COI | Centre for Ocean and Ice | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
Recent Comments
gelcarrion0t on Australia Permanent Drought Up… gelcarrion0t on “New computer modeling… Morgan Wright on Climate Destroying Shrimp Christopher Simpson on 1896 : Japan Hit By Earthquake… energywise on What’s At Stake? Robert Cherba on Too Hot To Live gelcarrion0t on Too Hot To Live Nicholas McGinley on “The world began to end… Nicholas McGinley on “The world began to end… Nicholas McGinley on “The world began to end…
There is a very interesting trend in nearly all the ice sections of the NH since 1979 they follow closely the world trend. It means that definitely NH ice is recovering big time http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html
Meanwhile, regarding the sun, the Los Angeles Time reports:
Our sun has gone quiet. Eerily quiet.
A few weeks ago it was teeming with sunspots, as you would expect since we are supposed to be in the middle of solar maximum — the time in the sun’s 11-year cycle when it is the most active. But now, there is hardly a sunspot in sight. If you look closely at the image above, taken on July 18 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, you will see a tiny smidge of brown just right of center where a small sunspot appears to be developing. But just one day before, there truly was nothing. It was a totally spotless day.
Phillips notes this is the weakest solar maximum to have been observed in the space age, and it is shaking out to be the weakest one in the past 100 years, so the spotless day was not so out of left field. “It all underlines that solar physicists really don’t know what the heck is happening on the sun,” Phillips said.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-the-sun-goes-eerily-quiet-20140718-story.html
Great news, thanks for the link and I agree with Phillips. 🙂
Fascinating!!! Through the first hundred days of this year, the temperature never once dipped below average, and yet since May, it never pierced it on the upside!!! Chances for a record September open Arctic this year are on the slim side, but two years down the road it will likely happen again, courtesy of relentless ocean currents on either side of Bear Island (between Norway and Spitzbergen)
Got a reference for the relentless ocean currents bit?
He is talking about the most northern tendrils of the Gulf Stream, that melt the ice from underneath, when the AMO is warm. (It recently shifted towards “cold” mode, though it is expected to return to “warm” for roughly five more years before becoming “cold” persistently, as we move to that side of what is roughly a sixty-year-cycle.)
The “problem” with melting the ice in Barents Sea is that it exposes much more water, which loses heat and also gets churned by storms, so it no longer is in a stratified state, and no longer can melt the ice from below. It is thus the author of its own demise, and a negative feedback occurs.
Remember all the fuss about the melt-water pool at the North Pole last summer, called “Lake North Pole” by some? This year, at nearly the same date, they had a fresh fall of snow up there. Nothing, and I mean nothing, does a better job of reflecting away the heat of sunlight than freshly fallen snow. And there’s not a melt-water pool in sight. Do you suppose the media will cover this event like they covered last years?
See the pictures at the very bottom of my long post at: http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/arctic-sea-ice-melt-flat-lining-death-spiral/
Excellent analysis, and your “long post” is spot on!
Fascinating ‘long post’ read.
Fascinating ‘long post’ read.
Oh boy.
Yep… no pictures of the Pole this year because it’s frozen solid… doesn’t fit the Global Warming meme…
Here’s a time series of May/June 2 m temperatures north of 80 degrees using the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis instead of ERA40. Note that the big melt years of 2007 and 2012 don’t show particularly high readings either!
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.proc.pl?dataset1=NCEP%2FNCAR+R1&var=2m+Air+Temperature&fyear=1979&fyear2=2014&season=1&fmonth=4&fmonth2=5&type=1&climo1yr1=1981&climo1yr2=2010&climo2yr1=1981&climo2yr2=2010&xlat1=80&xlat2=90&xlon1=0&xlon2=360&zlat1=0&zlat2=90&zlon1=0&zlon2=360&Submit=Create+Plot
The Snow Queen is Back!
The absence of correlation with air temperature is because air temperature is not the primary driver; transport and clouds are bigger factors. 2007 stands out as irregular because the weather patterns relentlessly pushed the MYI out of the Arctic into the Frame Strait for several years prior. 2013 and 2014 stand out because that trend has now reversed and the ice has NOT been directed to the Frame Strait. The MYI stacked up this winter and stayed in the Basin this summer.
Thanks for the warm welcome!
So Steve/Tony’s graph at the top proves nothing?
N.B. s/Frame/Fram/
The problem with that time period is that in early May the temperatures are still well below freezing, and no thawing is occurring. Likely a June 10 to August 20 time period would be better.
Steve’s plot demonstrates that this summer’s arctic temperatures have been below the long term average. It’s a irritant to all those that believe that higher CO2 leads directly to higher temps.
Your post implies an expected correlation between the temperatures and the arctic ice area minimum for a given year. Your post was erroneous.
The true irony is that, as an AGW acolyte, you believe that the atmospheric temperature is the primary driver of the trend in sea ice area as influenced by CO2 concentrations and the plot that you referenced clearly demonstrates that the summer temps and area minimums are NOT strongly correlated.
The 2013 Polar Vortex system arrived in the last week of July, this year it was around the second week.
Re: Caleb says: July 27, 2014 at 3:58 pm
ESRL divide their data up into monthly chunks. Perhaps we can compare notes again when they’ve reanalyzed July 2014, and then August?
In the meantime perhaps someone can explain to me why a positive anomaly of up to 15 degrees during the winter is any less relevant than a negative anomaly of a degree or so during the summer? An explanation of why the graph at the top shows that the “Record Cold Arctic Summer” of 2014 “Ends Several Weeks Early” would be useful too.
The only time Arctic ice can melt is in summer.
Summer temperatures are buffered by the latent heat of melting. The gap this summer is indicative of much lower atmospheric energy. By contrast, Winter temps in the Arctic can vary sharply with small changes in energy. Ice forms almost as fast at -25C as it does at -30C
The freezing point of Arctic surface water is somewhere around -1.8 °C, which is not at all the same thing as 273.15 °K.
Ice is a relatively good thermal insulator, and the rate of thickening in “winter” at constant air and water temperatures is highly dependent on the current thickness. Surely it stands to reason that ice which is both thinner and warmer at the start of “summer” will be quicker to melt, everything else being equal?
Jim, you seem to understand that you don’t understand.
How can we help?
One question/concern at a time, and Caleb or “Goddard”, or (heaven forbid, me,) can provide you with all you need to know to NOT be a Warmist.
We’re here to help.
Once again, you demonstrate your ignorance about the topic.
Arctic ice forms at -1.8C, but it melts at 0C. This is because the brine drains out of the ice during the summer. MYI is fresh enough to drink.
Interesting to read the process by which ice forms in salty water of the Arctic Ocean:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_wadhams.html
In part:
How ice forms in calm water
In quiet conditions the first sea ice to form on the surface is a skim of separate crystals which initially are in the form of tiny discs, floating flat on the surface and of diameter less than 2-3 mm. Each disc has its c-axis vertical and grows outwards laterally. At a certain point such a disc shape becomes unstable, and the growing isolated crystals take on a hexagonal, stellar form, with long fragile arms stretching out over the surface. These crystals also have their c-axis vertical. The dendritic arms are very fragile, and soon break off, leaving a mixture of discs and arm fragments. With any kind of turbulence in the water, these fragments break up further into random-shaped small crystals which form a suspension of increasing density in the surface water, an ice type called frazil or grease ice. In quiet conditions the frazil crystals soon freeze together to form a continuous thin sheet of young ice; in its early stages, when it is still transparent, it is called nilas. When only a few centimetres thick this is transparent (dark nilas) but as the ice grows thicker the nilas takes on a grey and finally a white appearance. Once nilas has formed, a quite different growth process occurs, in which water molecules freeze on to the bottom of the existing ice sheet, a process called congelation growth. This growth process yields first-year ice, which in a single season in the Arctic reaches a thickness of 1.5-2 m.
