by Judith Curry
The seasonal forecasts of Arctic sea ice minimum have been submitted to annual SEARCH Sea Ice Outlook
For background on the decline of Arctic sea ice, see my summary post at Climate Dialogue (and Climate Etc. references therein).
The relative recovery of the Arctic sea ice last September has pretty much put the kibosh on forecasts of an imminent ‘spiral of death’ for the Arctic sea ice.
Melt ponds as a forecast tool
One of the forecasts, by a group at the University of Reading, is getting a lot of press. They recently coauthored a paper entitled September Arctic sea-ice minimum predicted by spring melt-pond fraction. Co-author Tsemados explained this in a guest post at Ed Hawkins’ blog. Basically, they have put a prognostic model for melt ponds into the CICE model (the most sophisticated of the sea ice models used in climate models). They found find that the Arctic sea-ice minimum can be accurately forecasted from melt-pond area in spring with a strong correlation between the spring pond fraction and September sea-ice extent.
Based on the springtime melt pond extent, the UK group is predicting a 2014 sea ice minimum of 5.4 million sq km, about the same as for 2013. Vox has a good overview on this.
Well I find this to be pretty interesting. As the grandmother of melt pond research (well co-grandmother with Beth Ebert), I have done considerable research on this topic, including developing the first parameterization of melt ponds for climate models.
So, what are melt ponds? Well this is what they look like:
As snow and ice melts, the melt water accumulates on the surface in valleys of the sea ice topography. The area and depth of the ponds depends on sea ice age (internal structure as well as surface topography), and ponds that melt completely through are called melt holes. As can be seen from the photo, melt ponds have a much lower albedo than ice, and hence enhance the melting of the sea ice in a positive feedback loop.
The onset of the melt season, in late spring, is driven in a general sense by the local increase in solar insolation, but also by weather systems originating in the midlatitudes. The first rainfall of the season causes metamorphosis of the snow grains, whereby the snow becomes wet and individual snow grains become larger, which makes the snow less reflective. This decrease in the snow reflectivity accelerates the snow melt. Depending on the age of the ice (newer ice has more salt and hence melts at a slightly lower temperature), the ice begins melting once the snow is gone.
In late summer, the ponds freeze over, triggered in a general sense by local decrease in solar insolation, but also by weather systems from the midlatitudes. Snowfall and high winds can help initiate the melt pond freeze up (note prognostic freeze up of the melt ponds is very tricky to get right).
Curent state of the sea ice
If you want to follow the details of what is going on during this melt season, check out Arctic Sea Ice Blog and Dosbat. Here are some plots that tell the story:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/Sea_Ice_Extent_v2_L.png
Last winter, sea ice extent was on the low side, but the melting trajectory looks pretty average for the decade of the 2000’s. What is more telling is this figure of the air temperature at 80N:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Winter temperatures were anomalously warm – the cold air kept moving southward without building up for extensive periods over the Arctic Ocean. Now since May, temperatures have been anomalously cool.
With regards to sea ice volume, there has been some recovery relative to the values of the last 3 years:
JC’s take on seasonal sea ice forecasting
There are three things to look at:
- The evolution of the multidecadal oscillations (e.g. where you are at on the stadium wave wheel)
- Seasonal ENSO forecasts
- Weather
Re #1, lets take a look at the long term anomalies:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
On a (2011) Climate Etc. post Pondering the Arctic Ocean, I interpreted the record in the context of a (qualitative) change point analysis, defined by changes in trend, mean value, amplitude of the annual cycle, and interannual variability.It looks like 2013 was another change point year, characterized by low amplitude seasonal cycle. Stay tuned for a a more detailed interpretation of all this in context of the stadium wave. Key question: does the mini shift in 2013 portend flat (no trend), low amplitude anomalies, or possibly a recovery? Or continued decline?
Re #2, see a paper I coauthored Recent Arctic sea ice variability: connections to the Arctic Oscillation and the ENSO. The analysis needs updating, but the punchline is that there is not much effect of these Arctic wide (although some big regional effects). Update on the 2014 El Nino watch: the predicted El Nino is somewhat fizzling, unlikely to see very strong El Nino at least through the end of summer. In any event, the seasonal predictability of ENSO starting in June provides some regional predictability of sea ice variations.
Re #3, The meltpond predictor seems useful to some extent; a slow start to the melt season implies a shorter melt season. However, without having dug into the details of what they have done, I would caution that they need to keep track of what is going on with first year ice versus older ice. The Arctic Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation influence substantially the drift and deformation of the sea ice, which is of equal importance in the seasonal evolution of sea ice ice extent. There is some predictability of NAO and AO out to 30 days; CFAN’s 30 day forecasts of NAO, and AO are pretty flat (i.e. not far off neutral).
So how does all this add up? I would say that the Reading team should be fairly close – similar to last year. I disagree slightly with their reason for this, focusing more on the large-scale climate dynamics regime and change points, but I agree that the late onset to the melt season should be a contributor. I am definitely not placing any money on a spiral of death scenario.
But there are many wild cards associated with the weather, and even high latitude forest fires can play a role. It will be fun to see how the SEARCH forecasts come in, and how this plays out.
Interesting thesis on the melt ponds. At the very least it may be a barometer that is useful for forecasting.
Go Adolescent Ice, Go!
==========
With arctic melting season firmly lodges around an even 6 months, another catastrophic melt seems unlikely.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=965
“another catastrophic melt” ??
I guess I missed that.
Makes sense — the larger the extent the greater the area for more spring ponds in the spring and statistically, the most accurate predictor of the immediate future is the most recent past.
Stroeve et al., “Predicting September Sea Ice – Ensemble Skill of the Search Sea Ice Outlook 2008–2013” (GRL 2014) observes that in some years predictions are pretty good and in others they stink. “[T]he mean squared error (MSE) of SIO predictions is only slightly better than a series of linear-trend predictions, each calculated from data up to but not including the target year.” Large year-to-year changes, in particular, seem to be difficult to predict.
Getting sometimes pretty close and then others badly wrong is fair indication of a complete failure to capture even the basics of the process.
durrr.. not.
duh… yes
Forecast skill is best measured against some kind of ‘null’ forecaster, such as the linear-to-date used in Stroeve et al.. The entire pool of models did ok only when the null forecaster also did ok — which alone says the entire pool isn’t skilled. That the pool does even worse in years the null forecaster also does poorly confirms it.
But the models in the pool (any submitted to the SIO) are quite different from each other, and their predictions are as well. Some have done better than the average or median that pooling represents. How much that means with only 3-5 forecast (years) is a question. It does seem excessive to say it’s ‘complete failure to capture even the basics of the process.’ One can have a perfect model of a chaotic process (Lorenz oscillator, for instance) and nevertheless be unable to make skilled predictions past a certain point.
My car has a distance to empty model.
It captures the fundamentals correctly.
sometimes, if the road changes to uphill and the wind changes to be directly in my face, it gets the answer very wrong. over time it corrects,
but then its wrong again if I go downhill with the wind behind me.
basically in a model where there are corner cases that drive extreme values it is possible to understand the fundamentals, get the answer correct on many cases, and still have corner cases that are wildly wrong.
The pattern of answers a model gives you is no sure indication of whether or not you have the “fundamentals correct” A real skeptic would recognize that when the answer of a model doesnt fit the data all you know is this:
something is wrong. could be the model, could be the data, could be both.
could be something central to the model or a corner case. a real skeptic knows what he doesnt know.
Robert Grumbine: “Forecast skill is best measured against some kind of ‘null’ forecaster, such as the linear-to-date used in Stroeve et al.”
By way of contrast, look at the UKMO’s self-assessment of their Arctic Sept. ice extent prediction here. They seem proud of a predicted-to-observed correlation, over their hindcast period 1996-2009, of 0.63 (“significantly different from zero at the 95% confidence level”). In comparison, the correlation with a linear trend over the same period is around 0.9. Using the prior year’s value as the predictor yields r=0.77.
I’m writing my opinion. It usually goes without saying, that not everybody agrees with me*. I talked some to Stroeve after Stroeve et al. came out. Hopefully this will help nudge the field in what I think is a better direction. I also snarked about ice model skill assessment in a 1998 paper, which finally got responded to (and has been percolating) in about 2006. Some spread, mostly in Canada, of my thoughts (or at least responses to them).
On the other hand, it also means I’ve got a pretty open field in to which to be writing papers. There are a lot of ideas from meteorological forecast skill analysis+ which have yet to be brought in to sea ice model skill analysis
*also: I don’t speak for my employer.
+ I know there’s a reflexive ‘weather models are always wrong’ in society, but
a) They’ve developed a lot of techniques for assessing skill, and apply them regularly.
b) If you think weather models are bad, look at (try even to find) skill assessments of economic models.
Personally, I think statistical models for seasonal sea ice forecasts will work better in the short term. With regards to the seasonal forecast skill of weather prediction models. For ECMWF forecasts initialized Jun 1, the skill is ok in some regions and some regimes out 3-4 months. Pretty good skill out to 30 days (but I haven’t looked specifically at the Arctic Ocean region.
Yes there is some good ensemble forecast skill assessment work that has been done by the NWP community
Mosher:
Yes – I agree with all of that.
However, isn’t the mismatch between climate models and observations at the stage where we can say that it is probably the models?
Didn’t BEST look at the data and find it was fairly good?
Seems like the models are the problem to me (80%) with the data being about 20% of the problem.
Some claim that in 2007 or 2012 usually winds blew sea ice into Fram Straight or other locations where it melted more easily. If important, any model not including wind will significant variability. Predicting winds over the Arctic Ocean several months in advance will be difficult.
I suspect the melt pond issue is a two edges sword.
For much of time when there is light in the Arctic, it is very low incidenct angle.
The argument that melt ponds have low albedo and thus accelterate melting is relevant at higher angles of incidence.
For low incidence light, water can have a very high reflectivity (upto 90%), not low.
Ice models do take account of incident angle but seem to model the angle largely on some lower latitude Atlantic sea measurements where wind makes the surface choppy enough that there’s not too much of the low incidence where this happens.
This is not the case with melt pools which tend to be much stiller and mirror like than open water.
However, the same is not true for radiative losses where the high emissivity comes into play 24/7. Significant melt pond areas means added losses right throught the summer in the upward LWIR. Both these factors will tend to counter the increased absorbance in the peak months at lower latitudes.
so far death-spiral mentality seems only to see the positive feedbacks, not the stabalising ones.
Maybe these other aspects of melt ponds are something the modellers need to look at.
Since PIOMAS just look pretty much like ice extent * const, they pretty much failed to capture the 50% increase in ice volume last year. Ice models seem to have the same kind of problem as GSMs, but are further off the mark.
What is the difference in the thermalization of ice cold water and snow w.r.t IR?
Greg Goodman | June 17, 2014 at 5:08 pm,
I think when you take into count reflection of low incident light, and that a few hours east and west of local noon, the angle is even lower, even in the middle of summer. Then the issue is how much clear sky does it get to radiate to space.
Greg Goodman: a personal observation: those ponds do look like mirrors when the air is still (they make beautiful photographs). But they have tiny ripples when the wind blows and this ruins the mirror effect. I also have a hunch personal observation for most of us who stayed near the shoreline is biased towards still air conditions because we tend to stay indoors and not go outside to walk on the frozen ocean in windy conditions. I did it in the Pechora Sea in May and I had to walk backwards into the wind, and even that was really hard, even though I was fully suited. I don’t think those models have the resolution to capture the ice, the melt water and the fog coming out of those polynyas we get when the wind blows towards the North in late spring and early summer.
