NCEP has changed their forecast again, and now shows wind producing conditions continuing in the western Arctic for most of the next two weeks. This means continued compaction of the ice, melting, and reduction of extent.
Temperatures are below freezing over most of the remaining ice sheet, except for the the tip of the ice in the Beaufort and East Siberian Seas.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmp_01.fnl.gif
Same image with NSIDC ice extent map overlaid.
The modified NSIDC map below shows ice loss over the last three days in red.
The extent graph is going to keep heading down for at least the next few days.
As you can see, this is a very different September pattern from any other recent year.
Thinner is more vulnerable to be pushed around by the wind. The arctic ice is not recovering. Third lowest extent on record and still a bit of time left.
And just for the record, winds blew before 2007 😉
Whatta ya know… warm winds, warmer than normal seas, and thinner ice pack results in deteriorating Arctic ice pack conditions. Who woulda thought that this is what’s up?
Steve Goddard; although you don’t seem to know a lot about thermodynamics, heat transfer, mass transfer (diffusion), and momentum transfer (fluid dynamics), phase equilibrium, or radiative energy transfer, you do at least have an open door policy on comments. This is a huge improvement over the heavy censoring at other skeptical sites.
Given that there has been a large increase in the amount of 2-3 year old ice this year, we should see a continuing increase in the amount of MYI next year.
Censorship is the hallmark of AGW sites, not skeptic sites.
Totally agree.
I was banned by Tamino for suggesting ocean cycles might play some part in recent warming.
RealClimate deliberately held back posts until the topic went ‘cold’ (a tactic admitted by Michael Mann in climategate emails) emails).
I’ve submitted countless posts to WUWT which disagree with Anthony Watts viewpoint. Not one has ever been rejected.
Till they change the forecast in three days…
Yesterday the extent decreased by only 17k km², but if the melt/compaction goes below 2008, we can count on a year of hearing about the second worst melt in history until next September.
How does it go again … it’s worse than we thought.
There will be some interesting discussions going on about thickness and volume. It seems pretty clear that volume has increased for the second straight year since the 2008 low.
Pretty clear on what grounds? There’s no direct measurement evidence publicly available yet. Of the three models I’m aware of, two (PIOMAS and TOPAZ) say it’s down, while the oldest and presumably least reliable (PIPS2) says it’s up.
Or are you basing that purely on the increase in 2nd/3rd year ice? If so, I think it’s only fair to point out that that’s also a model, just one that’s less specified and hence likely to be even less accurate than any of the other three.
Nature will do as she pleases – some times, it seems, just to confound us. Mr Dorlomin is right to point out that the same wind based result occured in 2007 which suggests wind is a far bigger factor than temperature.
That aside I was concerned by Mr Zinfan94’s comment regarding “the heavy censoring at other skeptical sites”. I have never encountered such sensorship. To whom do you refer sir?
Or am I misreading your point. Could you mean that as there is now so much independantly verified science disputing AGW that the pro-AGW position is infact the skeptical one? In which case it is very well established that such sensorship occurs and I fully agree with your point. But then this site would not be classed as skeptical. Oh well.
Of course (for those who are censertive to such things) I meant censorship.
To John Finn:
Thank you for recognizing this fact.
Wherever the minimum ends up, at least we know CO2 had nothing to do with it.
Based on what? Ice free arctic in summer, nothing to do with CO2, Greenland ice cap melting, nothing to do with CO2. Antarctica melting, nothing to do with CO2. Glaciers melting, nothing to do with CO2. It’s all natural, it has been going on for millions of years. Sure, before the dinosaurs disappeared, they burned coal, drilled for oil, denuded forests and used natural gas for heating. Not so intelligent denial.
Indeed, Layne. It’s confirmation bias talking. ‘We’ don’t know this, you think it is so. For one, the experts don’t agree.