Time series of area of perennial sea ice
According to recent posts in the Denialosphere1 the Arctic ice is well on it’s way to a full recovery.
Here are a few examples, Anthony Watts Arctic sea ice continues rebound, Another Global Warming Hoax Deconstructed “a gigantic 30 per cent increase in Arctic sea ice coverage”,74 Years Since Oct Snowfalls – Deprogramming Global Warming “the Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater”, but the meme is hardly limited to them. Just fire up your favourite search engine to see how wide spread this Denier meme is.
One gets the impression that the Arctic can return to work any day now. Is that what’s actually happening? Of course not, it’s the Denialosphere. I’ve blogged about their attempt to spin this one before, but let’s see what they are up to now.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Arctice Report Card 2008 “There continues to be widespread and, in some cases, dramatic evidence of an overall warming of the Arctic system.” Science Daily reports Arctic Sea Ice Is Suddenly Getting Thinner As Well As Receding.
The best and most recent analysis would be Tamino’s Northern Ice; perhaps a little technical for some, but definitely worth a look. Certainly anyone wanting to understand what is really going on needs to read his piece. The graphs of the data say it all.
So how is Watts getting his impressive rebound of ice to “normal’ conditions?
Simple, for a comparative baseline he is using the average of 1979-2007, ie the average under three decades
Arctic Spring Melt
of climate change. In other words he is defining as “normal” an area that is about half of what the ice had been in 1979.
On the one hand it makes moderate sense if you are a Denier not to factor in ice loss due to climate change – why correct for something you claim does not exist?
On the other hand you would think someone wishing to demonstrate that climate change truly isn’t happening would be eager to show that there has been no meaningful change over the last 30 years. Well, I am certain they would be eager to show that, the problem is that they can’t.
If we look at the decline in the summer minimum over the last three decades …
Cyrosphere Today http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Well, does anything else need to be said?
Of course it is understandable that the Deniers missed it. It only on all of the Arctic research sites, the science blogs
- DeSmogBlog New satellite data shows arctic ice at historic minimum
- A Few Things Illconsiderd The other Arctic sea ice loss
- Climate Change On the Arctic sea ice
- Hot Topic In the heat of the (Arctic) night
the mainstream media
- Reuters Man-made climate change seen in Antarctica, Arctic
- Telegraph UK Arctic ice thickness drops by up to 19 per cent
- MSNBC Dramatic evidence’ of Arctic melt, experts warn
popular blogs
- allvoices Arctic Ice is Melting too Fast to Recover!
- geneticliving.com Arctic sea ice thinning at record rate
and of course H.E. Taylor’s invaluable site
… but other than that it is almost impossible to find any mention of it.
In other words they know perfectly well that they are misrepresenting the facts; that’s why we call them Deniers.
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Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 30 … still no evidence.
1As I discuss here I do not use the term “Denier” to refer to all climate change doubters. Those who thoughtfully and intelligently address the facts I call ’skeptics’.
Those who irrationally deny the existence of the science and instead propagate the lies and distortions such as those discussed above and linked to the right under “Debunking Denier Nonsense” are “Deniers”.
The choice of the correct term is based on their actions, not their conclusions.
IMAGE CREDITS:
Greenfyre's 
Your link to Watt’s blog is wrong – you’ve accidentally used the same url as for the following link. [1]
Watts didn’t plot the graph himself – he lifted it from Arctic Roos – but as you say, it suits his purpose as it is based on a 1979-2007 average (and ends on November 1). We’ve been within 1 s.d. of the 1979-2007 mean (in area only, not extent) for all of 11 days now – clearly the ice is “recovering”!
Any of his readers curious enough to follow his link back to Arctic Roos could also have found this, which is strong support for what you, Tamino and others are saying. [2]
I find the last graph interesting (and disturbing). Tamino has stated that the trend isn’t linear, and this shows it graphically (though I don’t know how they calculate the trend).
Some recovery.
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[1] Whoops 😳 Thanks for that – corrected.
[2] Them … I know when I am out of my league, and Tamino, Stoat etc are definitely major players. I just collect the cards. 🙂 But on that note, you could drop Tamino a comment asking for a reference to somewhere that explains how those trends are calculated; I am sure he will be more than happy to oblige.
But as you say, there is that graph, as well as the “Climatology Sea Ice Concentration in Arctic (NERSC)” and the “Long-Term Global Surface Temperature Anomaly” (NERSC) animations which contradict the Denier thesis.
and thanks again
Mike
Sure – it is clear that sea ice extent has been reducing over the past 30 years.
The question is why?
Recent papers suggest it’s a change in ocean currents and winds. There is no evidence that it’s AGW.
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yes – I’ve read that BBC article – it’s about models. Models aren’t science, they are tools to interpret science, and they can be wrong as they have been so far.
I said there was no evidence that the melting of the arctic was due to AGW just as there is no evidence to prove that the antarctic is getting cooler due to AGW.
If you have such evidence I’d be happy to read it.
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may I suggest YOU read the following article that is up to date on this subject.
Click to access Response.to.Dingell.EAQ.pdf
where the following conclusion is drawn:
Overall, in answer to your question, climate models project that, if greenhouse gases dominate the
climate, the troposphere over the tropics and over both poles should be warming; the tropical
troposphere should be warming two to three times faster than the polar tropospheric regions, namely
at a rate of about 0.25 to 0.5 oC/decade, and the polar warming should be strongest at the surface. The
data, however, do not support any of these hypotheses. They show, at most, a trend of about 0.1
oC/decade in the tropical mid-troposphere, it is statistically insignificant and recently the annual
mean temperature has fallen below the level observed in the early 1980s, despite an overall 14%
increase in the atmospheric CO2 content since that time. The trend observed in the tropics over the
past 30 years is less than half that observed over the North Pole, and the troposphere over the South
Pole is cooling, not warming. The enhanced trend over the North Pole has been attributed to
variations in atmospheric heat transport, and the vertical structure is inconsistent with the pattern
predicted in models as an amplified response to greenhouse gases.
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here’s a starter for you
http://climateresearchnews.com/2008/10/winds-are-dominant-cause-of-greenland-and-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-losses/
this article suggests that air temp is NOT a factor in the antarctic Ice sheets melting, ocean currents are to blame.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7261171.stm
Janama:
McKintrick gets it wrong on at least two counts:
No, the polar regions should be warming faster. It’s known as “polar amplification”. And it’s independent of the forcing (It doesn’t matter if it’s greenhouse gases, or solar, or cosmic rays, or whatever).
Try Polar amplification of climate change in coupled models by Holland and Blitz for starters. [1]
Garbage. Check NASA GISS or Hadley CRU for yourself.
Mike:
Thanks, and yes – I’m sure Tamino could work out how Arctic Roos get their trend, but he’s a busy man. [2]
I’m studying maths at the moment, I’ll try to work it out for myself. 🙂
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What’s quite funny is that the first link in Jamana’s last post quotes the same M.M. Holland that co-authored the paper I linked to in my last post.
No-one doubts that ocean currents are a major factor of changes of climate (local, regional or global). And no-one should doubt that the atmosphere and the oceans interchange heat.
I’m quite sure that ocean currents are one of the reasons that Arctic ice is declining. But that doesn’t mean that greenhouse gases are not to blame.
S2: So, does this mean that McKitrick no longer believes that “global temperature” has no meaning?
Janama: Tell me, what is the primary reason ocean currents change?
I have no idea Brian but I don’t doubt that the undersea volcanic activity in the Pacific Rim might influence ocean temperatures and how currents interact with the arctic and antarctic.
Unfortunately we don’t know much about the volcanic activity in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Earlier this year a team from the British Antarctic Survey examined the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and discovered a volcano that erupted 2000 years ago (325BC) and remains active. Dr David Vaughan from the team stated that the ice sheet melt was not caused by increase in air temps and GW, and the probable cause was heat from the volcano and increased water temperatures.[1]
His paper ‘A recent volcanic eruption beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet’ by Hugh F Corr and David G Vaughan is published in the February 2008 edition of Nature Geosciences
But hey – I’m not a scientist so what would I know.
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Of the primary causes of ocean currents, several (such as topography and the Earth’s rotation) haven’t changed. All of the others are connected directly to temperature. Therefore, ocean currents can change due to a temperature increase, suggesting the root cause comes back to temperature. This is first-year oceanographic or second-year earth/atmospheric science stuff, and is summarized on Wikipedia fairly well.