I just looked at the side by side for June 12 2012 and 2014 on cryosphere today. Not to much difference except 2014 has a lot more dense cold area.
The winter was warm for most of the Arctic Ocean, but the North American sub-Arctic was brutally cold. This affected the Arctic Archipelago area to a great degree. But we must go back to summer 2013 Arctic Cyclones pervasive presence which stopped the warming of the Arctic Ocean as with preceding recent years, this allowed spreading out of loose pack ice to trigger earlier onset of fast sea ice in the fall. The greater Pan-Arctic winter was mostly cloudier, but without a great deal of precipitation in the CAA Arctic Basin area, this made the sea ice even thicker during wind storms. After end of long night, a short lived La-Nina partially triggered a cloud free period made even less cloudy by the thicker Archipelago sea ice area spurring the creation of consistent Anticyclones. We are at this time experiencing the continuance of Anticyclones which favor ice accretion until the sun becomes too high in altitude. There is evidence that the CAA will continue being pervasively anticyclonic until summer.
The Archipelago is significant because ice there can block the entry of warmer water from the south, which impacts greatly on the melt extent.
E.M.Smith has a good post on this:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/arctic-flushing-and-interglacial-melt-pulses/
Very nice. Thanks for the link.
‘There is a tide in the affairs of ice,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to melting…
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.’
H/t Julius Caesar and the Chiefio.
Interesting
I don’t know about this year, but the 11-year trend is positive and the length of the positive trend will surely increase in the next decades (solar or AMO/PDO related).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/last:132/trend
Yes, but we’re at peak solar activity. Daily and seasonal temps lag, we might see some more decline in the next couple of years.
Yes, we might see some more decline in the next couple of years, but I think it’s unlikely it will affect the ‘long-term’ positive decadal trend. Looking at the neutron data for example, this solar cycle is so weak that even at the peak it’s not much stronger than the strong cycles (21, 22) at the minimum.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif
I think solar cycle frequency is ‘the knob’ – high frequencies (short cycles) cause warming and low frequencies cooling, with some lag and some ‘system memory’. When the climate system is at a cold state (the LIA for example), even a prolonged high solar frequency cannot bring it to a much warmer state ever the course of just a few cycles – it takes time.
I agree, but a knob and probably not the knob. I think system memory is probably right. I also think solar effects are probably regional and mostly over the ocean, filtered through enso and other ocean processes. A look at cumulative CRF between enso events might be interesting. If we could suss-out high energy vs low energy CRF, we might see something more interesting.
Does the melt pond water evaporation amount to something significant?
No.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/Images/Fig5-9.htm
Latent heat flux is 4W/m2 over the arctic ocean and I’m pretty frickin sure that already small amount is predominantly over open ocean not ice ponds.
Correction to the above: I should have said the ice in the Archipelago blocks cold Arctic sea water from leaving, thereby inhibiting the ingress of warmer southern water. The Smith post makes this clear.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=965
There’s a general tendency to anti-correlation at 1 year ( ie alternation ). There are some other short term patterns that break this periodically but I’d say were not due for a break this year.
I estimate the melting period will remain below 6mo this year, with the 12day filter I used for that graph.
Then there’s this analysis that Judith featured here last year where I looked at decadal trends.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
That also looks like ice extent will continue upward this year since we’re still at the begining of 5y bump.
Death spiral seems to have gone the way of the 1990s run-away warming.
Even the warmists seem steadfastly intent on talking about anywhere but the Arctic this year.
What I suspect to be the underlying pattern is this:
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=783
It’s too early to have anything but a glimps of this yet, but don’t think this going to gently bottom out over 20 years. It looks a lot like a cusp to me.
One of the things that interests me, as a Canadian, is whether the NW passage will open up for traffic this year, wihout the help of icebreakers. In 2012, there was little ice in the NWP in September, and this seemed to attract all sorts of adventurers last year. Some people on jet skis had to be rescued by the Candian Coast Gard. But in September, there was a rapid freeze at two choke points, Prince Regent Inlet to the east and Cape Bathurst to the west, and about 20 vessels did not escape. They overwintered at Cambridge Bay. Will they escape this year, without the help of icebreakers, at $50,000 per day?
Highly unlikely since 2014 is likely to be similar to 2013 ice areas
Dr. Curry
If Greenland is any guide for the rest of the Arctic, than you might be interested in what is shown here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMOetc.htm
The ’14 September sea-ice extent is correlated with ’14 melt-pond area in spring, which is correlated with the ’13 September sea-ice extent, which ultimately is correlated with an independent variable: solar energy.
“What would Al Gore predict”
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/alarmists-have-lost-one-tenth-of-their-melt-season-already/
Because we know his 2009/10/11/12/13 predictions of total melt were at just tad off, but even he knows enough to keep his gob shut this time in an effort to hang on to his Saint Gore persona.
Al Gore is not a scientist. He is a summarizer, he takes what scientists tell him and puts it into words that people can understand. If he is wrong, his advisors told him the wrong thing.
“he takes what scientists tell him and puts it into words that people can understand”
You mean he takes the science out of it.
Andrew
Whaddya expect; he couldn’t even keep up with Ravelle.
========
Contrary to George Will’s “Al Gore’s Green Guilt” Roger Revelle—our father and the “father” of the greenhouse effect—remained deeply concerned about global warming until his death in July 1991. That same year he wrote: “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.” Will and other critics of Sen. Al Gore have seized these words to suggest that Revelle, who was also Gore’s professor and mentor, renounced his belief in global warming. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Revelle inveighed against “drastic” action, he was using that adjective in its literal sense—measures that would cost trillions of dollars. Up until his death, he thought that extreme measures were premature. But he continued to recommend immediate prudent steps to mitigate and delay climatic warming. Some of those steps go well beyond anything Gore or other national politicians have yet to advocate.[9] – Global Warming: What My Father Really Said”, Carolyn Revelle Hufbauer,
People misuse dead people. Nothing new there.
So? Trillions spent to what effect?
=================
I guess this tale is similar to “Darwin recanted evolution when he was dying”. Gore went a bit over the top with his movie and has been more harmful than helpful because he tends to be way too emotional and loses sight of the bigger picture (overpopulation as far as I’m concerned). Taking drastic action is quite senseless, but it does make sense to begin a gradual change to be much more efficient and move away from oil, simply because we are running out of the stuff. In that sense Gore’s global warming mania does help so we can avoid too steep a run up in oil prices in the future. Regarding the Arctic conditions, I got a hunch scientists don’t really understand how it works up there. It’s very hard to get data on the ground, the satellites don’t provide the needed detail, and it’s very heterogeneous. For example, I worked on a project in the Barents and Kara seas with a team coming from the Canadian Beaufort and a lot of what they had learned was useful, but there was also a lot they didn’t know about. We also found going through the Kara Gate was like changing planets.
Death spiral : it’s an aviation term, for a situation where you correct with a problem too little information and make things progressively worse.
You can’t tell whether you’re turning or not without reference to some outside point.
For any of a thousand reasons, you start turning in clouds. The nose drops and your speed starts increasing. You correct for this by raising the nose. This steepens the turn, and you correct more, and so forth until you tear the wings off with G forces or impact the ground, in an increasingly severe spiral, called a death spiral because the pilot lacks information to get out of it.
Hence the invention of the turn indicator. Believe the instrument, not what it feels like you’re doing.
Recovery with the turn indicator is simple : center the turn indicator with the rudder, then center the ball with the ailerons, and finally control the speed with the elevators. You can’t start without that turn indicator, the missing information.
rh, the environmentalist and general know-it-all JFK Jr killed himself, his wife and sister-in-law flying at night, over water and unqualified on instruments
Also, if the nose is high – full power. If the nose is low – idle the engine.
Implications for policy. Don’t veer for deer… Turning sunk the Titanic…
Death spiral was copied by aviators from corporate boards with a company heading into bankruptcy. But I think the term was first coined by Bardas Focas in a letter discussing the gradual weakening of the Eastern Roman Empire.
All statistics. No physics. Are there usable ice melting models?
It seems clear that sea ice is tracking 2007 – with similar states of the NAM and Pacific. I suggested a near sea ice minimum some months ago – nothing really seems to have changed.
In 2007 the wind blew the ice out of the Fram strait. Do we have the same wind conditions this year?
‘On time scales of years to decades, the dominant cause of atmospheric variability in the northern polar region is the Arctic Oscillation (AO). (There is still debate among scientists whether the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Arctic Oscillation are the same phenomenon or different but related patterns.) The Arctic Oscillation is an atmospheric seesaw in which atmospheric mass shifts between the polar regions and the mid-latitudes. The shifting can intensify, weaken, or shift the location of semi-permanent low and high-pressure systems. These changes influence the strength of the prevailing westerly winds and the track that storms tend to follow.
During the “positive” phase of the Arctic Oscillation, winds intensify, which increases the size of leads in the ice pack. The thin, young ice that forms in these leads is more likely to melt in the summer. The strong winds also tend to flush ice out of the Arctic through the Fram Strait.
During “negative” phases of the oscillation, winds are weaker. Multiyear ice is less likely to be swept out of the Arctic basin and into the warmer waters of the Atlantic. The Arctic Oscillation was in a strong positive phase between 1989 and 1995, but since the late 1990s, it has been in a neutral state.’ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/page3.php
The reverse is true, all summers with reduced sea ice extent have negative AO/NAO conditions. For two reasons, negative AO/NAO increases poleward ocean transport which is the dominant cause of ice melt, and the associated weaker atmospheric vortex allows more warm humidity event incursions into the Arctic. Negative AO/NAO episodes have increased from 1995 to 1998, and again from 2005, leading to a warm AMO, and the acceleration of sea ice loss.
‘Regression maps of SIM during the wintertime (January–March) AO index show 1) an increase in ice advection away from the coast of the East Siberian and Laptev Seas, which should have the effect of producing more new thin ice in the coastal flaw leads; 2) a decrease in ice advection from the western Arctic into the eastern Arctic; and 3) a slight increase in ice advection out of the Arctic through Fram Strait. Taken together, these changes suggest that at least part of the thinning of sea ice recently observed over the Arctic Ocean can be attributed to the trend in the AO toward the high-index polarity.
Rigor et al. showed that year-to-year variations in the wintertime AO imprint a distinctive signature on surface air temperature (SAT) anomalies over the Arctic, which is reflected in the spatial pattern of temperature change from the 1980s to the 1990s. Here it is shown that the memory of the wintertime AO persists through most of the subsequent year: spring and autumn SAT and summertime sea ice concentration are all strongly correlated with the AO index for the previous winter. It is hypothesized that these delayed responses reflect the dynamical influence of the AO on the thickness of the wintertime sea ice, whose persistent “footprint” is reflected in the heat fluxes during the subsequent spring, in the extent of open water during the subsequent summer, and the heat liberated in the freezing of the open water during the subsequent autumn.’ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442(2002)015%3C2648%3AROSITT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
“Quantifying the Influence of Atlantic Heat on Barents Sea Ice Variability and Retreat”
Eldevik et al 2012
“Based on the simulated ocean heat budget it is found that the heat transport into the western Barents Sea sets the boundary of the ice-free Atlantic domain and, hence, the sea ice extent. The regional heat content and heat loss to the atmosphere scale with the area of open ocean as a consequence. Recent sea ice loss is thus largely caused by an increasing “Atlantification” of the Barents Sea.”
This paper would indicate the greatest factor in sea ice extent is ocean heat transport. An AMO heading south indicates that is the direction the sea ice will head also.
What can we expect, possibly beatings that the arctic sea ice is, like SST, not a reliable indicator of the missing heat.
One would think, shock, horror , if heat could go deeper way out of the reach of the sun that the arctic and antarctic sea ice extent would actually have to increase but irony fails the AGW crowd.
The Arctic Sea Ice Blog has gone remarkably quiet on the subject of death spirals recently. Neven has not updated numerous graphs from 2012 as he does not want to admit the recovery of Arctic sea ice.
2013 was a great year to read over there [thanks for your link, Judy makes it easy to find and he has a great collection of graphs] as they were all predicting imminent catastrophe with cracks opening up in the ice that one was led to believe had never happened before [no mention if ice ponds then].
No one admitted there predictions turned out to be wildly wrong and nobody has apologized for all the cracks they made.
Re Ice Melt ponds, if they were that predictive I am sure you would have worked that out well before this and I assume that the correlation is serendipitous and specious.
Does a square meter of sea ice emit more, less or the same amount of IR into space as a nearby square meter of cold water?
Well the simplistic positive feedback idea that lead to death spiral thinking does not seem to be happening , so there must other negative feedbacks going on.
Albedo is not the only consideration in the surface energy budget. Evaporation will present a substantial negative f/b when more water is exposed. The low incidence angle reflectivity I mentioned above seems to be getting ignored so far
There seems to be a dominant mindset in climatology that they “know” it’s catastrophic and they just have to prove it “before it’s too late”.
This leads to a focus on +ve f/b phenomena and catastrophic models which feed into bias confirmation and get accepted. More “studies” get published with death spirals in the abstract.
As Dr Curry has been saying since 2006, there is a need to get back to objectivity and scientific method in climate science.
Looking at the color picture of the scientists near the melt ponds, someone could figure out what time of day it was taken using a shadow. I am guessing near noon.
Ragnaar | June 18, 2014 at 12:29 am |
Looking at the color picture of the scientists near the melt ponds, someone could figure out what time of day it was taken using a shadow. I am guessing near noon.
===
Yes, about noon in late June. The sun does not get much higher than that up there.
There was a canadian geologist Heath McCoy who had an article in U. Calgary’s UTdoay about arctic melting, covered at WUWT http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/25/hamster-wheels-and-sea-ice-explained/
His article had a beautiful low angle shot that showed reflected sun on the melt ponds. I wrote to him to ask if they had considered this as a feedback, his bottom line response was “I’m not familiar with your work”.
I was going to link the photo but when I go back I found they’ve changed it for a boring pic with him standing near some ice.
I guess he thinks I had a point.
If the ice is a lower temperature than the liquid water, and as a general rule ice usually is colder than liquid water, then the ice emits less infrared radiation.
I can’t tell if that was a rhetorical question or you really didn’t know. Sorry.
Well it’s clear you don’t know it does not matter whether it’s a rhetorical question.
Go and find out what emissivity is and try again.
It is my understanding that the typical emissivity in the IR of snow and ice is less than for sea water;
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/223833767_In-situ_measured_spectral_directional_emissivity_of_snow_and_ice_in_the_814_m_atmospheric_window/file/d912f50b47ef31819f.pdf
this means that open water and pools will radiate less IR at the same temperature.
Evaporation is probably a lot faster than sublimation, but sublimation takes more energy per mass.
The prevailing wind direction is far more important than subtle differences in albedo. Does the ice get blown out through the Fram strait or not?
Wind also affectes evaporation and sublimation. If ice sublimes and water evaporates because of wind rather than just melts from ocean heat transport, much more heat will be radiated away.
Before speaking of the “recovery” of the ice, should one not make sure that the ice is a patient?
Did the Arctic get “well” when ice levels increased post 1960?
Was the Arctic sick after the Napoleonic Wars, when it went all melty? Sick again after WW1?
Is the Antarctic now to be congratulated on its return to Turney-crunching good health? (I know they’ve found melty bits down there, but those are the geologically active bits – aren’t they, tricksters?)
Hey, I don’t recall anyone saying the Arctic was bursting with health back in the icy ’70s.
So, what’s to recover from?
Indeed, this is all part of a mindset where things were fine til we came along. Without human intervention, all climate indices would be locked at their 1860 mean value with nothing but short term weather variations.
A totally spurious idea that natural climate variation is negligible and that anything which has happened in the last 150 years is “unprecedented”.
The Operation Was a Success, but the Patient Died. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
They found a patient. Now they are going to cure it.
@ mosomoso
Greg Goodman says: “With arctic melting season firmly lodges around an even 6 months, another catastrophic melt seems unlikely.”
Like jim2, I wondered: “Another catastrophe? I must have missed the first one.”
Then I noticed that the Arctic Sea Ice Anomaly chart started in 1979, when all the rage was ‘Record Arctic ice warns of imminent catastrophic freezing!!’ and gradually decreased to around 2012, when the headlines were “Vanishing Arctic sea ice proves we are all going to die of heat prostration and we gotta do something right now!” It has now apparently leveled off and may be starting to climb again.
From the two data points I have learned a couple of things:
A. Since the anomaly of the 70’s was a sure sign of catastrophic freezing and the anomaly of 2012 was a sure sign of catastrophic warming, the ideal anomaly must lie somewhere between that of the 70’s and recent anomalies.
B. I have lived through both periods, catastrophically high Arctic ice anomaly and catastrophically low Arctic ice anomaly, and NO ONE, actually living in a habitable part of the world, would have noticed either absent the cries of doom from the experts.
Given that the Arctic anomaly has bracketed the ‘ideal’ during my lifetime, what, exactly, IS the ‘perfect Arctic ice anomaly’, who chose it, using what criteria, what resources should we devote to achieving it, and what catastrophe will be visited upon us if we simply ignore it, from a policy standpoint?
Where are you getting your “record ice extent in the 70’s” from?
http://nsidc.org/icelights/2011/01/31/arctic-sea-ice-before-satellites/
To look back into the past, researchers combine data and records from indirect sources known as proxy records. Researchers delved into shipping charts going back to the 1950s, which noted sea ice conditions. The data gleaned from those records, called the Hadley data set, show that Arctic sea ice has declined since at least the mid-1950s. Shipping records exist back to the 1700s, but do not provide complete coverage of the Arctic Ocean. However, taken together these records indicate that the current decline is unprecedented in the last several hundred years.
@ Joseph
“Where are you getting your “record ice extent in the 70′s” from?”
From reading contemporary news and popular science articles warning of possibly unstoppable cooling and citing arctic conditions as evidence.
Ludwick — don’t you think it’d be better to get your science from scientific sources rather than mass media?
@ Robert Grumbine
“Ludwick — don’t you think it’d be better to get your science from scientific sources rather than mass media?”
Well, at the time I, like most folks didn’t have ready access to ‘scientific sources’, so I read the cries of alarm in places like major newspapers, Scientific American, Science Digest, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and other such publications, which in turn provided extensive quotes from authoritative ‘scientific sources’. Our impending doom was also reported on extensively by the broadcast media.
Little did I suspect ‘in the cold of battle’ that REAL scientists knew that it was all bunkum, that the thereat of ‘global cooling’ was made up out of whole cloth to sell papers and magazines and justify the expansion of government and that the reality was that anthropogenic CO2 was going to cook us all.
But finally, after they allowed the charade to continue for for nearly a decade, the TRUE experts informed us that while it was true that the the climate, being driven made by meddling humans, was in fact going to kill us all, it was actually going to do so by barbecuing us rather than freezing us.
Ludwick: If you’re old enough to remember those ‘imminent ice age’ media reports, you’re old enough to have noticed that the media likes to hype things for ratings.
You could also remember that we were all going to die in the ‘Jupiter Effect’, a dozen or so different predictions of the end of the world in 2000, that 5/5/2005 would have a ‘pole shift’ and end the world, the many, many predictions of the end of the world by Harold Camping and other evangelicals.
More recently, the 12/21/12 end of the world that some non-Mayans attributed to the Mayans. And, of course the several different times in the past decade we were all supposed to be dead due to the ‘planet’ Nbiru, or planet X, or some such.
Going back again, I recall when men were being told (by the media) that we should not eat eggs because they would increase our cholesterol and kill us. Time frame not given, but level of hysteria would be appropriate to ‘next week’. I happened to have been in a public library reading Science at about that time, and saw the original that the media were having their frenzy on. It had no such apocalyptic conclusions, nor anything that could — reasonably — have been extrapolated to them. Just a continuum of increased risks for increased cholesterol, the rate of increase getting higher for higher levels. No ‘if you eat more than 2 eggs a month you’re going to DIE!!!’
Public libraries at least used to routinely carry subscriptions to both Science and Nature. If you’re near a university, many of them allow non-students in to the library, or have a card you can sign up for, and read the journals even if they won’t let you check the materials out. Or you can sign up for a personal subscription. Science is $99/year in paper, $50 electronic — I just gave a subscription to a school. Or you can go to google scholar and read at least abstracts of almost anything. Links to many of the actual articles.
But if you think it’s the scientists who decided back then, or do now, what gets written by the media about science, you’re simply badly deluded. They’ll write what they choose, for the reasons they choose. Maybe that includes talking to a scientist about the science. But I was just talking to a now-retired science journalist, who observed that with the changes in the market, science journalists generally don’t have enough time to take out of their writing to talk to scientists, not if they want to make enough to have food and shelter. It certainly doesn’t include publishing response articles by scientists correcting the science errors made in the media.
@ Robert Grumbine
“Ludwick: If you’re old enough to remember those ‘imminent ice age’ media reports, you’re old enough to have noticed that the media likes to hype things for ratings.”
I have indeed noticed such media behavior. And you cite several examples. ALL I might add, leading with some generic version of ‘Studies show…….’ (butter bad; margarine good, etc.), with quotes from the oh so scientific ‘study’ in question. Said study invariably being a paper written by Real Scientists, on data collected by themselves, and published in a Real Scientific Journal, specializing in the relevant field.
So given the 50 year track record which I have personally observed, THIS time I am supposed to believe that Climate Science is in fact reporting reality when it tells me that anthropogenic CO2 will toast and/or drown the entire biosphere, except for possible small regions around the poles, unless we cease the use of fossil fuels and reduce the human population to somewhere around 1+/- 0.5 e9? From our current 7.5 e9? That would make Charlie Brown’s annual response to Lucy’s promise to hold the football when he came running up to kick it hard nosed skepticism in comparison.
And to ensure that I only receive authentic, unbiased SCIENTIFIC information, untainted by political agendas, specifically on the subject of ‘Climate Change’, I should subscribe to ‘Science’ and ‘Nature’?
Puhleeze!
@ludwick
On one hand, you know that media hype things, on the other, you still believe they’re accurately reporting the science — hence the all caps adn exclamation points. Oh well.
Could you, or anyone else here — it seems a popular claim, present sources to climate scientists saying that they want the world population to be reduced to 1 billion (give or take)?
@ Robert Grumbine
“Could you, or anyone else here — it seems a popular claim, present sources to climate scientists saying that they want the world population to be reduced to 1 billion (give or take)?”
Well only one of these is an actual ‘climate scientist’. The others are influential in organizations which either support the consensus subset of climate science–and only the consensus subset–directly or whose organizations regularly host consensus climate scientists as speakers and support the consensus subset in a variety of other ways. They are also widely treated as ‘experts’ by the media and the opinions expressed below are disseminated and accepted uncritically. The works of consensus scientists are also cited as proving the necessity of population reduction and the destruction of our energy intensive civilization. What the climate scientists do, rather than directly advocate for population reduction, is to furnish ‘science’–just the facts, ma’am–which is cited as one of a laundry list of reasons for the critical necessity for population reduction.
Bottom line is that consensus climate science, the sustainability movement, the population control/reduction groups, progressive groups ad infinitum are all arms of the same progressive octopus. As cwon14 points out regularly: there are many excuses for converting to a society in which everything not commanded is forbidden, and all of them have the central ‘feature’ that the progressives are the ones doing the commanding and forbidding.
“My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” Ted Turner, Founder of CNN and major UN donor
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.” Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies, Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
“The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.” Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, Lead author of many IPCC reports
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” David Brower, First Executive Director of the Sierra Club
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Maurice Strong, Founder of the UN Environmental Program
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-Development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies, Author: “Population Bomb”, “Ecoscience”
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to return to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, Patron of the Patron of the World Wildlife Foundation
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the US. We have to stop these third World countries right where they are.” Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.” Professor Maurice King
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on the human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.” Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” John Davis, Editor of Earth First! Journal
The little ice age.
I lived through the same period and somebody is wildly puffing the level of alarm that existed then. And there is a reason why.
It was not even remotely like AGW.
I agree with JCH, there was little alarm. It was seriously discussed amongst climatologists, many believing cooling imminent.
I’ve seen an early video from around that time of Schneider confessing that science really didn’t know the direction of climate. He has since fooled a lot of people, but first he fooled himself.
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Pingback: 5 years later: checking up on the 2-minute hate at George Will about melting of the polar ice | Fabius Maximus
The Arctic temperature above 80 North is heading to an unprecedented second year in a row of staying below average. Last year was quite amazing in that it stayed below average throughout winter.
Nobody has explained a reason why. As the Skeptical science duo Batman and Cowtan prove the models show ever increasing Arctic sea surface warming I wonder why neither of them have ventured a peep about this.
Not that it matters as the ice formation is 95% due to the coldness of the Arctic waters and as shown by the extra ice north of Norway some cold water is returning to the Arctic in the North Sea and the rate of melt will hopefully be less again this year.
September sea ice extent should be greater than 2013 for the next 2 years in a row before a slight decrease.
By 2020, the Arctic will be frozen solid. In the UK, the Northern ports will need inshore icebreakers in mid-winter.
And the cause? It’s the end of SC 24 and 1 K reduction of average World atmospheric temperature as we enter the new Dalton/Maunder minimum.
There is no significant CO2-AGW – it takes a really bad scientific education to believe in ‘back radiation’, but that is the case for the Atmospheric Sciences whose well was poisoned by Sagan’s basic physics’ mistakes…….
A 1 K drop in average global temp in the next 6 years? I’m skeptical.
Quite easy: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/new-paper-predicts-temperature-decrease.html
The paper concludes that global avg temps may decrease by 0.3 to 0.5 C. The 1 C drop appears to be predicted for Northern Europe only. The study is a curve fit and offers no physical mechanism other than ideas on what might be (TSI, UV, cosmic ray) and even there the %contribution from the sun appears to be very high compared to other work cited. Still skeptical… Correlation is not causation.
Often no intercausation, but both responsive to some other cause.
==============
Alec M: Quite easy: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/new-paper-predicts-temperature-decrease.html
that paper is not new, fwiw, but was published in 2012. Like a lot of predictions of cooling, it asserts a stronger relation between short-term solar fluctuations and Earth temperature changes than can be justified by detailed analyses of the mechanisms. The next 2 decades should provide a very good test of whether such assertions are justified, if the solar output declines and the CO2 continues to increase. If the Earth cools, then clearly the effects of the sun have been underrepresented in the models. If the Earth warms in line with CO2 predictions, then confidence in the current representation of solar effects will increase.
A 1C decline in ocean surface temp in 6 years seems an unreasonable prediction unless the sun declines extremely.
“A 1C decline in ocean surface temp in 6 years…”
—-
Really, only some massive volcanic event could do that on a global basis, Moreover, looking only at ocean surface temperatures in general does not give you the most accurate view of energy dynamics. You need to see what us happening across all depths to understand the full ocean energy content changes. For example, in the Pacific, when easterlies increase in strength (as happens during the cool phase of the PDO) the net surface may cool but more heat is being sequestered at depth due to increased Ekman pumping, thus the net energy content of the ocean increases, even with a cool surface layer. This also may cool (or not warm) the troposphere, leading to the illusion that the whole system is not warming.
This absolute physics is at the heart of the IPCC Climate scam. A pyrgeometer measures Irradiance, potential energy flux from the emitter to a sink at absolute zero.
Real, net IR flux from a warmer to a cooler emitter (or for equal temperature, a greater to a lower ’emissivity’) is the difference of Irradiances.
We process engineers who have to get the sums right use the term ‘operational emissivity’ to specify how much net IR energy is transferred relative to a black body emitter.
For the equal temperature surface (emissivity ~1) – atmosphere (emissivity ~0.6 in temperate regions), the surface operational emissivity is ~(1 – 0.6) = 0.4.
For 16 deg C, this corresponds to maximum IR emission in the absence of convection of 158.4 W/m^2, very close to the 160 W/m^2 mean SW thermalised at the surface. Because the surface and atmospheric Irradiances are 396 W/m^2 and 333 W/m^2, the real net IR flux from surface to atmosphere is 63 W/m^2. The rest, 97 W/m^2 is lost as convection (17) and evapo-transpiration (80).
This means the real surfaceoperational emissivity is 63/396 = 0.16. The same sites that transfer energy to electromagnetic waves can also transfer it to adsorbed gas molecules or liquid water.
I am prepared to repeat this master class in the real heat transfer at the Earth’s surface on as regular a basis as needed to correct the problem of people having been taught incorrect radiative physics!
AlecM: A Google search for a definition of “operational emissivity” shows that you are the source for about 50% of the hits for this inadequately defined term. The remaining 50% of the hits were to papers from scientists doing remote sensing, who use maps of “operational emissivity” to convert surface flux into surface temperature.
Can you provide a link to engineers using the term “operational emissivity” in a clearly defined manner.
When expressed as a flux (a vector), OLR and DLR cancel to produce a net upward radiation flux (ca 390-333 = 56 W/m2). However, the photons carrying energy in both directions do not cancel or annihilate each other. Surfaces emit real photons, not net fluxes. These real photons are captured and quantified by detectors as two fluxes OLR and DLR, not net radiation.
You would be surprised how often overall flux is stated as ‘true’ even in cases where influx and efflux are not known.
Alec M. :I am prepared to repeat this master class in the real heat transfer at the Earth’s surface on as regular a basis as needed to correct the problem of people having been taught incorrect radiative physics!
Could you supply a reference?
AlecM –
You seem to be a bit confused about how atmospheric radiation works. Take a look at my 2013 paper in Tellus B http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/la06400p.html
Section 4 of this paper describes in considerable detail the basic physics of atmospheric radiative transfer.
In Fig 9 for example, you show a Cooling DegK/Day, under what conditions are the various DegK/Day values calculated / measured?
Judy
Thanks for reducing off topic comments. They make it harder to find links and useful information
Scott
A Lacis: Take a look at my 2013 paper in Tellus B http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/la06400p.html
Thanks for the link.
A Lacis | June 18, 2014 at 1:23 pm
Sorry, this should have ended up here.
A Lacia, have you ever tested the model you have described in Section 4, against the actual temperature and fluxes, at modeled wavelengths, at a single local, over 24 hours?
Andy Lacis only does the radiative part ignoring all the consequences
An ingenious theory, but the model set out in that paper seems to make predictions about what would happend to surface temperature if CO₂ concentration were to vary which are out of kilter with empirical measurements by several orders of magitude in timescale and at least one order of magnitude and possibly the wrong sign in temperature. Is this not indicative of a major blunder in the simplifications, notably the effect of convective heat transport and the stabilising effect of condensation and evaporation at the oceanic surfaces? There seems to be scope in the paper for cross-checking against the constraints placed by the Second Law. Finally the details of the mechanism by which GHGs actually transform EM radiation into increased temperatures are somewhat sketchy. There has to be some sort of inhomogeneity, such as free surface, cloud droplet, dust particle or abrupt change of refractive index, for the energy in the intercepted electromagnetic radiation to reappear in the form of translational motion (i.e. heat) rather than being confined to vibrational and rotation modes. The rate at which this conversion takes places is crucial, as otherwise it may turn out that the CO₂ molecule simply re-radiates at one of its characteristic frequencies (such as the one that it absorbed in the first place) befor the energy has time to appear as heat. This was a crucial point in explaining why extrapolating Arrhenius’s historical measurements and theories (and his followers in the later small-scale laboratory work) turned out to be so way off-target when applied to the atmosphere in the large. I don’t think Hansen has understood this even today, which may lead him to believe that CO₂ really does represent a “giant control knob” for temperature, a mistaken concept that unfortunately has been seized upon by Gore and the Greens.
AlecM. Are you claiming that there is no downwelling IR? Are you claiming that,for example, when an IR photon hits an atom of CO2, a certain percentage of the time, calculable using quantum mechanics to an amazing degree of accuracy, though not able to be predicted in advance for individual photons, the CO2 molecule does not absorb the photon as heat?
And that after some amount of time, the molecule does not surrender the heat as an IR photon that can travel either up or down of in any arbitrary direction, some of the time producing “back radiation”?
That is what I learned in Intro to Quantum Mechanics.
While being eaten by reality, kim tries to keep hope alive. Lol, even the skeptic friendly (as of late) AMO ticked upward in May.
@TJA | June 18, 2014 at 9:34 am
Downwelling LW is the atmospheric Irradiance, the potential energy flux it would emit to a sink at absolute zero; standard physics.
Only the vector sum of Irradiances can do thermodynamic work. Paradoxically, the person who incorrectly taught luminaries like Lindzen that the GHE is ~33 K, Goody, correctly expressed this relationship in the treatise he wrote with Yung, ‘Atmospheric Physics’.
It is qdot = – DIV Fv where qdot is the monochromatic heat generation rate of matter per unit volume and Fv is the monochromatic radiation flux density. Integrate this at a plane over all frequencies and total heat generation rate Qdot = – Δ(Irradiance). Most scientists and engineers forget about the minus sign.
The real ‘flat plate’ GHE is between 11 and 17 K depending on your estimate of present albedo and planetary emissivity in the absence of GHGs.
“Only the vector sum of Irradiances can do thermodynamic work. ”
I am curious as to your definition of thermodynamic work.
@TJA: regarding thermodynamic work, a Crookes’ Radiometer is a good example of the conversion of EM energy to heat thence to mechanical energy as molecules desorb with different energies on the blackened and shiny sides of the vanes.
I didn’t ask you for an example, I asked you for the definition you use to conclude that “back radiation can do no thermodynamic work” and why it applies to the so called “Greenhouse Effect.”
Alec M: it takes a really bad scientific education to believe in ‘back radiation’,
Do you think that the molecules in the atmosphere, when they emit radiation, only emit in the direction where the destination (so to speak) is cooler than they are? Within a volume of the atmosphere, none of the molecules are exactly at the mean kinetic energy, all are below or above average by at least a small amount, and some are above or below average by large amounts. The same is true at the Earth surface (where, of course, the density is much greater than in the atmosphere): none have exactly average kinetic average, though many are close, and some have much below or much above average kinetic energy. In the atmosphere, the high energy molecules emit radiation in all directions, and the low energy molecules absorb from all directions. The net flow of energy is from a region of high mean kinetic energy to a region of low kinetic energy, but a population or region of molecules radiates in all directions.
Whence comes this idea that the molecules in the atmosphere experience the temperature gradient at the molecular level and radiate in only upward directions? It looks to me like it comes from a belief that all the molecules in a volume have exactly the average kinetic energy, overlooking the variation.
Meh, moshe asks inconvenient questions. Sometimes he even answers inconvenient questions.
==========
Poptech does not understand that many great engineering teams have characters such as Mosh on board, and they thrive because of it. A college degree is better than no college degree because it does educate you on how to use logic, especially with classes in philosophy — see Logic 101 for example .
Whereas I can’t imagine any team that would suffer someone like the chief. Skippy would certainly be shunned if he kept making claims and spouting gibberish like he does here. See the diff?
http://papers.sae.org/901850/
Steven Mosher, your link gave me this: Advanced Cueing And Displays For Super Agile Aircraft
This post has degenerated past all saving. Australians don’t do loud mouthed self-aggrandizing – such as webby excels in – or puffed up humbug like mosh. Mostly it gets automatically classified as BS.
None of it seems remotely on topic or at all interesting. As off topic – but as a lover of literature I find this a bit disturbing.
‘I used Shannons concept of informational entropy to understand novelty and creativity in texts. Oh and some natural language
generation.’
The import or meaning of a text is of course irrelevant to ‘informational entropy’. The former is in the mysterious realm of consciousness and hardly susceptible to coding. The latter learns the value of nothing.
Inductive logic – on the other hand – is the core of the scientific method. It proceeds from observation to generalisations. The critical stage is natural philosophy is this stage of synthesis.
For instance.
Multi-decadal variability in the Pacific is defined as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (e.g. Folland et al, 2002, Meinke et al, 2005, Parker et al, 2007, Power et al, 1999) – a proliferation of oscillations it seems. The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006) Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmichet al, 2007, suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947).
There is a growing literature on the potential for stratospheric influences on climate (e.g. Matthes et al 2006, Gray et al 2010, Lockwood et al 2010, Schaife et al 2012) due to warming of stratospheric ozone by solar UV emissions. Models incorporating stratospheric layers – despite differing greatly in their formulation of fundamental processes such as atmosphere-ocean coupling, clouds or gravity wave drag – show consistent responses in the troposphere. Top down modulation of SAM and NAM by solar UV has the potential to explain otherwise little understood variability at decadal to much longer scales in ENSO.
So in this instance – we have a few key observations and a theory of solar modulation of polar to equatorial climate mechanisms. The ways of thinking seem more visual and intuitive but solidly based in observation.
I have suggested something similar wrt sea ice above – although I know far less about it than ENSO.
Abrupt climate change is one of the other ideas that emerge.
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
This idea is the most modern – and powerful – in climate science and has profound implications for the evolution of climate this century and beyond.
These sort of ideas seem well beyond what webby is able to get his head around – and we get the unedifying spectacle of abuse and insults gratuitously directed at me while sucking up to mosh in this instance. It seems more schoolyard in and out groups than anything rational. But one wonders what anyone thinks of the superficial nonsense of his blogospheric triple plus unscience – or the abusive and obnoxious ways in which his message is delivered.
Perhaps you could further elucidate how UV/ ozone interactions in the stratosphere can affect surface temperatures. The optical depths for both CO2 and H2O GHG effect are thought to be below the tropopause. Which is why the stratosphere cools with global warming- its heat can escape, and it is not ‘fed’ enough replacement from below. I cannot understand the logic of your argument even if the posited interactions are true. Please explain.
The literature relevant to how solar variability influences climate is vast—but
much has been based on inadequate statistics and non-robust procedures. The common pitfalls are outlined in this review. The best estimates of the solar influence on the global mean air surface temperature show relatively small effects, compared with the response to
anthropogenic changes (and broadly in line with their respective radiative forcings). However, the situation is more interesting when one looks at regional and season variations around the global means. In particular, recent research indicates that winters in Eurasia may have some dependence on the Sun, with more cold winters occurring when the solar activity is low. Advances in modelling ‘‘top-down’’ mechanisms, whereby stratospheric changes influence the underlying troposphere, offer promising explanations of the observed
phenomena. In contrast, the suggested modulation of low-altitude clouds by galactic cosmic rays provides an increasingly inadequate explanation of observations.’
http://www.eiscat.rl.ac.uk/Members/mike/publications/pdfs/2012/286_Lockwood_SurvGeophys2012.pdf
Most of the UV is absorbed in the stratosphere – so we are talking warming and cooling in the stratosphere with more or less UV. The tropospheric responses – SAM and NAM especially – are in sea level pressure which are a major determinant of winds, storms and currents. Lower solar activity leads to negative NAM and SAM and the consequences of that.
Scaife, A. A., Spangehi, T., Cubasch, U., Langematz, U., Akiyoshi, H., Bekki, S., Butchart, N., Chipperfield, M. P., Gettelman, A., Hardiman, S. C., Michou, M., Rozanov, E. and Shepherd, T. G., 2012: Climate change projections and stratosphere–troposphere interaction. Climate Dynamics, 38 (9-10). pp. 2089-2097. ISSN 0930-7575
Lockwood, M., Bell, C., Woollings, T., Harrison, R. G., Gray, L. J. and Haigh, J. D.: Top-down solar modulation of climate: evidence for centennial-scale change, Environ. Res. Lett. 5 (July-September 2010) 034008 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/5/3/034008
Matthes, K., Kurada, Y., Kunihiko, K. and Langematz, U., 2006: Transfer of the solar signal from the stratosphere to the troposphere: Northern winter Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (1984–2012), DOI: 10.1029/2005JD006283
Gray, L. J., Beer, J., Geller, M., Haigh, J. D., Lockwood, M., Matthes, K., Cubasch, U., Fleitman, D., Harrison, G., Luterbacher, J. Meehl, G. A.: Solar influences on climate, 2010, Reviews of Geophysics, Volume 48, Issue 4, DOI: 10.1029/2009RG000282
Forgot to close the italics after the first paragraph.
Does it seem a little simple? High solar activity leads to positive NAM and ice loss in the Arctic? Low solar activity vice versa?
Please elucidate ‘consequences of that’.
============
Robert I Ellison: http://www.eiscat.rl.ac.uk/Members/mike/publications/pdfs/2012/286_Lockwood_SurvGeophys2012.pdf
Thank you for the link and the other references.
“The import or meaning of a text is of course irrelevant to ‘informational entropy’. The former is in the mysterious realm of consciousness and hardly susceptible to coding. The latter learns the value of nothing.”
That is why I didnt study meaning. The focus was on novelty and creativity.
NOT on meaning. as in duh.
See peckham on non functional stylistic dynamism.
See Pierce Signals and Noise.
Touche.
The idea of creativity divorced from meaning was more the point. Duh.
See Bozo on techniques that mean nothing at all.
It’s precisely the move to bracket meaning that makes
The study of innovation possible. See recent work studying
Patents.
Studying meaning is too easy. You can say anything.
Studying style and stylistic innovation was amenable
To objective methods.
Style in literature is recognizable by a set of rules? The roots of modernism and the eschatological promise bursting like a new and frightening dawn on the consciousness of humanity.
In our reality meaning emerges as the measure of innovation and significance in literature and science. Style in literature creates new layers of meaning. Style in blogs does as well – clumsy, labored and pedestrian for the most part. Space cadets like webby especially. I take it as a measure of dumbness.
To paraphrase Steve Martin — you know, a lot of people come to me and they say, “Steve, how can you be so f’n smart?”
I have no idea. But the hits just keep on a’comin. This one is da bomb:
http://contextearth.com/2014/06/17/the-qbom/
‘Equatorial total ozone variations with time scales of annual, quasi-biennial, and about 4-year periodicities are described by paying attention to their longitudinal structure. Analyses are made for 11 years from 1979 to 1989, using the global total ozone data derived from the total ozone mapping spectrometer on board the Nimbus 7 satellite. Over the equator an annual cycle in total ozone is conspicuous. Zonal mean values are maximum around September and minimum around January. The longitudinal structure shows a zonal wavenumber 1 pattern with minimum values around 140°E to the date line all year-round, indicating a close relationship to a region where the convective cloud activity is vigorous. By removing the climatological annual cycle from the original data, there appears the quasi-biennial oscillation in total ozone. This variation is characterized by zonally uniform phase changes and is strongly coupled with the quasi-biennial oscillation of the equatorial zonal wind in the lower stratosphere. Moreover, subtracting zonal mean values from the anomaly data mentioned above, we see an east-west seesaw variation with a nodal longitude around the date line. This east-west variation, having a characteristic time scale of about 4 years, is clearly related to the El Niño and the Southern Oscillation cycle. During El Niño events the longitudinal anomaly field in total ozone is positive in the western Pacific and negative in the eastern Pacific; the anomaly pattern is reversed during anti-El Niño events. Because the active region of convective clouds is located relatively in the eastern Pacific sector during El Niño events, it is suggested that the stronger upwelling and the higher tropopause associated with the convective cloud activity bring about less total ozone.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/92JD00530/abstract
Scaling the QBO to ENSO and calling it a model is the epitome of dumb science.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n5/fig_tab/ngeo2138_F2.html
Now all you need to have a poor projection – on top of a curve poorly fitted to data – is to predict the QBO.
‘ENSO causes climate extremes across and beyond the Pacific basin; however, evidence of ENSO at high southern latitudes is generally restricted to the South Pacific and West Antarctica. Here, the authors report a statistically significant link between ENSO and sea salt deposition during summer from the Law Dome (LD) ice core in East Antarctica. ENSO-related atmospheric anomalies from the central-western equatorial Pacific (CWEP) propagate to the South Pacific and the circumpolar high latitudes. These anomalies modulate high-latitude zonal winds, with El Niño (La Niña) conditions causing reduced (enhanced) zonal wind speeds and subsequent reduced (enhanced) summer sea salt deposition at LD. Over the last 1010 yr, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below-average (El Niño–like) epochs, 1000–1260 ad and 1920–2009 ad, and a longer above-average (La Niña–like) epoch from 1260 to 1860 ad. Spectral analysis shows the below-average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2–5 yr, while the above-average epoch is associated more with variability around 6–7 yr. The LDSSS record is also significantly correlated with annual rainfall in eastern mainland Australia. While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910–2009 ad) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and southeastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.’
Webby has made a prediction – it is impossible that more frequent and intense La Nina can continue for a decade to three more – let alone longer term variability. It is after all an oscillation – and the obvious – and hugely documented decadal and longer variability just doesn’t exist.
He misses it all – his is very, very, very poor science – he fits the data series procrustean like to fit the theory – and I am a denier because I disagree with him. I’ve got news – but not such as he is capable of processing. I don’t deny any science – he does.
I don’t think so Judith. This post is terminal anyway.
What we have is what? An exposition on measuring ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’ in science and literature while eschewing ‘meaning’ because that can be anything? It is in fact one of the dumbest pieces of post modernist shtick ever to come out of an 80’s (?) philosophy department. Time to move on.
‘Zonally symmetric easterly and westerly wind regimes alternate regularly with periods varying from about 24 to 30 months(Holton,1992). The fastest obsevedoscillation had a period close to 20 months(1959-1961) and the slowest was 36 months(1984-1987), while the mean period was 28.2 months(Pawson et al 1993b);about 5 cycles in 12 years(Maruyama,1997).’ http://web.atmos.ucla.edu/~cwhung/qbo.html
‘Over the last 1010 yr, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below-average (El Niño–like) epochs, 1000–1260 ad and 1920–2009 ad, and a longer above-average (La Niña–like) epoch from 1260 to 1860 ad. Spectral analysis shows the below-average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2–5 yr, while the above-average epoch is associated more with variability around 6–7 yr. The LDSSS record is also significantly correlated with annual rainfall in eastern mainland Australia. While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO)…’ Vance et al 2012
So I suppose that lunar orbits are variable at interannual to decadal to centennial scales? No? Didn’t think so.
What fits is top down solar modulation of the SAM spinning up the lower latitude gyres. ENSO is not ‘sloshing’ – in first cause it is upwelling in the eastern Pacific with feedbacks in wind, current and cloud across the Pacific. It is followed by a relaxation event in the western Pacific that is probably triggered by the Madden-Julian Oscillation.
Webby really, really doesn’t have a clue.
‘And what you will find is the Mathieu equation, which one can solve, either analytically for trivial cases or numerically for the more difficult cases of arbitrary excitation.’
We have been here before I think. He takes a periodic solution for an elliptical cylinder and modulates it to fit the SOI.
In no mathematical sense is the analytical solution for an elliptical bathtub further solved. It is nothing but extreme blogospheric dissimulation.
If only he would be honest and learn something instead of digging a hole for himself and snarling randomly from it at anyone at all it seems.
But especially at me it seems. I would generally ignore him – but that doesn’t give him carte blanche to gratuitously snarl at me. Repeat your nonsense endlessly webby – but leave me of it.
Style is not a sign.
You remind me of freshman who had been infected
By their high school teachers with that nonsense.
And yes style has rules. It is how you recognize it when
It changes.
Think of fashion styles to clear your brain.
Think of style in formal cutlery.
Here Elision
These guys looked at music style
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/843561?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104333547693
as I noted I was looked at measures of novelty.
simple
in the english language Q us almost always followed by U
when it doesnt the rate of entropy is high.
This signals a novelty.
simple in principle, hard to actually do with language
think of patterns in genres and how they are broken.
No one knows what will happen to Arctic ice.
Except maybe the polar bears.
And they are not talking.
Except, of course, to the admen from Coca-Cola.
Look at the ice core data for the past ten thousand years. Earth Warms, Oceans warm, Sea Ice Thaws, Snowfall increases, Ice volume increases, Ice advances, Earth Cools, Oceans cool, Sea Ice freezes, Snowfall decreases, Ice volume and then ice extent decreases, Earth Warms. This cycle repeats, over and over and over.
This is what has happened and what will happen again and again.
You will never know what will happen if you do not study what has happened.
Mosh obviously has philosophy and english cred. Software is logic. Philosophers study logic. Ergo many sw companies hire philosophy majors.
https://thereitis.org/can-i-get-a-job-with-a-philosophy-degree/
“Why are philosophers so overwhelmingly employed? They have learned to think critically and creatively, to articulate, and to find outside-the-box solutions.”
unless someone is making stuff up, the stats show this
I saw your comments Poptech. AI companies specifically consider philosophy majors, such as Lenat’s Cycorp. Interesting that one of Cycorp’s hiring qualifications is a “sense of humor”. Working ontologies can make anyone bonkers.
Fluid dynamics can explain the very thick ice in the Western Arctic and the very thin ice in the Eastern Arctic.
Thermodynamics, not so much.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif
Had anyone predicted that -with the arctic hurricane induced 2012 anomaly/outlier removed from the data series- 2007 would in fact be the turning point for the Arctic minima? Given the alarmist pandemonium caused by Gore’s TIT and IPCC winning the “Nobel Prize”, I think not.
The multi source data available at WUWT’s Sea Ice page indicates that every year since 2007 -storm induced 2012 anomaly removed- the minima have gone back up. Not by buckets, but back up. It should be interesting to see in September whether 2014 confirms that development.
Is the data for volume available also? That may show a similar recovery.
======================
Mass and thinkness http://imb.crrel.usace.army.mil/
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice/data_summaries.html
TJA
AlecM. Are you claiming that there is no downwelling IR?
Radiation does not “well” either up or down. It radiates. Didn’t your Q. Mech prof explain the difference between photons and water?
Here is the very first thing that came up on Google:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004JC002573/abstract
It is a very common term.
Looks like my comments are being cleansed.
If you would like to talk about sea ice on this thread, then your comments are welcome
I just deleted about 25% of the comments on this thread, that were irrelevant (and pointless)
Great move Judith. I was wondering how the counter was only at 86 !
I often read an article here, see 387 comments already posted and give up without reading the first one, knowing 89% will be the usual irrelevant ding-dong. Plus O.Manuel telling me something rather incoherent about neutrons and the second world war.
You could probably do another 25% ( including this one ) ;)
I like this policy. Perhaps if you can enforce it for a while CE will be less of a food fight each time.
I have enough time for the next month to do heavy moderating
I can put this on automatic you know.
I am requesting that you cease spamming my blog. You are welcome to comment here if your comments are on topic, and do not attack or irrelevantly discuss other commenters here
curryja: I just deleted about 25% of the comments on this thread, that were irrelevant (and pointless)
I appreciate that, but it is time-consuming. I’d hate to think that it cuts into your professional life.
“I appreciate that, but it is time-consuming. I’d hate to think that it cuts into your professional life.”
Yes. It’s time-consuming to reply to comments that make you look bad. Faster to just delete them.
Andrew
Or production.
Bad Andrew: Yes. It’s time-consuming to reply to comments that make you look bad. Faster to just delete them.
In that sentence, whom does “you” refer to?
“In that sentence, whom does “you” refer to?”
Matthew,
The “you” is the general “you”.
In the case of Climate Etc. it is Dr. Curry.
But I’ve seen blog admins of every persuasion do it.
I’m not even complaining about it. I think some of it is justified, and some of it isn’t. Such is the internet.
Andrew
It is interesting that those who seemed to fear the negative impacts of AGW are now not willing to comment much on what is being observed in the arctic. The predictions were wrong, but somehow they still claim the basis of the fears are still completely valid.
AGW fears were based on the RATE of climate change and the rate of change is much slower that feared by Hansen, Mann, etc.
A completely foolish conclusion. The current rate of change since the great climate shift of 2011-2012 is .64C per decade, more than 3 times ultra conservative .2C rate of the IPCC.
Why just yesterday my local temperature swing was over 25 F – that is a much bigger swing than the .2C rate of the IPCC, and certainly a lot larger than your .64C per decade swing (computed over 2 years).
Why not just shorten up your period? You can tailor for any rate you want.
JCH
Do you believe the rate of change in arctic ice will be as severe as you did in 2008? Obviously not if you have observed actual conditions and are not basing your views on religious like belief systems. If you are reasonable and base conclusions on actual data, you should acknowledge that conditions are not changing as quickly as once feared.
All winter the warmists have criticized the 17 year pause for being too short. Now JCH rolls out a 2 year trend. What’s wrong with this picture. Apparently all cherry picking is seasonal. Lol.
The problem, however, is NOT the decreasing Arctic sea ice extents at its September minimum of 3 – 4 Mkm^2 at 80 north latitude, but the ever-increasing Antarctic sea ice extents at 59 south latitude.
Now, the politically-correct (corrupt ?) government publicists claim there is only a “modestly increasing” Antarctic sea ice extents, but that description seems to depend on what your definition of “modest” is.
Today, 18 June, the excess Antarctic sea ice area = 1.5 Mkm^2. (1.5 million square kilometers) above the normal for this date. This is no exception: the Antarctic sea ice anomaly has been positive for many years now, and has been consistently above 1.0 million sq km’s since May, 2011. (Note that, before 2007, an Antarctic sea ice anomaly of 1.0 Mkm^2 was only rarely even touched, much less routinely exceeded.)
Well, when the excess Antarctic sea ice was +1.0 Mkm^2 in February with the minimum sea normal ice at 2.0 Mkm^2, does an excess of 33% seem “modest” ?
What is “modest” increase? Was a value back in 2010 of +0.25 Mkm^2 against an area in September of 19.0 Mkm^2 “modest” Yes.
What value do they want to look at (er, cherry pick) to decide a “modest” Antarctic sea ice excess this year? If an Antarctic sea ice anomaly of +1.0 Mkm^2 is “routine” what is their new definition of “modest” by the NSIDC and NOAA and GISS? (And always remember to compare claims of “sea ice area” against “sea ice extent” .. the two are different, but you cannot directly compare the two.)
Right now? We have an excess Antarctic sea ice area of 1.5 Mkm^2, but a total area of only 10 Mkm^2. Is a mere 15% excess a “modest” gain? Is the Arctic’s “devastating” or frightening sea ice loss of -.98 Mkm^2 from a total Arctic area of 10 Mkm^2 a “disaster” or “trivial”? Will an excess of 2.0 Mkm^2 in September be “trivial” compared to a total of 20.0 Mkm^2 sea ice extents?
You CANNOT directly compare “arctic sea ice area” against “Antarctic sea ice area.” You can only compare how much sunlight is reflected from each surface at the edge of each ice pack, and how much sunlight is absorbed from each square meter.
Is an Arctic loss really worse than +1.5 Mkm^2 gain down south if the Arctic loss occurs at very high latitudes with less solar elevation angle even at the solstice? Now (today) of course the Arctic sea ice is melting – it does every year. But today (mid-June and early July) that Arctic sea ice only has a 0.40 – 0.46 albedo according to Dr Curry’s SHEBA measurements. The 1.5 Mkm^2 of excess Antarctic sea ice is new ice with an albedo of 0.85 – 0.90. And its area is increasing.
Rhetorically, I have asked before when the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn will be blocked by Antarctic sea ice in September. If today’s rates of increase continue, significant ice blockage at latitudes 57-56 south may occur within 8-10 years, and commercial ship traffic may be stopped for weeks at a time within 10-12 years. .
Headlines you will not see publicized by the administration’s ABCNNBCBS news media:
Today, the “excess” Antarctic sea ice area of 1.78 million square kilometers exceeds the total area of Greenland’s 1.7 Mkm^2.
(Somewhat sarcastically, one could also ask how many “Manhattan-sized” icebergs that excess sea ice anomaly would equal ? )
Judith Curry writes, regarding Arctic sea ice:
Even if one believes in the “stadium wave”, where is the fourth thing? The arctic sea ice trend due to global warming (i.e., where are we on the downward slope)? Or are you saying the Arctic sea ice decline doesn’t have anything to do with global warming?
Jan, look at the DMI data, tell me where you see warming there.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Whatever the reason for the decline in Arctic sea ice during the satellite era, it’s got nothing to do with warmer air over the pole.
“therefore do not use this measure as an actual physical mean temperature of the arctic”
from here
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/documentation/arctic_mean_temp_data_explanation_newest.pdf
The DMI is not a physical mean temperature for the Arctic.
OK. From that link’s words, the DMI “green line” IS the best way to consistently compare the daily estimate of NORTH areas of the arctic – those areas north of 70 latitude to 83 north latitude NASA-GISS extrapolates “surface” ground-based temperatures as far as 1200 km from where their land-based measurements were made from 60-70 latitude over the ever-greening (and darker) tundra and forests OUT to the open sea where where the arctic sea ice actually is present.
And, by comparing the DMI 80 north daily temperature presentation from 1959-2014 for the summer melt season (mid-June to late August when the arctic is above 0.0 Tave), you see very clearly that there has NO warming over the actual arctic ocean. In fact, when you compare these summer temperatures carefully, you will find that the high arctic daily averages have been decreasing the more CO2 is added to the atmosphere as years go by.
While pointing out that the Antarctic sea ice record all-time satellite-era anomaly was 1.84 Mkm^2.on 20 dec 2007, we should note something else as well:
More disturbing, more ominous, the Antarctic sea ice high was NEVER above 1.25 Mkm^2 before 2007, and it “touched” 1.0 Mkm^2 only 5 times since 1959.
Now, since 2007, at the height of the global warming scare tactics about arctic sea ice, the antarctic sea ice extents anomaly CONTINUOUSLY exceeds 1.25 Mkm^2 for 3 years straight now, and is larger than 1.5 Mkm^2 so often for such long times that it is not even newsworthy on a skeptic site.
the Antarctic sea ice record all-time satellite-era anomaly was 1.84 Mkm^2.on 20 dec 2007,
This will be broken this week,at solar max.
maksimovich:
Careful about that! Solar maximum at TOA of 1410 watts/m^2 occurs each year about Jan 3-4, and solar TOA minimum of 1310 watts/m^2 occurs just a few days from now on July 5. Neither matches either solstice nor does either match the annual NH/SH minimum sea ice/maximum sea ice dance of the seasons, which “almost” match the equinoxes in late March and mid-September. So, for the NH, the summer solstice (maximum number of hours of the day the sun is exposed at the maximum solar elevation angle during the day) occurs when the insolation is at its yearly minimum. Worse, from a heat reflected/heat absorbed standpoint for those who fear a melting arctic sea ice, Judith Curry’s measured arctic sea ice albedo from her SHEBA year up north shows a yearly minimum of 0.45 in June-July-August, well below its freezing season (November-March) highs of 0.86-0.90.
<blockquote.maksimovich | June 24, 2014 at 9:12 pm |
the Antarctic sea ice record all-time satellite-era anomaly was 1.84 Mkm^2.on 20 dec 2007,
This will be broken this week,at solar max.
I am very surprised, but you called it accurately. Congratulations (sort of) on anticipating that new (very ominous!) record Antarctic sea ice anomaly high at 2.074+ million square kilometers near the summer solstice on 29 June 2014. And every square meter of these 2.0+ million “excess” sea ice square kilometers is reflecting energy into space……
I reckon that the NAO will be generally positive from later in July through to early October 2014, suggesting that the ice extent minimum will be closer to 2013 than 2007 or 2012.
“Poptech does not understand that many great engineering teams have characters such as Mosh on board, and they thrive because of it. A college degree is better than no college degree because it does educate you on how to use logic, especially with classes in philosophy — see Logic 101 for example .”
In my first interview at Northrop went like this.
Boss: you studied philisophy and English
Mosh: I started in math and physics, but got degrees in Philosophy and English.
Boss: why did you stop math
Mosh: it wasnt a challenge. Philosophy made my head hurt.
Boss: your graduate work was in English what did you do?
Mosh: I used Shannons concept of informational entropy to understand
novelty and creativity in texts. Oh and some natural language
generation
Boss: you did math on words
Mosh: ya.
Boss: ok, you are hired
The first thing I did in the Operations research department was automate a markov process model guys had built for doing engagement level air combat analysis.
One day I walked past this guys cubicle. On the wall was this massive diagram of a air combat engagement, with trees and trees of events.
two guys sat there with their calculators punching in numbers.
The diagram looked like a huge transformational grammar tree.
I asked them why they just didnt program the tree into a computer.
They declared that fortran couldnt do this kind of thing.
So I went to my cube and coded up a tree data structure, a user interface, a plotting routine, and wrapped the whole thing in loops to allow sensitivity analysis. It was just a big sentence like structure. I think that thing won some kind of award for R&D.
Second thing I worked on was AI for vehicle control. AI in war simulation was a very important technology.
If you ever flew the air combat simulator falcon 4, then the digital brain you flew against was my creation.
liberal education sucks
Steve, screw them, you is what you is. You may be a venomous, cantankerous, warmist, but they should play the ball and not the man.
Not really, Doc, if your comments were right, (he is not venomous for example) and I was good enough to be playing him (not) , I would certainly play the man in that circumstance.
A bit of humor. The Professional Organization of English Majors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8IPbC09kq8
Never sell an English Major short.
The latest ice scare being promoted by the usual suspects (Gleick, Mann…) is a spike in the Greenland ice melt.
Here you go, be scared or not be , that is the question. Decide for yourself.
http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/
Looks more like 2012 than 2013.
In a previous thread, a commentator, an engineer, compared the formation of models to an engineer forming a model beginning with the atoms.
Why this statement?
I have wondered why, when looking at some part of the earth system, there is little consideration given to looking at the system first as a whole.
Antarctic sea ice is currently at an unexplained high.
**A cursory look at historical weather conditions show that Northern and Southern Hemispheric sea quantities have been in tandem opposites.
Why not look at Forcing s, Internal or External, to the world as a whole?
There is a thing called the polar see saw that you can research. Has mostly to do with poleward ocean heat transport. Explains part, but only part, of present pole ice conditions.
@DarrylB
It goes to the old joke – how do you eat an elephant? one bite at a time.
The system as a whole is massively complex. Those who jumped from ground zero to the end point missed the target. So others are going back and taking it one bite at a time.
True, but I keep thinking the entire system is dominated by negative feedback and so really as a whole it is never quite in equilibrium , but is always chasing equilibrium,
Taking a look over a long time period and quantifying the lag time between cause and effect, even when the cause is unknown might help to isolate what the cause might be.
There are so many oscillations, particularly in the oceans; can anyone
state unequivocally what the causes and the timing of oscillations are?
–and if not, how can one zero in on an effect like trends in the amount of sea ice?
These are the “single bites” that others are researching. Dr. Wyatt and Curry’s Stadium Wave. David Evans “X-Factor”. They are not trying to jump to a unifying theory. They are just trying to understand small bits at a time. Eventually, once enough bits are understood, then others (or perhaps some of the pioneers themselves) may bring it all together. For now, I seek out the little nuggets that accurately explain little parts. As that is where the best science seems to be occurring (as it apparently is below the radar of the PC Police that seek to stifle any dissent).
Searchlights constantly scan the barbed wired consensus, but there is tunneling underneath.
=============
First, thanks for the moderation. Unfortunately needed.
Second, TonyB has written here and elsewhere on Artic variation. For a recently completed essay on The Northwest Passage,, I found some old DMI maps for August of 1923 and 1938. Drawn from whaler and fishing boat reports. 1938 show quite low summer ice compared to 1923. There are equivalent Russian papers also saying this was a relatively ice free period. (Pisarev is available in English at psc.apl.Washington.edu/publications/Arctic Change/arctic.pdf) And Larsen’s third ever Northwest passage was completed in just 89 days summer 1944. Amundsens first in 1906 took three years! He overwintered with the Inuit. A strong indication of a period of very low arctic summer ice around WW2. All evidence of some naturally varying multidecadal cycle of arctic ice.
Ocean currents and weather have as much to do with Artic ice as temperatures, but UAH for 60-85N shows increasing temps from 1991 to 2007, and generally decreasing temp anomaly since. Could well be much more sea ice at minimum this year than last. And last year most of the folks who attempted the 2013 NWP failed. Stuck overwinter (Le Manguier), turned back (Tooluka), rescued by Canadian ice breakers (Akademik Ioffe, Tara, LastFirst). Certainly all the NASA and UK Met model predictions about completely ice free by 2011/2013/2015 have already been proven grossly wrong.
The 97% Consensus Predicted *NOT* an Arctic Ocean “completely ice free by 2011/2013/2015”, but rather “an ice-free Arctic for at least part of the year before the end of the twenty-first century.”
See e.g. NASA’s Earth Observatory web page
Please study “confabulation“ and how the scientific community avoids it via objectively verifiable surveys of the scientific literature, Rud Istvan!
Fan
According to stroeve et al 2007 the prediction of an essentially ice free seasonal arctic was for 2050 onwards to the end of the century. However the models are found to consistently understate actual melting and that period may be brought forward 30 years
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL029703/full
They seem unaware of the substantial warming from 1920 to 1950 nor of the warming around 1818 to 1860 , nor that of the first few decades of the 18th century nor of the first half of the 16th century when the northern sea route probably became navigable for the first time since….the Viking?
Tonyb
The cooling in UAH 60-85 is predictable from Richard Swanson’s 2003 article — http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL017938/full
The MSU and AMSU in polar regions see to the surface. Replacing sea ice (warm in the microwave) with open water (cold in the microwave) produces a trend in the UAH. It’s a warmer earth (melting off the ice) but colder UAH.
Rud
The trouble with the old maps is that they finished at the end of August yet substantial melting occurred well into September.
According to several reports I saw at the Scott polar institute this late melt meant that in some years an essentially ice bound August arctic became a pretty navigable arctic in September.
Tonyb
TonyB, thanks. I had not thought of that. Is obvious.
Risky business, navigating the Arctic in September. That is how all those tourist ships got stuck in 2012.
Highest regards
“The evolution of the multidecadal oscillations (e.g. where you are at on the stadium wave wheel)”
Where exactly are we on this so-called “stadium wave?” What does the theory predict in terms of future surface temps? Does anyone take this theory seriously besides Curry and Wyatt?
yes- Have YOU read the paper?
I don’t have the technical background to understand the paper. Can you answer my questions? Will the paper tell me if anyone finds the work credible?
Step 1 read the paper. It really isn’t difficult to follow.
http://judithcurry.com/?s=stadium+wave
The fact that a paper has been peer reviewed does not mean that it is widely accepted or even correct. Time will tell us more if the theory holds up, but it does seem very creditable. If arctic ice continues to recover/stabilize, there will be much more widespread support or the theory.
I believe you can just look at the chart. -I,-II, -III and -IV took place between 1940 and the early 70s indicating a cool period. It looked like a more spread out wider arc lasting longer. I, II, III and IV took place between the early seventies to the late ninties in a tighter arc that was a warm period. The latest cool end of the arc started in the late ninties. If it is a tighter arc like the beginning of the 20th century I guess it would last between 25 to 30 years? It also appears to be bottoming at around -1 on the indice where as the ’40 to ’70 cool wave was between -1.5 and -2. The early 20th century wave also bottomed at -1.
Arc should read group of arcs.
sure I find it credible.
True? idunno
credible? yup
@A Lacis: No, i am not confused. I and every other process engineer of my era did real experiments to measure coupled convection and radiation. About 40 years ago, using electrical heating of horizontal plates of hot-rolled steel and aluminium to separate natural convective and radiative heat transfer, I measured the former and deduced the latter by difference as a function of local GHG composition and temperature to design large process plant.
In air, the radiative heat transfer flux for 0.9 emissivity steel only exceeds natural convection at c. 100 deg C. For aluminium it’s about 300 deg C. Check any of the standard engineering texts, e.g. McAdam ‘Heat Transfer’ to confirm (it’s in the tables of combined heat transfer coefficients).
You can easily prove this coupled concept with a beach windbreak: erect it and the sand temperature rises to keep the sum of convective and radiative heat loss equal to the SW thermalisation; drop the windbreak and sand temperature falls as convection increases.
The ‘Forcing’ concept works for SW because opposing surface SW emission is zero. Use it for LW and increased ‘Forcing’ REDUCES net surface IR flux (the vector sum of irradiances), meaning temperature has to rise to keep convection plus radiation constant. Hence feedback = 1.0 were it not for the negative feedback from clouds, another story.
Question: Where’s the Decadal ‘Pause’?
Judith Curry’s Arctic Sea Ice Extent shows decade-by-decade decreases:
• 1980s Average: low
• 1990s Average: lower
• 2000s Average: lowest
• 2010s Average: lower still
Where’s the decadal ‘pause’?
The world wonders!
Get busy, ‘stadium wave’!
Or not.
Ouch.
That ‘uncertainty monster’ is turning out to have a nasty bite.
Fan’s facts always remind me of an old Russian joke: – Is it true that Ivan Ivanovich did win a racing car in Moscow? – Yes, it is true. Only it was not in Moscow, but in Novosibirsk; it was a bike, not a racing car; and he did not win, but someone stole it from him.
Fan
The two coldest consecutive decades in Greenland remain the 1930’s and 1940’s according to Phil jones.
You shall have to wait another 6 years before we can know if that will be beaten.
Tonyb
Oh look, FOMD strips the data of all context then performs parlor tricks, basically doing nothing more than moving the endpoints to the point that makes his argument look the strongest.
That is not quantitative reasoning, that is rhetoric, abetted by a healthy dose of omission.
Dr (hc) Noor van Andel, Tropical Rainstorm Feedback, Energy & Environment, V21, N4 (2010)
Arctic Sea Ice can conjure up some confirmation biases.
Arctic Sea Ice loss is certainly consistent with ‘Arctic Amplification’ of an increased global temperature.
On the other hand, dynamically thinned sea ice leads to increased air temperatures from the exposed ocean.
The warming caused the thinning, versus the thinning caused the warming.
How much of each process? Time will tell, but a reversion to the mean would lean towards dynamics.
Displacement of the Arctic (polar) vortex, allowing meridional jet stream, leaking cold air south?
ya Mathew it should have gone under another comment where it would have made sense. Looks like a bunch of crap got deleted.
Someone came in to attack Mosher, the stuff got deleted (a number of people saw it), I allowed Mosher’s response
Mosh
Yeah, sorry for the c rap that was directed your way. Glad it got deleted.
Tonyb
funny thing is I came in after the clean up.
generally speaking I think all attacks on me should be left in the open.
bottom line: i should be dead, but Im not, so every day is cool and people get to say all manner of things about me. they actually get to. its all good.
Overnite there were about 40 comments attacking you (I seem to have been successful at not letting more of these get through). If there had been one or two, I would have left them, but I really want to keep technical threads clear of this kind of stuff
Wow 40
Nice
Mosh
There were so many attacks that it completely derailed what had been an interesting discussion. It was along the lines of the same individuals attack on Willis.
I’m not sure what the purpose of it is. It just destroys his own credibility as previously he had done some worthwhile work If he is reading this, please stop, it has become counterproductive.
tonyb.
Judith, incorrect I simply responded to your request to stop. I made my point.
Climatereason, everything is factual and fully sourced.
PT
It may well be fully sourced, but what purpose does it serve? Thread bombing rarely reflects well on the person doing it. As I said on a previous thread, both Willis and Mosh can lay claim to being ‘citizen scientists’ which has a long history. If they claimed a doctorate in physics that might be a different matter but I have never seen either do this.
tonyb
@TonyB – Well stated.
It would also be interesting if Judy would venture some contributions to the SIO at ARCUS herself. It’s amazing how much making a guess yourself, in public, sharpens your thinking on a topic, or at least gives you an appreciation for those who do.
My first guess was in 2009. I’ll keep calling them guesses until I can say with confidence that they’re better than ‘null forecasters’, per my other comments. That said, my suite of guesses seems to be doing better than average, at least.
My company Climate Forecast Applications Network regularly makes forecasts on timescales of days to decades. I agree that making real time forecasts provides invaluable feedback to scientists, and tends to reduce their overconfidence (I wouldn’t be such good friends with the uncertainty monster without making operational real time forecasts). With regards to seasonal sea ice forecasting, it is too far away from my current research topics, for now I will just comment, but it is something I might take on in the next year or two.
As you say. I’ve been talking to professional, full time, forecasters, and learned various things. One is, as you say, the uncertainty monster — forecasts will _always_ be incorrect — to some degree, about some things.
Another is, we make decisions even when the uncertainty monster is present. We might do so with forecast guidance, we might not. But we will be making decisions regardless. Because of this, forecasters are welcoming to any guidance that is better than throwing dice. (On the other hand, per my comments about the UKMO ice forecasts, they _do_ want to see something better than throwing dice.)
Deterministic forecasts under conditions of substantial uncertainty aren’t very helpful. The key issue is making probabilistic forecasts where there is a statistical basis for the uncertainty. When uncertainty is very large, an alternative for decision makers that is better than throwing the dice is to present a range of possible scenarios, each associated with its story line (model or whatever). If multiple story lines give the same outcome, then the likelihood of that scenario is increased. See my presentation on this approach: http://judithcurry.com/2014/03/19/uk-us-workshop-part-v-broadening-the-portfolio-of-climate-information/ (ppt is linked to in this post)
“Where’s the decadal ‘pause’?”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/trend/plot/nsidc-seaice-n/last:132/trend
Based on your claim, I should not be able to do this.
What I have notices a lot in pictures from the Arctic is that they are always “warmed up’ a bit in post processing. There is actually a setting in Adobe Creative Suites where you can set the apparent temperature of a scene in Kelvin, and the colors will be adjusted to reflect that change. We associate oranges and turquoise with warmer temps and deeper blues and less orange reds with cooler temps.
It is like they have an instagram filter to make their pictures of the Arctic appear warm.
Antarctic sea ice area 1.505 sq million greater. When will it break the Satellite record? In the next month?
Arctic 1.101 negative but a holding pattern and likely to improve shortly.
Slow melt multi year thick ice with colder North Sea currents.
Touche for Steven Mosher – threading apparently broken again.
That’s why I admire Mosh. He dives in and tackle tough problems.
Related to Mosh’s interests. As a spinoff project, I am maintaining a semantic web server that organizes a collection of environmental and energy models and simulations. This is linked off of my http://ContextEarth.com blog. The objective is to gather mostly simple models related to entropy but I usually get sidetracked into working on more complex problems, and these of course tend to eat up lots of time. I can understand how projects like BEST are a labor of love. Find something interesting and dive in. No one is stopping you.
Mosh doesn’t appreciate the fact that I won’t make an over/under bet.
Will I “suck up” to him and place a bet? nope.
I always keep it simple because I don’t think this kind of climate science is complicated. The ENSO and QBO both share the same cyclic forcing, which is a slightly varying periodic signal centered around 28-29 months. As it turns out this is the folded frequency for the synodic lunar month of 29.53 days, which is pointing to the same forces which give rise to tides as being the stimulus for both ENSO and QBO.
http://contextearth.com/2014/06/17/the-qbom/
Kind of hard to knee-jerk refute this, just as the tide going in and out is difficult to challenge. But I will wait for a counter-argument.
BTW, this is real exploratory science, not suited for the incurious.
Touche for Steven Mosher – threading apparently broken again.
Yes of course it’s broken. So who are you curious George? Apparently not curious enough.
What we have is a scheme – using spelling rules – for measuring the ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’ of science and literature while abjuring ‘meaning’ and ‘significance’ because that can be ‘anything’ you care for it to be.
One of the dumber pieces of post modernist schtick ever to raise it’s stupid head in a philosophy department. How old is that piece of best forgotten coding? Grow up and move on Mosh.
BTW webby.
‘Zonally symmetric easterly and westerly wind regimes alternate regularly with periods varying from about 24 to 30 months(Holton,1992). The fastest obsevedoscillation had a period close to 20 months(1959-1961) and the slowest was 36 months(1984-1987), while the mean period was 28.2 months(Pawson et al 1993b);about 5 cycles in 12 years(Maruyama,1997).’ http://web.atmos.ucla.edu/~cwhung/qbo.html
‘Over the last 1010 yr, the LD summer sea salt (LDSSS) record has exhibited two below-average (El Niño–like) epochs, 1000–1260 ad and 1920–2009 ad, and a longer above-average (La Niña–like) epoch from 1260 to 1860 ad. Spectral analysis shows the below-average epochs are associated with enhanced ENSO-like variability around 2–5 yr, while the above-average epoch is associated more with variability around 6–7 yr… While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the interdecadal Pacific oscillation…’ Vance et al 2012
I suppose the tidal cycle has interannual, to decadal to centennial variability? No? Didn’t think so.
Keeping it simple it one thing – but simple minded is just taking it too far. What fits is UV modulation of SAM and spin up of the lower latitude gyres. Because ENSO is not about ‘sloshing’ – but the first cause of upwelling in the eastern Pacific with a series of feedback in wind, cloud and current followed by a relaxation event in the western Pacific – probably triggered by the MJO.
You’ve not got a clue have you?
Of course sloshing is happening! Upwelling and downwelling of waters cannot happen without the behavior known as sloshing! Sloshing is defined as an irregular movement of liquid, and I have no better word which defines the ENSO behavior. Neither do the climate agencies!
Now what does it take to mathematically describe the sloshing of liquid?
Well, you can always “look it up” as they say!
[1]J. B. Frandsen, “Sloshing motions in excited tanks,” Journal of Computational Physics, vol. 196, no. 1, pp. 53–87, 2004.
And what you will find is the Mathieu equation, which one can solve, either analytically for trivial cases or numerically for the more difficult cases of arbitrary excitation. In the end, one gets an excellent mathematical representation of the sloshing
http://contextearth.com/2014/05/27/the-soim-differential-equation/
Next, we can look at the ENSO behavior over longer periods by looking at the coral data from Palmyra Island as compiled by Prof Kim Cobb at Georgia Tech!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v424/n6946/images/nature01779-f6.2.jpg
stay tuned ….
Style is not a sign.
You remind me of freshman who had been infected
By their high school teachers with that nonsense.
And yes style has rules. It is how you recognize it when
It changes.
Think of fashion styles to clear your brain.
Think of style in formal cutlery.
Start with a meaningless statement.
Follow with an insult.
Add a non sequitur and a couple of irrelevancies.
No wonder mosh eschews meaning in science and literature. My guess is that he failed math and still had no breadth or love of literature and relied on dissecting it in a computer.
Style in literature is something that adds extra dimensions to meaning – it is not remotely either hairstyles or place settings.
http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Egyptian-art-students-drawing-woman-in-hieroglyphic-pose-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8641429_.htm
Ernst Gombrich, ‘Art and Illusion.’ CH 1 on The Riddled of Style.
The ARCUS Sept 2014 sea ice outlook has just been published:
http://www.arcus.org/sipn/sea-ice-outlook/2014/june
Some seem to be expecting a major migration of ice out to sea or maybe catastrophic global warming to kick in real soon now.
Do you have a guess curryja?
Anyway, related to Arctic sea ice, seasonal predictions and the dynamical considerations behind them are quite interesting and tell us much about the dynamics of short term natural variations. But they unfortunately tell us little about the external forcing behind the long term decline in Arctic sea ice. Even natural variability can impact medium term sea ice declines (or increases) but it is the long term constant external forcing from the rapidly increasing GH gas concentrations that will ultimately bring about the very likely ice free summer Arctic later this century. Over the long term, more net energy is accumulating in and being advected to the Arctic, and the inevitable result is an ice-free summer in some future decade this century.
The Roman Warm time had an open Arctic.
The Medieval Warm time had an open Arctic.
The Chinese Mapped the Arctic in the 1400’s because it was open then.
The Vikings moved to Greenland because it was warm and ice free.
This modern Warm time is much like all the Warm times in the past ten thousand years and it will end and be followed by another little ice age.
Look at the actual data. What has happened in the past will happen in the future. With more CO2, we will have more green things growing to help us make it through the cold time that will come next.
Consensus Climate Theory and Models do not properly account for the Polar Ice Cycles. Mother Earth does. