since the reduction in all of these parameters should be amplified (rather than damped) toward the end by the increasing exposure of seawater in the highest insolation period. So the fact that a Gompertz curve fits the facts best so far is bemusing

I second Chris's comment. Denying the heat-trapping effect of accumulating atmospheric CO2 is a bit like saying that you don't believe in the p-orbital. No amount of obfuscating argument about the details of heat transfer can restore credibility to the person who does it.

"It's not implausible that the Arctic will see a period with relatively modest further declines in September sea-ice extent, if some facet of natural variability (the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, perhaps?) acts in a contrary sense to the trend." I'd agree with not impossible. It IS implausible, given that the Arctic has begun absorbing MUCH more energy in the past few years due to the onset of significant melt-out in the Arctic basin during the period of maximum insolation (late May-beginning August).

That was a nice post Chris - I plugged it over at AmWx, maybe it will educate some people,,,,,,

When you compare these images with the Bremen ice concentration images, it looks as if the newest ice is whiter than moist other ice, since areas of new ice formation are in the "whiter" regions (in parts of the ESS and Laptev). BTW - notice the big loss after the first frame - this corresponds to our storm of many names in August, which really did do a number on SIA and SIE.

No.......white is red channel signal that is probably ice. Either blue or white is ice - I've taken to leaving the red signal in when it is clear that not does not represent cloud. For this animation, all of the frames were treated the same way. In the past, I've removed more of the red signal since I couldn't be sure of what it was. This had the effect of making the ice appear more uniform. In those cases, it was best to assume that the degree of white wan't much of an indicator of anything. So in this animation, the white signal MAY mean something about ice thickness - especially away from the ice margin.

FrankD Most of the discussions I've seen on the topic specify that the kind of ice you are discussing (i.e. SIA numbers of well under 0.5 million Km2) should be ignored in the calculation, because the genesis of such ice is very different from that of most of the SI that we are seeing. In my post on the subject, was talking about ice that had been created on the ocean surface during a previous freezing season (increasingly the most recent one). As far as I know, bergs calved from glaciers during the current melt season are generally not considered sea ice and can readily be distinguished from it (i.e. they have pebbles and such in them and are completely freshwater ice). So we may not really be disagreeing much. If you were to include bergs from glacial ice, then I agree that you'll have a long thin tail on your distribution - this will last until ALL of the ice (including the GIS and AIS) are gone.

Listen, here in the northeast USA we have had multiple tornado watches and warnings - this NEVER used to happen here. I know there have been multiple sightings of funnel clouds in New England this year, and there were multiple tornadoes (with fatalities just last year), together with a number of waterspouts. I think that even New York City had one earlier this year. Not sure about the actual incidence rate of such storms - I know that there was a severe outbreak here (in Massachusetts) about 50 years ago, but that was always considered to be an outlying event. I do know that I've seen no more than 2-3 local references to them in the period between 1970 and 2005 in this area. Something is definitely going on

Terry, I agree. It's getting hard to figure. Makes me think of the series of shark attacks off the New Jersey shore in the summer of 1916 (I think). It was all done by one great white shark (they caught it later, and found body parts), but 8 people were attacked, and 3-4 killed over the space of several weeks. In the interim, the newspapers were suggesting that it was due to the propellers of German U -boats, rather than a shark........... I haven't got to that point yet, but yikes - people deliberately swimming in the CAA?. I've heard that lots of Maine fishermen don't bother learning to swim........ Could it be a deep-sixed reactor from a Russky sub?

Hi Neven - check your e-mail. The 9-17 EC composite must have just been posted - you now have the declouded version. I THINK all the islands are still there........... This composite includes the 9-13 minimum SIA, so it may have a certain iconic status to some.

"some people on this blog prefer a Gompertz curve because the last little bit will be the bit that is most resistant to melting." This is a tautology that can be used to justify a Gompertz curve whatever the reality is. Even if all of the ice is equally susceptible to melting, there will always be a "last little bit". All of the evidence we have indicates that it will go very, very soon after the "penultimate little bit".

Terry, As you know, I've been interested in the "Inuvik Anomaly" in SST this year for a while also. If it were a busted sensor, wouldn't there be evidence from last spring (at the time of initial SI melt in region) or last year of persistently high readings? As for the volcano hypothesis, the tectonic plate map doesn't find any of the usual culprits http://pubs.usgs.gov/cp/51/plate-1-preview.pdf although I suppose some kind of New Madrid-like mid plate stretching scenario is conceivable, however unlikely. I assume you were joking about that, though......

That's one reason that Terry is always suggesting that the CAA is now a burial ground for MYI (in addition to the Nares and Fram). Right, Terry?

Nightvid, All of those bodies of water now receive extensive freshwater drainage after sea ice has melted out (from Greenland, the melting icecap or surrounding well watered land areas (respectively). They also don't completely melt out until relatively late in the season. Not sure if they are a good test of the thesis - yet.

Cholera? Absolutely. Look on the bright side, if you just keep drinking water, you can survive cholera. That might not be very pleasant, though. My grandfather once helped with a cholera epidemic in California (sometime around 1910 or so) for 2 weeks. He and his pals avoided infection by drinking only water with whisky in it. Bet a flooded NYC won't have enough whisky for all, though.

That first para is Jim's, of course. I wish Neven had an edit function here for us ADD types.........

As soon as there's no more ice to melt by mid summer the water will start getting saltier and the halocline will quickly break down, ending Winter refreezes. Jeez, I hadn't factored that one into my scenario, which has things going kablooey fast enough as it is (i.e. as soon as there is significant albedo loss over the Arctic as a whole during the high insolation period (late May-early August)). The latent heat of evaporation needed will be huge, but the insolation rate will be huge also. This might stave off massive increases in SST, 2M temps and GIS melting a bit though.............. This REALLY makes me want to know where the Gompertz/sigmoid type predictions for SI loss with time are coming from.