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.

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After Uni Bremen extent, Arctic ROOS area, Cryosphere Today sea ice area, DMI sea ice extent and CT Arctic Basin SIA, another big domino has fallen, one of the most popular graphs in recent years, mostly because they have downloadable daily updated data: IJIS sea ice extent.

Here's how the graph I use for ASI updates is looking right now:

The 2012 has plunged below all previous minimums, but I have to add the caveat that this is based on a preliminary data point for August 24th, which will be revised tomorrow. It needs to be revised upwards by 66 thousand square km for this record not to remain standing. Even if this happens, the record will almost certainly be broken tomorrow.

Here are the numbers for the IJIS SIE minimums in the 2005-2012 period:

• 2005: 5.315 million square km
• 2006: 5.781 million square km
• 2007: 4.255 million square km
• 2008: 4.715 million square km
• 2009: 5.250 million square km
• 2010: 4.814 million square km
• 2011: 4.527 million square km
• 2012: 4.189 million square km (and running)

Another caveat is that the IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) - an international collaboration between the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) in corporation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) - has switched from the AMSR-E to the WindSat sensor, when AMSR-E stopped functioning last year. WindSat isn't as sophisticated as AMSR-E, so this could cause slight inconsistencies between the yearly numbers.

However, it seems that IJIS is soon switching to ASMR-2, the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2, that is similar to predecessor ASMR-E, but better. All data will be consistent again when that happens. More on that later.

Next up is NSIDC daily sea ice extent or Arctic ROOS sea ice extent...

Comments

[Seke Rob]

It's prelim still, but as what I wrote in Dominoes 5 just after the dominoes 6 announcement [slow typing day], having passed the 2007 record by 65K, it's is probable August 24 that goes on to the record as having the first day below the old lowest minimum.

Day 8 of the 5M to 4M step... [Firmly] think it's going to set itself now as the first that does goes below the 4M mark now. See http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/ArcticSIEDaysMillionStepMelts.png

[Artful Dodger]

A new IJIS sea ice extent record, and 31 days earlier than the previous record-holding year, set on Sep 24, 2007.

So where are we headed in 2012? Just as a for instance, if melt stopped today (SIA stayed at 2.8 M km^2), and only compaction continued until CAPIE value equaled 2007 (71% at min SIE), then 2012 would bottom out at 3.8 M km^2.

[k eotw]

"Next up is NSIDC daily sea ice extent or Arctic ROOS sea ice extent"

Is that all that's left?

[Artful Dodger]

Well, there is the 'end-0-the-wold' ;^)

NSIDC Avg Sep SIE is the BIGGIE, and will almost certainly fall now that Sep 1st begins the month below the old record...

[Seke Rob]

... to add, as of prelim this is how 2012 and 2012 compare for the day... 686,250 km^2 lower than 2007 at this time
: http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/JAXADecline0331.png

[Neven]

"Next up is NSIDC daily sea ice extent or Arctic ROOS sea ice extent"

Is that all that's left?

There's PIOMAS, NSIDC September average extent and IMS (the new favourite of fake skeptics). And that's about it.

[Espen Olsen]

Area: 2.751 anomaly -2.326

[Alan Clark]

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

[iceman]

The steep drop in recent days is probably attributable to the extra edge area of the two big detachments. Now those are mostly gone and the remaining thicker ice won't melt much, except for advection through the Fram Strait. Once that slows down after the next few days, we'll see nearly flat graphs through the end of the melt season.

[Apocalypse4Real]

It is not only the records that interest me, but also, how quickly do we have refreeze this fall/winter? That sets the stage for next year.

The preliminary Sept-Nov forecast from IRI is sobering - it projects high potential for warmer temps in the Canadian Arctic, Greenland and perhaps for much of Siberia.

What is worse is that potential warmth for the rest of the globe.

http://portal.iri.columbia.edu/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=944&PageID=7868&mode=2

Artful Doger: Your humor is beginning to match my ID on this board.

I think we are looking at non-linear climate change. All of its ramifications - placed somewhere in the future - are starting to be realized.

[Espen Olsen]

Another record that could easily be broken this season is no ocean sea ice south of 75, except some Fjord Ice in Gulf of Boothia!

[Artful Dodger]

For the period Aug 1 to Aug 23, 2012 IJIS SIE has averaged a daily drop of -93,988 km^2.

Previous record rates of loss were 2004 with -77,704 km^2 per day, and 2008 with -74,063.

The average for 2003-2011 was -60,119 km^2/day. So more than 50% faster rate of loss for sea ice extent in 2012.

This is NOT your father's Arctic...

[Espen Olsen]

Ice coverage,

And out of 360 DG 210 DG (58%) could be north of 80 at the end of the season!

[Wipneus]

Alan:

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?

July was 5770 km3. To reach 3000 must melt an awful lot.
(2770 km3 @ 1m thickness is 2.77 10^6 km2)

It could be that this melting is already taken into account with the exponential extrapolation.

