Arctic sea ice update – still happening before our eyes
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Last month we noted that after momentarily being near the long-term average, Arctic sea ice extent had returned to tracking at very low levels for that time of year. The latest update from the National Snow and Ice Data Center makes clear that ice extent is remaining close to record low levels – but even more troubling is this graphic showing what’s happening with ice volume:
As the NSIDC notes:
Ice extent measurements provide a long-term view of the state of Arctic sea ice, but they only show the ice surface. Total ice volume is critical to the complete picture of sea ice decline.
The graphic above is based on modeling done at the University of Washington (info on the evidence supporting the model here).
The declining volume seems consistent with the idea that the Arctic ice cap is at risk through the loss of multi-year ice. Even when the ice extent seems to have recovered, such as it did in April, the fact that it is new and thin ice means it can disappear quickly. The NSIDC report tells us that:
… ice extent declined rapidly during the month of May. Much of the ice loss occurred in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, indicating that the ice in these areas was thin and susceptible to melt.
They note that it is too soon to know whether this year’s minimum Arctic sea ice extent, which is due in September, will be below the record low of 2007 – that will depend very much on weather conditions in the region over the next few months. But it seems likely that we’re headed for another minimum ice extent that will be considerably below average. And given that some experts are suggesting that the decline is happening at a faster rate for ice volume than for area, and well ahead of the predictions in the last IPCC report, there seems to be plenty of reason for concern.
Is this a case of being alarmist, because I am alarmed?
This is significant because melting ice absorbs heat. What happens to this heat when all the ice is melted?
be intersting to hear what Andy Bolt has to say on this!
“The graphic above is based on modeling done at the University of Washington”
Oh, well, THERE’S your problem. Models. Models are left-wing alarmist stuff. It wasn’t models that designed the atomic bomb, or got us to the moon … oh, hang on …
I’m Andrew Bolt. I took a glimpse at this data, noticed that it came from the National Snow and Ice Data Center — whatever that is — and decided it was another example of skewed statistics designed to generate more funding for grant-hungry scientists.
I then turned up the gas heater and went trawling through right-wing websites for another prediction that hasn’t come true.
Tomorrow I’ll declare that the steam has run out of the GW campaign. Again.
So where’s the catastrophe? Or, what’s your point?
Matthew @ 3: Probably done by a graduate student and all!
Never go lake skating in the Spring or Autumn. It’s deadly.
Any 10 year old from a cold country will tell you that.
Sure, it looks like there’s a lot of ice out there, even more than in the deep of winter, but it’s thin ice.
By the end of a Spring or Autumn day ice floes no bigger than a square metre float freely.
After sundown, the temperature drops and these floaters get connected up by new ice.
If the next day is cold enough, the ice stays intact. If it snows during the day, the ice gets covered and looks solid.
That’s when people die.
Arctic sea ice behaves similarily, but on a much larger scale and longer time frame.
Warm weather means expansive floes which freeze up over Winter, giving the impression of more ice.
But it’s an illusion. It’s less ice spread more thinly and it’s a killer to the ignorant.
Any 10 year old from a cold country will tell you that.
Cheers
Another error in the IPCC Report, proving again that Rudd was wrong with his great big new tax that would wreck the economy and the legacy left to us by John Howard.
Groupthink! I posted this on Bolt’s “Tips for Wednesday” at 10:19am yesterday, with the usual blathering replies.
Capt. Col: just because a catastrophe doesn’t announce itself with 100,000 dead and a million Youtube hits, it doesn’t make it less of a problem. This one’s a slow builder. When the reflectivity of Arctic sea-ice is lost, then we’ll really see ocean warming kick into gear. Of course, if it doesn’t affect the price of a pot in the local RSL, then why worry?
{Removed – let’s play the ball and not the man, thanks – Tobby}
If you lean over to the right and look at the graph, you can make it look as if the ice is growing…. Ah – yes that’s better. Now climate change is not happening again.
AB – Herald Sun
Col, Alarmists play a very important role in waking people who are capable of imagination and thinking to potential problems. As you are a military man, you can understand the importance of Essington Lewis’s alarmist predictions to Japanese imperialistic expansion before the second world war. There were people then (a bit like yourself really), that couldn’t imagine the catastrophe coming and called him an ALARMIST in a derogatory way.
Mark Matthews @ 11
Don’t worry about the sea ice.. It is cold outside the Herald Sun Offices this morning and I hear I may have to fit chains to the bilia volvo for ski opening.. Pfft those lefties and their climate change!.. i mean global warming. The Real AB – HUN
Can I actually get odds on Andrew doing a post in the next week regarding the start of the ski season and climate change?
Ha! I bet he gets really irritated by all those “Keep Winter Cool” stickers in various places and cars around the slopes!
Yes, its pretty easy in these positions to argue when you’re Andrew Bolt. If you can’t win on facts (which is most of the time) just go to the thesaurus and find some more snide, sneering comments to make about your opponents that will no doubt have your fawning supporters in raptures. There’s nothing to worry about when you have the might of the Murdoch empire behind you.
This really isn’t alarmist; it is alarming. For all we know we may already be committed to melting Greenland, and all that that entails. Once it is gone, we won’t see it back for a thousand years or more.
I find those who believe we must have evidence of an actual disaster before we act to fix a problem quite frustrating. So we don’t act, and then when the disaster does happen they wonder why it can’t be fixed. It is the sort of thinking that let BP cut corners on the Deepwater well and then wonders why there is a huge oil slick and no solution after? Why can’t we apply risk management to environmental problems, rather than crisis reponse?
I couldn’t blame our desendents for really hating the baby boom generation. They will inherit a poorer, more crowded, less fertile earth from us.
As a further thought, if Al Gore was right that this is the foremost moral challenge we face, then we are failing it. 18 years after Kyoto we have no real progress. The economic (carbon trading) solutions have been impossible to implement. We need to move to simpler more effective measures, even if less efficient – bans on new CO2 emitters, carbon taxes, programs to replace our infrastructure with less CO2-intensive alternatives, and tariffs on goods with large carbon footprints. It is the only way we will ever start to make progress.
Professor Tim Naish, one of my guests in today’s Polar Exchange session, couldn’t be clearer about the risks ahead.
Director of the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, Professor Naish told me: “The international scientific community assessed all the latest science post Copenhagen and it’s converging on agreeing a sea level rise of 1m by the end of the century.”
This is double the figure quoted in the IPCC report – possibly because the dynamic effects of large ice sheets were not included.
Naish wasn’t finished. “It’s heading towards an upper limit of 2m.”
The impact would be considerable. “It’s huge,” he agreed. “One-hundred-and-fifty-million people live within one metre’s elevation above sea level.” Read the original context here…
What catastrophe, Capt. Col? What catastrophe?
Monkeywrench, don’t bother with the captain with facts, the depth of his analysis is trying to work out what sort of derogatory comment he can call this person. My bet is he will call him either an alarmist or a lefty. That’s it.
He can’t see or imagine any potential threat anywhere. I suppose after dogging all those bullets fighting all those wars for our freedom to think and say what we like (except that he doesn’t like people doing using that freedom and they must be put down by calling them names), he is immune to any coming catastrophe, if he can’t see it, it ain’t there.
So where’s the catastrophe?
That you are so unaware of all the potential catastrophes that an ice free Arctic would bring speaks volumes of your nativity on this issue. The catastrophe will be faced by your children and their children col. They will live in a world made poorer, harsher and harder simply because of unfettered greed by the very rich and unfettered stupidity by their political followers.
So what?
After all the comments here, still no catastrophe. Anyone? “Potential catastrophes” don’t count twobob, unless you believe the already discredited soothsayer’s “predictions” and include the cost of trying to prevent them.
Anyone prepared to bet on a 2m sea level rise? How much are you prepared to wager against the cost of preventing a 2m sea level rise by not just adjusting the CO2 magic knob, but turning it right off and sending us back to the stone age. Which is the catastrophe? One hundred and fifty million people would be a drop in the (much bigger) ocean if we have to hunt and gather after having listened to the gods of warming (snug in their ivory towers).
There once was a remedy to sea level rise. And God said, “Noah, build me an ark.” Noah replied, “What’s an ark?” Apologies to Bill Cosby.
Moral of the story – adapt.
Victims adapt because they have no choice. Winners make decisions and get the best outcome.
Comment 21 is the pièce de résistance of a confirmed Conservative. It’s not happening right now so why worry? It hasn’t dawned on Col that a 2m rise by the next century will not happen as quickly as the collapse of the oil economy due to depletion. I suppose you’ll be blaming the Gods of Warming for that too. Governments worldwide are completely unprepared for what will happen when oil runs out. Your “drop in the ocean” will then refer to the minor upsets caused by what might have happened if we’d made a sensible and timely provision to moving to a carbon-minimal economy.
You’re not a deep thinker on these matters, I fear, Captain.
Complete and utter strawman. The continued melting of arctic sea ice for years has been pointed to as proof of warming, excpet brave warriors like Bolt have denied that there is any melt happening.
Melting ice leads to sea level rise, and there are 150 million people at or below one metre above sea level.
Seriously, what are you expecting? One metre sea level rise in one day? Or a slow, continued rise over thirty years?
Are you denying that the sea is rising? The ice isn’t melting? What?
More predictions of catastrophe? That’s predictable. What would be a real catastrophe would be a return to an ice age rather than a bit balmier weather (by a degree or two) so I’d much prefer the ice to melt rather than extend to cover where it’s been before. All this despite much evidence saying that Arctic ice extent is not much different to normal and not trending towards some mythical “ice-free” status (don’t mention the Antarctic). And even more evidence that low lying lands are actually extending into the sea rather than retreating.
Rich Uncle Skelton, I’m quite capable of outpacing the existing sea level rises (imperceptable to the naked eye) as is everyone else. That’s the whole point. We can deal with it.
Col says: All this despite much evidence saying that Arctic ice extent is not much different to normal …. Just shows he can’t read a graph (see top of posting) and how stupid he really is. If he was a captain in our defence force, it is no wonder we are still can’t win a war in a stone age country after 7 years.
If you can find a scientist saying by 2010 there was going to be a catastrophe, I’d love to see it. What you will find are scientists saying the ice is melting and the sea level is rising. This is evidence of that.
Strawman. There is no impending ice age.
What evidence? Not this evidence, obviously, which shows exactly that.
Great news, isn’t it?
Obviously we can. Australia is well placed to dealing with climate change. But is Bangledesh?
See why you’ve been labelled a denialist?
“It’s not happening, it’s not happening…..okay it’s happening but it’ll all be fine!”
And of course sea level rise and the ensuing problems is only one consequence of global warming.
PeeBee @26, I don’t think the problem is that people like Captain Col here are stupid. I think the problem is that conservatives in general “want” to be stupid. They want to live their selfish little lives without giving a damn about the rest of humanity or the consequences. To do this, you need some pretty twisted logic, as our Captain Col so ably demonstrates.
If it weren’t for the fact that they dominate the media and threaten democracy with their bullying tactics, I would pity their shallow lives.
I pity their shallow lives anyway.
What am I saying? No, I don’t! The whole lot of ‘em can garn git …