Additionally, volcanic eruptions are localized events and generally do not last very long temperature-wise (lasts only as long as the volcanic activity lasts; the longer-term impact seen on surface volcanoes stems from particulates they spew out during eruptions, i.e. Pinatubo). Compare this to the prolonged change in temperature from an increased greenhouse effect (and if you accept the centuries-old established discipline of radiative physics, along with direct observations, you must also accept that the quantity of GHGs has increased substantially recently, particularly CO2. Then isotopic analysis can tell you that the CO2 increase is primarily from burning fossil fuels).
Putting all of this together, and you find…?
so Dr David Vaughan is incorrect when he suggests that the 2000 year old volcano is responsible for altering the ocean currents and melting the western ice sheet, and it’s due to global warming coupled with increased air temps caused by burning fossil fuels?
right – gotcha.
The antarctic has been cooling for the past 30 years and southern hemisphere temps have remained pretty well constant according to 29 years of high quality satellite measurements..
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I’m working my way through Vaughan right now; I wrote my earlier comment before reading it. I’d like to remind you that a volcano in Antarctica does not explain such things as stratospheric cooling, arctic amplification, ocean acidification, isotopic ratio changes, and similar observations.
Your contention on Antarctica
is incorrect, as is your categorization of satellites as “quality” — they don’t actually measure temperature! It’s satellite analyses that provide temperature from MSU data. Interestingly, both RSS and UAH agree with the instrumental record (RSS moreso than UAH, although UAH has some <a href=”http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/rss-and-uah/”unusual artifacts in it).
Oh, and speaking about the southern hemisphere? (Setting aside that it’s first-year meteorology material that the southern hemisphere is expected to warm slower than the north.) Where are you getting your information?
Brian – there’s not a great deal of land in the southern hemisphere so land temp measurements a far and few. Satellites on the other hand can cover the whole area, and they do, and they find it’s been pretty constant over the past 30 years. The NH has warmed thus the slight global warming. But even that is changing as this article mentions
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/20/national-post-thirty-years-of-warmer-temperatures-go-poof/#more-3739
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Janama, that was already addressed here. It’s garbage, and Watts knows it.
As for the southern hemisphere not warming based on satellites (which do NOT measure temperature, although you can use them to estimate it), you can download the data yourself and check. It *has* warmed, although less noticably than the north.
(Hint: The dataset you’d want to compare your satellites with would be a land-ocean temperature index. There aren’t land stations over the ocean but there ARE oceanic measurements being done. Yes, even in the southern hemisphere.)
If you want something designed to get a full measurement of temperature in both hemispheres, you’ll need something at L1 (the Lagrange point of equal gravity) between the Sun and Earth, pointed at Earth. This could even do one better, measuring energy imbalance directly (and really, climate all comes down to (Energy in – Energy out); the rest is just shifting it around). Coincidentally, we’ve had such a device built for years — DSCOVR, the Deep Space Climate Observatory. Bush’s appointee at NASA mothballed it, and the White House has been censoring anything requested on the mission under FOIP, despite it costing millions of taxpayer dollars to keep in storage. It isn’t launch expenses — they’ve recieved offers from Europe to launch it for free. So riddle me this: Why would the anti-science, pro-oil Bush administration try to cover up a mission that could definitively stop all this bickering and tell us precisely what we need to know?
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yes – sure sure – but please explain why June 1988 was higher in temp than June 2008? [1] Aren’t we supposed to he hurtling upwards in temperature towards catastrophic outcomes? That was predicted in 1988 and it didn’t happen did it? [2] In fact nothing you’ve predicted has happened. [3]
doesn’t it appear that your increase in temp is only marginal and possibly helpful as life thrives in warmer temps, not cooler. [4]
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may I humbly suggest your leader has lost it!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09gore.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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Mike, I am just laughing. Your blog just reminds me of “The consensus is in” .. “there IS no debate” … hahaha
There are so many holes in all of your posts, I don’t even know where to begin.
Good luck with this, I am out of here to read something worth while. What a waste of bandwidth.
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