[DrTskoul]

good grief...

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawn4S99JJRLrNfgA838BLqx0pzoN7lqRBgI]

I know it has already set the record. But area is the one to be watching. Assuming all the datasets are accurate, then extent only tells you how spread out the area is.

[L. Hamilton]

DMI 30% keeps on going down; by -112k to 2.77m on Aug 23.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_DMI_this_date2.png

My IJIS bar graph does not yet show a record because I don't use the prelims,

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_IJIS_min_to_date.png

Graph/website question: lately I've been having trouble (inconsistently) in seeing newly updated graphs in Photobucket, despite steps to clear the browser's image cache and refresh. I recall seeing other mention of this problem here. Any fixes to suggest?

[Espen Olsen]

Larry do you need a drill for that graph?

[L. Hamilton]

Another graph worth noting: DMI mean daily change in August to date:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_DMI_delta_this_month.png

[Seke Rob]

Re www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawn4S99JJRLrNfgA838BLqx0pzoN7lqRBgI | August 24, 2012 at 13:58

As there is snow before the sun, there's ice before men. The CT-SIA continues to run outside the 3 Σ anomaly range. See http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/AtmosArcticSIA1979-today2.png and day full 3 weeks [22 days] now with an uninterrupted anomaly of over 2M, in fact it's running average is now -2.23M

[L. Hamilton]

"Larry do you need a drill for that graph?"

It sure is diving. I need to rescale the y axis!

One more graphic. Just to watch what happens, I've been updating a regression model each day that predicts NSIDC mean Sep extent from CT area so far in August, and a quadratic function of year. At the start of this month that model was calling for an NSIDC Sep mean around 4.04, which I thought at the time was pretty aggressive. But nowadays it looks even more aggressive.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/2012_OLS_extent1b.png

[Seke Rob]

More on the CT-SIA metric, as time slips away towards autumn, the amount that still melted in previous years till mimimum was:

1979-2011 0.46M
1980-1989 0.12M
1990-1999 0.30M
1995-1999 0.33M
2007-2011 0.69M

Clearly the amount from present to end to recorded minimum is strongly upwards. Apply that to mean CAPIE and we have ... very long distance swimming polar bears.

[Apocalypse4Real]

Larry,

The regression is impressive - and ugly.

[Artful Dodger]

Seke Rob, luckily min SIE does not coincide with min SIA. Usually SIA has rebounded a couple o'hundred K before SIE bottoms out... but still that could be like 3.2 M km^2 for IJIS minimum SIE.

Yikes.

[Espen Olsen]

Another indication how warm the sea is north of Norway, the algae blooming is extremely big this season:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r02c05.2012237.aqua

[Sphaerica.wordpress.com]

L. Hamilton,

RE: Graph/website question

Data caching is controlled by the host, meaning photobucket. They are telling your browser "don't bother checking for a new copy of this image for X days." Photobucket decides/controls X.

So the short answer is no, there's nothing anyone can do about it, short of:

a) You can turn off caching in your browser (but not by web site or URL... it will affect everything everywhere).

b) You can hit "reload" after you see the old/out-of-date image, and that basically tells the browser "ignore any cached thingies and go get everything fresh", so you get the latest image.

Alternately, if people put photobucket images up with entirely new names (like by appending the date to the name), obviously you won't have a cached version of a file with an old name and there's no problem, but then you need to know the name of each new image.

One way to get around this (but it takes work on the part of the uploader) is to use a tinyurl.

a) Upload the image, named by date
b) Create a tinyurl to the image, and give that to people for access
c) When you upload the new image, use a new name and change the tinyurl to point to the new image.

[Fairfax Climate Watch]

My back-of-the-envelope math suggests volume stands around 3,300 cubic km.

[Espen Olsen]

North West Greenland,

Steensby Glacier is calving a +/- 20 km2 piece.

[crandles]

>"July was 5770 km3. To reach 3000 must melt an awful lot.
(2770 km3 @ 1m thickness is 2.77 10^6 km2)

It could be that this melting is already taken into account with the exponential extrapolation."

At 31 July NSIDC extent was 6.47 and we are expecting it to go below 4 perhaps even 3.7. So there is your 2.77 M km^2. That probably isn't all 1m thick but don't forget that the 3.7 M Km^2 that remains will also lose some thickness.

Just 50cm for the ice that melts out and just 1cm per day in Aug and none in Sept for the ice that remains gives
3.7*.31 + 2.77*.5 = 2.5 K Km^3

I only see one buoy giving a measurement: buoy D which has 84cm of bottom melt since 28 July. That is a lot more than the 31cm estimate above. If 84cm was typical we would be close to 4.5 K Km^3 melt leaving just 1.27 K Km^3 (without increasing the 50cm melt out thickness). So I doubt the 84cm is typical but it seems to me there is room for more than 2.77 K Km^3 of volume to melt.

