It's March 18th and according to Athropolis this means that if we were to be present at the North Pole right now (just before freezing to death) we'd see the Sun coming up at the horizon after many months of permanent darkness.
It should look something like this, however this picture was taken on Svalbard around February 15th (source). The Sun is just over the horizon, but gets a bit higher every day. And after today it doesn't set for half a year!
Don't forget your sunglasses.
2012 Maximum Area PoolEDIT Neven: There's a poll in the right hand bar running until February 8th for predicting the Cryosphere Today maximum sea ice area number. See details below. Don't be afraid to share your prediction in the comments. :-)
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Post by guest author crandles:
This post has taken me a bit longer than anticipated, because I really had a hard time picking a suitable island in the South Pacific to be bought with the donations that came in through the tip jar. But then I had a streak of conscience and ahem, realized I don't want to be on an island in the South Pacific with sea level rising and potential freak weather patterns. So here's all the info on money coming in, going out, and what I propose to do with what's left.
I was initially hoping to get enough donations to cover this year's hosting costs for the blog and do the same thing next year, but to my great surprise a lot more came in: 945 USD through ChipIn and a further 50 USD directly through PayPal (of which 30 were Canadian dollars, which is almost the same as USD). A total of 995 dollars. Once more I'd like to express my gratitude to all donators, not only for the amount, but also for the trust conveyed.
As for the costs: PayPal charges a commission, as does Neteller for its virtual credit card (no plastic thingy, and endless paper waste) that I used to pay for the TypePad hosting costs of 149,50 USD. Just this week I upgraded my account at FollowThatPage that is a great tool for monitoring webpages. And I donated 50 USD on behalf of the Arctic Sea Ice blog to Greenman3610 for making a great video of the 2011 sea ice minimum.
This is the last post on pseudo-skeptics for a while, I promise. I have written four in two melting seasons, out of approximately 250 posts.
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The Arctic sea ice, it can burn.
We all remember how Anthony Watts and Steven Goddard were a bit overconfident last year and predicted a nice recovery ('you bet ya'). Their prediction turned out to be just 1 million square km too high. Of course, it didn't matter much for their reputation.
Nevertheless, this year the bravado has magically disappeared and thus they didn't do any predictions, although Goddard still likes to imply that we are witnessing a recovery at every opportunity he gets (for example writing multiple posts at the start of the melting season about how well 2011 is tracking 2006).
Their colleague Joe Bastardi did much better, taking a conservative view and predicting that 2010 would go relatively low. As it did. This success instantly made him last man standing on the pseudo-skeptic side of the debate. Or at least with regards to the Arctic sea ice.
So what did he predict for the 2011 melting season?
One down, zero to go. Extent didn't set a new record low, but the credibility of pseudo-skeptics did. Bastardi was at least as wrong as Watts and Goddard (who got off lucky) last year.
Of course, this could happen to anyone (happens to me quite regularly). But most rational and honest people own up to their mistakes and learn from them. Or did I miss Bastardi's explanation for his miserably failed prediction?
In honour of Horatio Algeranon, the climate poet, and today's intriguing news from the Alfred Wegener Institute that most of the ice they have measured at the Norh Pole is 0.9 meters thick, I have written an alternative version to a song people who have survived the 70's will appreciate:
How thick is your ice?
I see the ice in the morning sun
I feel it thinning in the pouring rain
And the moment that the graphs drop off a cliff
I wanna feel you in my arms again
And you come to me on a summer breeze
Warming up in the sun and then swiftly leave
And it's me you need to show...
How thick is your ice? (how thick is your ice, how-thick-is-your-ice?)
I really need to learn
'Cause we're living in a world of fools (didn't have to change that one)
Breaking us down
When they all should let us freeze
We belong to you and me
I believe in you
Without you there could be much harm
You're the thing that keeps the weather calm
My air conditioner when I warm
And you may not think
I care for you
When you know down inside
That I really do
And it's me you need to show...
How thick is your ice? (how thick is your ice, how-thick-is-your-ice?)
I really need to learn
'Cause we're living in a world of fools
Breaking us down
When they all should let us freeze
We belong to you and me
I'm being a bit tongue in cheek here, but at the same time I'm sure there is something to be learned from this video in relation to the sea ice in the Beaufort, Chukchi and East Siberian Seas:
It could be discerned through the clouds for a few days already, a huge algal bloom off the coast of Norway, and yesterday it finally came into full view. I've made a couple of wallpapers out of it for my laptop monitor (1366 x 768 resolution). I liked these two best:
Go get it while it's still there over at LANCE-MODIS, splice the two images together (250m resolution) and copy part of it in your monitor's resolution. It's an awesome background.
No, this is not the Metallica song (which I used to like, God knows why), but some lovely footage rw langford sent me:
Apparently we human beings have a brain that is specialised in understanding and interpreting faces. Carl Sagan believed we are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face because it increases our chances of survival if we're able to discern friend from foe quickly. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces (a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia).
A very famous instance of pareidolia is the Face of Mars, and not a week passes by where somewhere around the world someone claims to have seen the face of Jesus Christ in some object or other. They see them on Google Earth images, ultrasound pictures, pieces of pizza, Sussex hawthorns, chicken feathers and IKEA toilet doors. What, you've seen the Lord's face in some shroud? Boring!Look what I saw when I opened a jar of Marmite this morning.
I'm not writing this blog post to inform you that I've seen our Saviour's face appear somewhere in the Arctic sea ice (although I probably could if I wanted to), but it is definitely funny to see facial patterns when looking closely at the MODIS satellite images. Here are some examples:
It doesn't look like the area maximum will be under 13 million km^2 based on past 10 years all increasing by at least 0.6m km^2 and sometimes over 1m km^2 from this time of year. We are currently at 12.414m km^2.
Also, you could argue that the recent trend has been unusually in that amount is less now than 15 days so perhaps a spike upwards is imminent.
On the other hand, area is high outside Bering strait and by Baffin Bay so maybe these won't increase area much further. Where the area is low, Barents and Kara seas, the water is warm and set to stay that way at least this week with strong winds blowing from Atlantic. Then maybe the sun is getting high enough for Southern Barents to receive more solar energy than usual because of low ice and therefore albedo.
This might suggest the increase in area could continue to be slow a little longer.
Or you might completely disagree with above assessment.
So how about a pool of guesses on the area maximumper Cryosphere today? Not much time left so I suggest guesses should be submitted before end of January.
Neven commented:
On the other hand: that huge high over Northern Siberia means clear skies and thus a lot of radiation escaping to space.
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EDIT Neven:
To add to the fun I have opened a poll and added it to the right hand bar. You can vote on what you think the SIA maximum will be until February 8th.
Here are the Cryosphere Today SIA maximums in the period 2005-2011 with the date of maximum (from this daily updated data file):