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Alan Clark
Liverpool
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2.6 million
If the volume continues to fall at the present rate then there will be no ice in 2015 or 2016. The extent will have to accelerate downwards to reach zero at that time, so I expect a reduction of about 1 million this year.
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...
An interesting article, but I would like to see what the models predict when the Arctic ice melts even further.
The temperature anomaly near Greenland has been huge recently, so I wondered how unusual it was, and if it had anything to do with the shrinking ice. This answers my question!
Looking for winter weirdness 6
I wasn't expecting another instalment in this year's series of blog posts on Winter Weirdness, extreme weather events that could be linked to the decline in Arctic sea ice. It's not even winter anymore officially. But as spring has been revoked in large parts of Europe, and the atmospheric blo...
The pressure in the Arctic is off the scale for January 19, over 1055hPa across a large area:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/weather/arcticweather_imagecontainer.php
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...
I enjoyed the video that came up after the first one finished!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ARJK0MWAITM
More vids
I'm pretty sure someone mentioned these while I was away in slowinternetistan, but the visuals are so stunning that I'm posting them two weeks later. These videos, uploaded to YouTube by noiv, were shot by folks on one of the helicopters of the Polarstern research icebreaker. I don't know when ...
Collincr, I share your disbelief at what people believe who should know better. A few years ago there was a confrontation between Richard Dawkins and a young-Earth creationist who claimed that evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. He was a professor of thermodynamics!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_McIntosh_%28professor%29
A New Climate State: Arctic Sea Ice 2012 (video)
Talking about cool, yet depressing vids: Peter Sinclair from the Climate Denial Crock of the Week blog has produced a new video for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media (link) that covers this melting season and shows the reactions from several experts: Great stuff. Thank you, Peter!
"- Rossby waves seem quite steadfast again, one trough after another positions real bad for the British Isles"
You can say that again! Some places have had their wettest September day on record.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19725625
ASI 2012 update 11: end or beginning?
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 IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) and Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2011 period (NSIDC has...
I wish the deniers would learn to sing from the same song sheet instead of putting forward various mutually exclusive claims. They never seem to argue between themselves which one is the truth, and some seem to support several opposing positions at the same time! Will we ever see the ostriches flying in formation? :-)
ASI 2012 update 11: end or beginning?
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 IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) and Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2011 period (NSIDC has...
Travis: "I would look for (1) to be the new skeptic go-to point for the near future."
I agree, I have seen several people making the same sort of claim in comments to articles.
(not so) Cool vids
The melting season has come to an end (more on that tomorrow in a new ASI update) and so all kinds of cool graphs, images and videos make the rounds. Unfortunately what is going on in the Arctic isn't so cool, otherwise it'd be more fun. The awe-inspiring shattering of records and the seriousnes...
The axis has been extended to encompass the new record anomaly, but only to -2.0 million. Will it be enough for this year?
Arctic Basin SIA dips below 2 million km2
The record for the most important region on the Cryosphere Today regional sea ice graphs page was broken 2 weeks ago. But it didn't stop there. In fact, it hasn't stopped yet. It seems the plateau since 2007 was short-lived:
Jim, much of mainland Europe has had very high temperatures (record in Czech Republic) and drought, and is still warmer than normal, including Russia where the wind is now blowing towards the North. In the UK it has been very different, with a very dry start to the year which was cured by the introduction of a hose-pipe ban, when it immediately started to rain heavily until the Olympics!
Record dominoes 10: IMS sea ice extent
That's it, all the daily sea ice records (area, extent and volume) that I know of have been broken (see the ASI Graphs webpage). The last one is of minor importance when it comes to monitoring sea ice, but is interesting nonetheless as it was used as a last-minute straw that fake skeptics graspe...
Looking at the forecast for the next few days, it looks like there will be a lot of warm air flowing from Europe and the Atlantic towards the pole, so i expect a further decline.
Record dominoes 10: IMS sea ice extent
That's it, all the daily sea ice records (area, extent and volume) that I know of have been broken (see the ASI Graphs webpage). The last one is of minor importance when it comes to monitoring sea ice, but is interesting nonetheless as it was used as a last-minute straw that fake skeptics graspe...
"The rest of them need some more Hellfire(TM) weather in their back yards.................."
Many years ago the comedian Marty Feldman did a sketch on TV in which he seems to be a rabid hellfire preacher, going on about how "the fire shall encompasseth the Earth" etc, but he ends with "....and the rest of the day will be mainly fine, with a few scattered showers."
It somehow seems appropriate to the present situation. Unfortunately I cannot find it on Youtube :-(
Arctic ice melt = 20 years of CO2 emissions
With records being shattered all over the place, some names in the cryospheric community are gaining in prominence. One of those names is Peter Wadhams, professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge, who has been predicting for years the things we are currently witnessing. He alrea...