[Dave Leaton]

From the Department of the Obscure:

CT SIA for 2012 now has 83 daily record lows in area. Only 2007 stands in the way -- currently at 107 and obviously set to lose ground over at least the next two weeks. 2011 and 2012 currently account for 206 of the 365 daily record lows in the record.

Melt season daily average is still around 76k.

[Al Rodger]

PIOMAS year-on-year graphed up close (usually 2 clicks to 'download your attachment') doesn't suggest a sub-3000 minimum if we assume it is going to follow the course of pervious years.
But then you think of the cyclone in early August. And then you see the way these extent graphs are exhibiting all the signs of brake failure....

[L. Hamilton]

Apocalypse4Real:
"The regression is impressive - and ugly."

Did I tell you about my blue/orange theory?

Sphaerica, thanks for the image advice. Part of my trouble is that hitting "reload" has not been fixing things. The tinyurl and renaming approaches, unfortunately, aren't attractive for updating ~15 files each day, which is my routine.

One question, when other folks look at my graphs on the "daily graphs" page here, do you usually see the current versions or a day or two old? Right now, should be 8/23 for DMI, for instance.

[crandles]

Century for NSIDC: 4.19043 675k below this day in 2007 and just 30k from record low.

[Ghoti Of Lod]

L. Hamilton
"One question, when other folks look at my graphs on the "daily graphs" page here, do you usually see the current versions or a day or two old? "

I see 8/22 for DMI now using Chrome.

[L. Hamilton]

"I see 8/22 for DMI now using Chrome."

That's what I mean. I carefully uploaded 8/23 this morning.

[crandles]

If NSIDC now follows the changes of any one of the 33 years on record, we would still get a record low Sept average extent. (This wasn't the case recently because a couple of years 1980 and 1987 have extent increasing rapidly after their minimum).

For records,
Besides NSIDC, JAXA and IMS extent, there is PIOMAS volume as already mentioned but also:
average August for each of the records,
average September for each of the records,
furthest North ice boundary, if that hasn't already fallen,
average august rate of loss for each record,
largest week of loss in September,
more record low days than any other year,
and probably a few more.

[Wipneus]

crandles:

it seems to me there is room for more than 2.77 K Km^3 of volume to melt.

Perhaps.

The point that I was trying to make is that while the area/extent records are indeed spectacular, the exponential PIOMAS trend that we have been following some time now is the cause of this.

In other words, we are just seeing the consequences of the exponential increasing volume melt, no need to think that PIOMAS must be breaking from its year long trend as well.

[Seke Rob]

Re my post of 14:30, the numbers first popped out defied logic... the closer we get to 90N, the tougher it would be [the last stronghold] and re-checked, now wondering how on earth I got those. This is proper SIA remaining melt from yesterday:

Means Last.Melt (miilion Km^2)
1979-2011 0.463276
1980-1989 0.508306
1990-1999 0.509403
1990-1994 0.527676
1995-1999 0.491129
2000-2009 0.390027
2000-2004 0.426190
2005-2009 0.353864
2007-2011 0.430655

With the applied formula of Lodger, (2.75-0.43+0.2)/0.71 we get 3.54 if CAPIE were to hold. Still Yikes.

[Seke Rob]

And NSIDC is in:

2012, 08, 22, 4.29062
2012, 08, 23, 4.19043

100K gone... bout 29K to go for the stone to go on it's back.

[Anu]

Next year, IARC-JAXA should change their Arctic Sea Ice Extent graph y-axis to start at 0, not 2.

http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png

In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly. It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040.
-- Professor Peter Wadhams from Cambridge University

[Otto Lehikoinen]

"The regression is impressive - and ugly", apocalypse4real

Seconded.

[OldLeatherneck]

Quoting: Apocalypse4Real: It is not only the records that interest me, but also, how quickly do we have refreeze this fall/winter? That sets the stage for next year....................................................................... I think we are looking at non-linear climate change. All of its ramifications - placed somewhere in the future - are starting to be realized.

Quoting: Artful Dodger: This is NOT your father's Arctic...

For the rest of this year, I'm going to look at three arbitrary dates for my "back of a crumpled papersack with a broken crayon" analyses and projections. I'm going to use Artful Dodger's Sept. 9th date as my point to look for how far below 2007 we are at that time. I'm then going to look at the trend (up/flat/down) until the 24th, when 2007 bottomed out. Finally, on Cot. 1st, I want to see how much recovery has occurrred and at what rate.

Looking ahead to 2013, there are already a number of givens, that we know for certain, to take into consideration:

1. There will be much less multi-year ice to melt.
2. Solar activity will be at it's maximum.
3. El Nino will bring warmer waters from the Atlantic.
4. Increased Radiative Forcing due to elevated GHG levels. While Carbon Dioxide is still the "Elephant in the Room", Methane is the "Herd of Mastodons waiting in the Wings"

I'm sure that I could think of more dire predictions, however, my wife has decided that I'm going shopping.....NOW!!

[Espen Olsen]

If someone is interested it could be interesting to create a Northern Most Average Ice Boundary Graph / Figure?

[Jeffrey Davis]

I'm just eyeballing a graph, and I know how inaccurate such things are, but the NSIDC graph on its front page to me looks 5 standard deviations from the mean. Maybe more. In other words, around 1 year in 30,000.

I'm reminded of the parable of Dives and Lazarus when Abraham rebukes Dives in Hell. Dives has just asked Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers. Abraham says, "They have Moses and the Prophets. If they don't believe them they won't believe if a man were to rise from the dead."

5 Standard Deviations.

[Jeffrey Davis]

And while we're on the subject of Jewish wisdom literature, let me quote Freud urging on his readers to embrace his realism:

"Those of our fellowmen who are dissatisfied with this state of things and who desire something more for their momentary peace of mind may look for it where they can find it. We shall not blame them for doing so; but we cannot help them and cannot change our own way of thinking on their account."

[Anu]

@OldLeatherneck | August 24, 2012 at 16:34
2. Solar activity will be at it's maximum.

Maximum ?
Or did you just mean, higher than in 2012 ?

http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfmms.html
http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfaml.html
I don't know if 2013 is necessarily the maximum sunspot activity year for this cycle.

El Niño is in the Pacific Ocean - maybe it will bring warmer water up through the Bering Strait...

There's natural variability every year, but the baseline warming keeps going up, up, up... the next big DROP (like 2005, 2007, 2012) might be the Big One - to a little stub of ice near Canada.

[idunno]

I don't follow IJIS nearly as closely as CT, but see it as a significant set of data in part because it is used for the SEARCH contributions:

http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2012/august

It's still too early to call, really, but these are now all looking terribly conservative. Looks like the house wins, and there's no payout.

But wait! A dark horse coming up of the rails...

As part of Watts' readers poll, he did give the option of voting for "Zwally's ice free forecast (less than 1M.)"

I would have thought that this is an unlikely outright winner; but its chances of being the most accurate (below 2.45 would be closer than Wang's 3.9) are gaining ground.

Further, and slightly more seriously, I am not exactly sure, but I believe that the IPCC4 model forecast was for 6.7 by now. So Zwally would be more accurate if the final figure is below 3.85. This is looking very possible.

So... the IPCC is NOT alarmist.

[Redin]

Only one buoy giving a measurement when we know there is a historic shift in climate? The data gathered now will be the only data available for all following generations of scietists to use to try to understand what happaned during the climate shift.

Even disregarding this and only counting greed and nations desparate investments to survive ought to give plenty of buoys to gather data to understand the new ice dynamics for oil and gas explotation. Are there plenty of prorietary data gathering going on? At least I hope so and that Russians and and others store the data with good labels and backup copies.

The house only burns down once, keep the cameras rolling!

[Lanevn]

Why is it so big difference (more than million square km) between this graph and cryosphere today graph? And this difference is only in low part of graphs.

[idunno]

Hi Lanevn,

IJIS measures extent, CT measures area. See:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#area_extent

In the winter, the ice is a near coninuous sheet. So the figures are similar. AS the ice fragments and spreads in summer, extent is a bigger figure than area.

[Chartsgraphs.wordpress.com]

Nevin:

Here's a gif animation of the JAXA sea ice extent data through 8/24/12.

http://chartsgraphs.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/visualizing-the-arctic-sea-ice-extent-decline/

[Espen Olsen]

Chartsgraphs,

Let the last frame in the gif animation stay for a while, 4 secs?

[LRC]

Larry: Been doing some poking around for you. Delete old pic upload new pick ... and be patient. Seems that the uploaded pic takes time to filter through their server network. Photobucket need to make the changes in ALL their servers before the changes are made.
Unlike here which only has one sever. Creating new url makes it instant because their search algorithm would point to to server(s) pic is currently located until all severs have the new url.
Not a techy, but that seems to be how things work.

[k eotw]

"the NSIDC graph on its front page to me looks 5 standard deviations from the mean. Maybe more. In other words, around 1 year in 30,000."

the sd can't be used to determine the frequency of the event in that way.

[LRC]

Redin: At least I hope so and that Russians and and others store the data with good labels and backup copies.
I assure you that very interested nation has a lot of bouys on location collecting and cataloging all info very well. Problem: National security. No one wants to reveal what info and how good that info is. We will be very lucky to get the info 50 years from now. Example: US subs have been collecting ice depth with their subs since the 50s, they still are not releasing that info because it is TOP SECRET. Once there almost impossible to change it no matter how foolish it may seem.
So we make do with what we have and hope it is enough soon enough.

[L. Hamilton]

LRC, thanks for poking around ... I think you're right! I just re-checked and Photobucket is now showing the 8/23 version of my DMI bar graph, which it wasn't doing one hour ago. I actually uploaded the file four or five hours ago and have done nothing to it since.

Too bad the updates are not instant, but I can accept that much better if they at least follow a pattern.

[Espen Olsen]

North Pole,

Another report from the NP, please use Google translator or similar from Danish - English:

http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_pa_verdens_top

[Superman]

"Anything else almost seems like one of the professional denialist schemes where diversion is the goal.

"Keep your eyes on the ice. Hold on.""

Don't agree. If this site is to have the impact it deserves, it must relate the ice observations to the larger context of climate change. While ice disappearance in the Arctic is of importance to the viewers of this site, it may not have the same importance to the larger potential viewer community. There are people who, when I've told them about the dire situation in the Arctic, respond that they can't wait to be the first on their block to cruise to the North Pole.

The ice disappearance in the Arctic is foreign to most peoples' everyday lives, unlike an extended drought or heat wave that will kill crops and raise the price of food. So, to enhance the value of this excellent site, the Arctic ice etiology needs to be placed in the larger context of increasingly severe storms, increasing heat waves, increasing drought.

More specifically, how does the ice etiology relate to increased methane emissions in the Arctic, changes in ocean circulation in adjacent and perhaps more remote areas, changes in atmosperic circulation due to more open water, etc. I don't think we need an either/or situation of ice only or larger climate change issues only. We need ice etiology shown in its larger context. Perhaps my earlier large postings were overly broad for this blog, but that shouldn't be interpreted that all context beyond ice etiology observations should be ignored.

[DanFrederiksen]

nasty business. one could hope that the super idiot climate deniers will wake up when the north pole is completely melted but as Einstein said only human stupidity is infinite.

Does anyone know when the north pole was melted last? is it 120k years ago or do we have to go back further?

[LRC]

Espen's link: little stilted and need to have pretty good grasp of english to understand what was really meant, but this link will get you whole page for you: http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=da&u=http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_pa_verdens_top&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_pa_verdens_top%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DX5c%26rls%3DSwiftfox:en-US:unofficial%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D895%26prmd%3Dimvns&sa=X&ei=E6g3UOi5Ccj1ygGH94HoDA&sqi=2&ved=0CCIQ7gEwAA">http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_pa_verdens_top&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_pa_verdens_top%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DX5c%26rls%3DSwiftfox:en-US:unofficial%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D895%26prmd%3Dimvns&sa=X&ei=E6g3UOi5Ccj1ygGH94HoDA&sqi=2&ved=0CCIQ7gEwAA">http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=da&u=http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_pa_verdens_top&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_pa_verdens_top%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DX5c%26rls%3DSwiftfox:en-US:unofficial%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D895%26prmd%3Dimvns&sa=X&ei=E6g3UOi5Ccj1ygGH94HoDA&sqi=2&ved=0CCIQ7gEwAA
If not all I did was google the link espen has and used translate link that google adds.

[LRC]

Ooops suda previewed that. If someone can delete that stuff starting from ">http" do not need to rest.

[Jeffrey Davis]

"the sd can't be used to determine the frequency of the event in that way."

Fine. I'm not a statistician. Exceeding 5 standard deviations on one side of the mean should happen around .000031383349 times.

Whatever the "times" means. When the issue has been discussed recently the "per/year" number has always been significantly smaller than my understanding of what it should be. To me a 2 sigma event shouldn't be all that rare. Once a decade or so. Discussion on the web make it seem rarer than that. I used my 1 in 30,000 because that seemed more conservatively scaled because at that point, it's back into the ages of glaciation and the real world meaning seems blurred. At any rate, it's rare enough that you need to account for it outside of natural variation.

[Espen Olsen]

Superman,

I completely agree with you, but I still think we should keep consequences away, because we then enter the political scene, and then the "language" will be very different.
But now we, inside here, have the opportunity to watch and interpret what we observe without having to "prove" it or ask anyone of permission, as scientist and researchers are bound to, unless they want to get sacked if they "speculate" in unwanted conclusions!

[Espen Olsen]

Superman,

And "solutions" we have seen in my part of the world, windmills and solar panels, are not a solution, since they look like crap!

[FrankD]

Superman,

It seems to me that you are projecting what you would do with this blog and projecting that onto what Neven should do. But its Neven's house, so it's Neven's rules. And Neven's rules have made this one of the best (and certainly troll-free-est) blogs on the intertubes.

Right now it functions very nicely as a science-meets-main-street for news, interpretation and ideas. The content gets picked up and processed for consumption on plenty of the blogs that are pitched more in the direction you are talking about. So the impact is there without having to just another political soapbox.

Value its uniqueness. Keep your eyes on the ice.

cheers

[Frankd 1977]

A note on denial: I live in DuPage County IL and if you check the US Drought Monitor every week (like I do), you'd see that my county in going through D1 moderate drought. It’s the little square county directly west of Cook County (Cook is the county Chicago is in).
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
We are one of the few counties not going through severe drought or worse this summer, with over 76% of the state experiencing extreme drought (D3) or worse. While not going into specifics (of which I could fill several pages), for a multitude of reasons, this drought is easily the worst ever for the agro-industrial industry and will have a much more profound effect on the WORLD economy than any other that has come before. There was a "perfect storm" of events that has nigh annihilated global corn stores. Soybeans while better off than corn are also affected and have seen prices rise steadily.
Anyway, my point is that as bad as the drought is, people in the Chicago land area (and most of the country) don’t or won’t understand the impact it will have on them. They are in denial as to the drought having any consequences for them. It’ something happening to farmers far, far away. The drought has been given plenty of media coverage and is even being called “the worst drought in 50 years”. But the implications of the drought and how/why it will affect the average consumer is not talked about. People know it’s a hot summer and feel sorry for the poor farmers in other parts of the country; That’s it!
This is something that’s readily apparent to the average person, is being given lots of (fluff piece) media coverage and has no politicians/corps fighting an expensive disinformation campaign against it. With all that said, I still have neighbors who think there is no drought.

You can lead a horse to water…

[Jon Torrance]

And "solutions" we have seen in my part of the world, windmills and solar panels, are not a solution, since they look like crap!

Says Espen who if marooned on a desert island would presumably refuse to be rescued by an ugly boat.

[Espen Olsen]

Jon,

Yes you are right!

[. ..]

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | August 24, 2012 at 16:56
"I'm just eyeballing a graph, and I know how inaccurate such things are, but the NSIDC graph on its front page to me looks 5 standard deviations from the mean. Maybe more."

I don't have my spreadsheet in front of me but last I checked a day or two ago, NSIDC extent was over 7 standard deviations below the 1979-2000 mean. Only during part of October 2007 has there been a larger deviation measured this way.

[Espen Olsen]

Jon,

But I believe more in wave energy, both in terms of energy and look!

[Bob Wallace]

I do agree that it is best to keep the discussion to the ice. And I, as much as anyone, find that frustrating. There's so much more.

Here's my suggestion - let's take the non-ice climate change problems and potential solutions to another site.

I'll recommend Ricky Rood's "Climate Change" blog on WeatherUnderground. Here's the latest blog entry and discussion...

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/comment.html?entrynum=234#commenttop

Now, back to the ice...

[Frankd 1977]

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | August 24, 2012 at 16:56
"I'm just eyeballing a graph, and I know how inaccurate such things are, but the NSIDC graph on its front page to me looks 5 standard deviations from the mean. Maybe more."

According to NSIDC records the SIE for 8/23/12 in 6.875 standard deveations from the 1979-2000 average and has been running around 7 for most of this month.

[idunno]

Hi Frankd 1977,

This is a really good piece on why the Arctic meltdown is pretty much directly causing the problems facing the grainbelt...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/aug/24/saving-arctic-environmentalism-challenge?intcmp=122

To precis to the bone... The difference in temp between the Arctic and the Southern latitudes is less than it was. For two reasons, this means that weather patterns, which move from West to East in the Northern Hemisphere, are moving slower.

So look out the window. Is it raining? If yes, it's much more likely to carry on raining for weeks on end. If no, it's much more likely not to rain for weeks ahead.

This is, clearly, a massive problem for farmers.

Several denialist blogs are now beginning to insist that an ice free Arctic is no problem, as it happened in the past.

Well, there's scant evidence that it has happened at any time after the dawn of agriculture.

[Sphaerica.wordpress.com]

L. Hamilton,

[Sorry, I got distracted by my paying job.]

Do the people who have Chrome see the old one after they hit reload? I'm using Firefox, and I got 8/22 first, then 8/23 after a reload.

Which browser are you using?

My advice would be to find another upload site... maybe Mediafire? Look for one that either sets no-cache, or else lets you set the cache control yourself (which probably doesn't exist... I can't imagine many sites bothering with that capability).

There are some other tricks you can try. For instance, add a meaningless but changed parameter to each new link, like

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/Climate/sea_ice_DMI_delta_this_month.png?d=08232012

That extra, meaningless (and therefore ignored) parameter makes the browser think the result may be different from what it got the last time, so it ignores the cache.

Of course, if someone follows the same link twice, they may still see the old cached entry (depending on the browser), so that parameter value has to change. So this is like changing the tinyurl, but at least when you embed links into comments you can get the right behavior for people.

[idunno]

Sorry, the link given above is completely wrong. This is the one about weather patterns changing/getting stuck:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/22/727501/arctic-death-spiral-how-it-favors-extreme-prolonged-weather-events-such-as-drought-flooding-cold-spells-and-heat-waves/

[GeoffBeacon]

Iceman

The steep drop in recent days is probably attributable to the extra edge area of the two big detachments.

I spoke to Peter Wadhams a few days ago he said that would happen.

Anu

In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly. It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040.
-- Professor Peter Wadhams from Cambridge University

I think Peter Wadhams has not been taken seriously enough. What is happening is what he has been saying for years. He has actually gone out and measured the ice but the official line seems to have waited for satellite data to take the thickness issue seriously.

And just compare what he said before Parliament to what the more "official" scientists, Tim Lenton and Julia Slingo, said. See Climate officials and climate provisionals.

It looks like Peter Wadhams was spot on and the "officials" way off.

I remember him saying "If there is a conflict between the real world and their models, the modelers believe their models."

Let's hope Peter's fears about methane don't come to pass.

[Superman]

FrankD,

"So the impact is there without having to just another political soapbox."

My latest remarks studiously avoided getting into political or policy issues. I focused on technical and scientific implications only, unlike my previous post. Why wouldn't you want to portray the observations on this site in their larger scientific context; that's the essence of good science?

You are correct about Nevens setting the rules for his blog. While I can understand his preferring policy issues to be posted on more appropriate sites, I see no restrictions on placing ice observations in their larger scientific context. Not doing so seems to me to be limiting the potential benefit from this excellent site.

[LRC]

Geoff: I have been saying something like that for years. I am spoiled in Canada with access to a public national service that is dedicated to good science. Remember years ago them interviewing a Inuit elder and they were saying that they were having drownings or near drownings where before it never happened. Why? They ice had changed so much they could no longer read it to tell then if it was safe or not. The Inuit do not need satellites to tell them the ice is basically gone. The same can be said about their weather. The reason they can no longer forecast it is that years ago a weather system would come in a stay for weeks. By interpreting what was going around them they knew what was coming and when. They can no longer do that either, because the weather changes too much too often.
They understand that big trouble is in the works, but get no support and no one listens to them.
As for the ice unless we get a cold cloudy summer in '13 I think things will get so bad we will start having to look at Greenland and what is happening there. That ice I suspect is in a lot worse shape then most believe. I remember watch something and they were having trouble getting good core samples because the ice was so rotten.

[Frankd 1977]

Thank you for the great link idunno. But the points I was making were:
1) Most people can't or won't see the implication of events they see transpiring.
2) Even when something is obvious with mountains of evidence supporting it, you will still have a (usually vocal) minority that refuses to accept it for esoteric reasons.
Thus, with climate change being a complex entity with anomalies occurring over decades and not weeks, people can easily dismiss it.

[LRC]

Speaking of rotten ice. Found this old piece: http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/41112
But Barber and his colleagues discovered that multiyear ice and the "rotten" ice have similar near-surface temperatures, similar near-surface salinities, and both have similar open water and new sea ice fractions at the surface.
Question: Can the CryoSat-2 do a better job because it uses totally different technology or will it find similar trouble? Could that also be why it is coming up with 50% less MY ice?

[Bob Wallace]

Annual PIOMAS volume maximum and minimum - does a simple graph like that exist?

This is the bottom half...

https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/piomas/piomas-trnd6.png

Seems to me that the story lies in the ratcheting down of the amount of ice from year to year. We, IMHO, spent too much energy on how widely the ice is spread when it's the "cold reserve" we're using up.

[Alan Clark]

"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

[Wipneus]

Bob:

Are you asking for something like:
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/piomas/piomas-trnd2-1.png

(The exponential extrapolations are not very meaningful)

[Bob Wallace]

Yes, but cleaner.

Just the max and min. Two lines and perhaps a single number for each year - annual volume melt.

Seems like that would hammer in what is happening to our reserve of ice.

We inherited a wealth of ice. We're spending a bunch each year and not rebuilding. We will run out.

I'd like to make a very clear statement on another blog. The monthly volume graph is most excellent, but hard for someone to grasp if they are only going to give it a quick look. IMHO.

[Paddy]

The NSIDC data for the 23rd looks so close to the minimum for last year that I'd be quite surprised if their data for the 24th or 25th doesn't also show a new low for sea ice extent (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/).

Does anyone know why the IMS data is so different to the others? (Apologies if this is a newbie question).

[Wipneus]

Bob,

Perhaps this one from Tamino:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/piomas.jpg

[Bob Wallace]

That one is pretty good. Thanks.

Is there anywhere I can download the max/min data and make a simpler version?

I want a 'dope slap' simple graph.

[Wipneus]

Piomas data link is
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/PIOMAS.vol.daily.1979.2012.Current.v2.dat.gz

(going offline now )

[Glacierchange.wordpress.com]

Espen is right Steensby has calved. I had looked at this last week 8/12 imagery was best, and it had not as of 8/23 it has. Espen I will give you credit and work on a post on Steensby for tomorrow.

[Seke Rob]

Re Bob Wallace | August 24, 2012 at 21:17

Last and second last chart here https://sites.google.com/site/allthingsclimatechange/nh-sea-ice---trends , 2012 at 21:17, trying to quantify the minimum/maximum anomaly and total melt. Noticed there is no base line ref in there, '79-'11

[Anu]

Several denialist blogs are now beginning to insist that an ice free Arctic is no problem, as it happened in the past.

Well, there's scant evidence that it has happened at any time after the dawn of agriculture.

Posted by: idunno | August 24, 2012 at 19:23

Exactly.
The "skeptics" accept some entry in a journal from the 1800's about "Arctic sea ice being much less than usual" at one location on one date as some sort of proof that the Arctic was ice-free that year.

Ergo, the Holocene coming to an end is no big deal, it's all part of "natural cycles", nothing to see here, move along...

There is literally NOTHING that will convince such people that there is a problem with AGW.

[Superman]

Bob Wallace,

"Seems to me that the story lies in the ratcheting down of the amount of ice from year to year. We, IMHO, spent too much energy on how widely the ice is spread when it's the "cold reserve" we're using up."

The 'cold reserve' is true, but the real story seems to be in how the ice is melting. It is sacrificing insulation between the atmosphere and ocean in order to maintain a higher albedo and a solid boundary to put a brake on lateral ocean and atmospheric currents. It's almost like your skin trying to maintain a scab in order to avoid hemorrhaging, even though it's getting more sensitive to hot and cold.

[Rebus]

@ Glacierchange
Sphaerica flagged this enent on an earlier thread.

Glacier watching on MODIS this afternoon I spied yet another large chunk that just calved off of the Steensby Glacier (if I'm reading my maps right). Not as big as the Petermann Ice Island 2012 -- maybe a fifth of that -- but still... One more big block of ice floating away, one that was there in every pic I look at from last year and two years ago (clear view on 2010217).

Posted by: Sphaerica.wordpress.com | August 24, 2012 at 03:37

[Superman]

Idunno,

"Several denialist blogs are now beginning to insist that an ice free Arctic is no problem, as it happened in the past."

That's like comparing apples and oranges. Two thousand years ago, there were about 300 million people on the Earth, living with far less infrastructure of all types per capita. Any natural cycles in those days that took many decades would allow some adaption and moving to compensate for the catastrophe. Now, with seven billion people, and a tremendous amount of hard-wired infrastructure, moving to avoid places that are devastated by climate change (if that is even possible) is infinitely more difficult and more expensive. But, that's where we're heading.

[Apocalypse4Real]

The August 23 Godiva2 sea ice concentration and thickness maps are up.

https://sites.google.com/site/apocalypse4realseaice2012/home/sea-ice-concentration-and-thickness-comparison

[Peter Ellis]

Paddy: From Walt Meier, head of ice services at NSIDC...

"This year is unusual in that there is a lot of very low concentration ice in the Chukchi Sea that passive microwave is not seeing, but IMS/MASIE analysis has been counting as ice. That ice will likely melt completely in the next couple of weeks and the area will open up in IMS/MASIE.

A key point is that IMS/MASIE and other operational sources, such as from NIC, use a variety of data sources that are inconsistent in quantity and quality, as well as subjective human analysis to create maps of ice. A primary purpose of these maps is to support navigation in ice-infested waters. So they tend to be conservative and count even areas sparsely covered with ice as \”ice-covered\”. The passive microwave data is produced by completely automated processing that is consistent over the entire record dating back to 1979. Thus, while absolute estimates of ice cover may be biased, the trends and variability (e.g., comparing records, determining a record low extent) is more accurate than from using operational sources.

Walt Meier
NSIDC"

[LRC]

Although this does not help what is happening just remember history remembers 2 types of people: the ones who were right and vilified for it, and the ones who did the vilifying.
Manning and Hansen fit into category one. and if remembered at all Watts and Goddard in camp 2. Our job is to makes sure all the facts are correctly recorded for the historians. Done right and history will take care of the rest in its own great way.
Watch the ice!
PS My pleasure Larry. I love poking around.

[Al Rodger]

PIOMAS MAX/MIN DAILY VALUES
1979 33.035 16.855
1980 32.385 16.139
1981 30.848 12.589
1982 29.146 13.395
1983 30.569 15.077
1984 30.438 14.48
1985 31.088 14.475
1986 31.084 15.935
1987 31.957 15.176
1988 31.324 14.853
1989 30.181 14.649
1990 30.005 13.679
1991 30.817 13.476
1992 29.778 14.864
1993 30.544 12.234
1994 29.854 13.611
1995 28.572 11.185
1996 27.640 13.715
1997 29.476 13.178
1998 29.525 11.512
1999 28.545 10.916
2000 27.296 10.954
2001 27.753 12.179
2002 27.538 10.792
2003 27.319 10.24
2004 25.811 9.881
2005 26.181 9.159
2006 25.191 8.993
2007 23.865 6.458
2008 25.159 7.072
2009 25.082 6.893
2010 23.402 4.428
2011 21.961 4.017

[crandles]

Missed one:

2012 21.669

[Anu]

The whole section from 90°E to 130°E up to about 85°N seems to be mainly thin (less than 1 meter thick) sea ice:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictnnowcast.gif

This is a whole peninsula of ice that might melt away this summer:
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/ssmis/arctic_SSMIS_visual.png
if ocean temperatures continue the bottom melt for a few more weeks.

It would be nice if the Cryosat-2 people would join the party and let us know if models like the ARCc0 Ice Thickness product in the first link above were accurate, or too conservative, or totally wrong...