How ice forms in rough water
If the initial ice formation occurs in rough water, for instance at the extreme ice edge in rough seas such as the Greenland or Bering Seas, then the high energy and turbulence in the wave field maintains the new ice as a dense suspension of frazil, rather than forming nilas. This suspension undergoes cyclic compression because of the particle orbits in the wave field, and during the compression phase the crystals can freeze together to form small coherent cakes of slush which grow larger by accretion from the frazil ice and more solid through continued freezing between the crystals. This becomes known as pancake ice because collisions between the cakes pump frazil ice suspension onto the edges of the cakes, then the water drains away to leave a raised rim of ice which gives each cake the appearance of a pancake. At the ice edge the pancakes are only a few cm in diameter, but they gradually grow in diameter and thickness with increasing distance from the ice edge, until they may reach 3-5 m diameter and 50-70 cm thickness. The surrounding frazil continues to grow and supply material to the growing pancakes.
The trend downward continues, but has not reached 0 C yet,
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2014.png
I wonder where the footage of the North Pole Cam is this year? Last year’s melt puddle was quite the media darling.
Maybe they’ll do re-runs of 2013’s melt puddle if the north pole cam is frozen solid in 2014….
They can call it “highlights of the climate cycle” as the climate charlatans attempt to shift from “the world will burn-up soon!!” to oops, maybe there are some long term climate cycles at play.
Settled science indeed….
Movies: no puddles. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/np2014/2014-cam1web.mov
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/np2014/2014-cam1.mov
Occasional droplets on the lens.
I take it you’re unaware that the NPEO webcams all bit the dust (metaphorically speaking) many moons ago?
Re: Crashex says: July 28, 2014 at 3:34 pm
My post implied nothing of the sort. If anything implied “an expected correlation between the temperatures and the arctic ice area minimum” it’s the graph at the top, but it was rather short on explanation so it’s hard to be sure. Hence your comment is erroneous.
Note also that “below the long term average” is not the same thing as “record cold” and that Caleb seems to suggest that “summer” runs until August 20th, although others might suggest something more like the middle of September.
Jim, when you graduate, you will know to refute data with data. And, you will not be so quick to assume others are wrong, when you are so WRONG.
Hope that helps.
I did refute data with data. Caleb suggested more data is required though.
Click my link. There’s vast amounts of data there.
Hope that helps?
Since you offer no data, I can only assume your “slant”.
You “believe” Arctic ice has entirely melted, right?
Caleb suggest the peak period, and said nothing about the duration of summer.
typo: suggests
Re: geran says: July 28, 2014 at 10:10 pm
You could start by explaining why you find it so difficult to extract any data from: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.pl
I’m here to help!
Nice obfuscation. (I know you phonies so well.)
You “believe” Arctic ice has entirely melted, right?
Wrong. I’m simply trying to work out the relevance of the title above to the graph above. As you rightfully suggest, I am looking at the data. Why don’t you try it yourself?
Re: stevengoddard says: July 28, 2014 at 11:06 pm
Did you read what I wrote? Here it is again:
“The freezing point of Arctic surface water is somewhere around -1.8 °C”.
We seem to be agreed on that point at least. In addition there is now far more first year ice north of 80 degrees than there used to be. Do you fancy the idea of sucking on some of that?
Arctic explorers melt sea ice and drink it. How do you think Amundsen stayed in the Arctic for three years in 1904-1906? You seem to be a very slow learner.
A little light educational reading for you Steve/Tony. An oft cited learned paper on the subject of multi year sea ice salinity:
http://www.igsoc.org/journal.old/13/67/igs_journal_vol13_issue067_pg109-120.pdf
“The cores collected from areas beneath surface hummocks generally showed a systematic increase in salinity with depth from 0% at the surface to about 4% at the base.”
Now a quick math test:
2014 – 1904 = ?
2014 – 1974 = ?
You can’t possibly be this stupid.
The summers of 2013 and 2014 represent two years, yet 2014 – 2013 = 1
Are you really a moron, or just pretending to be?
For further information on the joys of drinking melted first year sea ice please see:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/coldest-summer-on-record-at-the-north-pole/#comment-397111
Do you fancy the idea of sucking on some of that?
A regular reader wonders:
“How about integrating that temperature record over both winter and summer and seeing how far above average temperature the value is.”
What does the team think?