I don't think the quadratic curve has any merit because it says that there was no ice in the early 20th century, so it is a very poor fit, as Wipneus pointed out. I also think that we have to look at volume rather than area, because thickness cannot be ignored, and area can change very rapidly as the thickness suddenly goes to zero!
I was hoping that the volume this year would be incompatible with either exponential fit or Gompertz so we could eliminate one of them. That does not seem likely to happen, but it looks like being more compatible with exponential. Anyway, I expect we will have a much better indication next year which (if any) is reasonably correct, as the two curves diverge strongly.
Naive Predictions of 2012 Sea Ice
Last year I proposed Gompertz curves as naive, black-box models for predicting mean September Arctic sea ice extent, area or volume. Here's how that worked out: Sep 2011 Sep 2011 Predicted Observed NSIDC extent ...
I see there is a link to a denialist article in the news links: "Arctic Sea Ice Record Low Is “Broken” - Energy Tribune". I presume this is a mistake.
Record dominoes 9: PIOMAS sea ice volume
The people from PIOMAS have done an extra data release (there'll be another one next week for all of the August data). This data shows us that yet another record domino has fallen, after so many others already. This is one of the biggest dominoes out there, especially now that observational data...
The decrease in extent from July 1 to Aug 1 was 2.590 million. The decrease from Aug 1 to Aug 30 was exactly the same, so the decline so far this month is more than in July!
ASI 2012 update 10: (wh)at a loss
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 IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) and Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2011 period (NSIDC h...
The latest volume figure is right on the "expected" value on this graph, as it was at the start of August:
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/_/rsrc/1346345120282/home/piomas/piomas-trnd4-1.png
The cyclone seems to have no effect, apart from a small but temporary reduction in ice volume relative to what was "expected". I find that surprising, given the large reduction in area this month.
ASI 2012 update 10: (wh)at a loss
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 IJIS sea ice extent (SIE) and Cryosphere Today sea ice area (SIA) numbers, which I compare to data from the 2005-2011 period (NSIDC h...
Whoops! Missed Blackdragon's link.
Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
The sea ice is leaving us a bit more every year. It's time to start contemplating its absence, which is why I teamed up with Kevin McKinney to write an extended version of the shorter piece you might see pop up here and there. Because you know, disappearing sea ice isn't without consequences. An...
This just out:
"Large volumes of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - could be locked beneath the ice-covered regions of Antarctica, according to a new study.
It says this methane could be released into the atmosphere as ice retreats, contributing to climate warming."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19410444
Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
The sea ice is leaving us a bit more every year. It's time to start contemplating its absence, which is why I teamed up with Kevin McKinney to write an extended version of the shorter piece you might see pop up here and there. Because you know, disappearing sea ice isn't without consequences. An...
Glenn, I have also noticed that reduction in variability, but it is only in absolute terms. If you look at it in relative terms then I can see nothing significant. The variability should get smaller in absolute terms as the volume decreases, IMO, but the confidence limits on the graph don't do that.
So, I do not think there is anything strange going on.
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/_/rsrc/1343965558784/home/piomas/piomas-trnd6.png
Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold
The sea ice is leaving us a bit more every year. It's time to start contemplating its absence, which is why I teamed up with Kevin McKinney to write an extended version of the shorter piece you might see pop up here and there. Because you know, disappearing sea ice isn't without consequences. An...
"Annual PIOMAS volume maximum and minimum - does a simple graph like that exist?"
This is nearly what you want - the monthly averages for April is close to the maximum:
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/_/rsrc/1343965477322/home/piomas/piomas-trnd2.png
Record dominoes 6: IJIS sea ice extent
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. -...
There is still the volume data to come, but we won't get that till September. The record, set in 2011, was 4000 cubic Km. At the start of August it was on course for 3000, but it is now likely to be much lower even than that. Any guesses?
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/_/rsrc/1343965522070/home/piomas/piomas-trnd4-1.png
Record dominoes 6: IJIS sea ice extent
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. -...
I find it strange that the second area graph shows no obvious sign of the recent cyclone, while the extent graphs show a large reduction. It seems as if the cyclone merely compacted the ice without actually melting it very much!
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. -...
Three spelling mistakes - solstice (second para).
Arctic Ocean Circulation - Mixing - Effect on Ice
There is a lot of information on Arctic Ocean Circulation available via a google search. Much of it is prior to the 2007 minimum and most does not provide for comments as we get here in the Arctic Sea Ice blog. As the Sun dips below the horizon, we are about two months past the northern Summer S...
Crandles' graph shows that the minimum thickness didn't occur until December at one time. Recently this has been November, but presumably this will occur in September when the ice melts completely, so the graph should continue to change its shape as well as its height.
Record dominoes 1: Uni Bremen sea ice extent
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 com...
Actually, 2009 show some signs of change. The maximum is very early compared to previous years, and there is a decline during the summer which is slow but still greater than before.
Record dominoes 1: Uni Bremen sea ice extent
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 com...
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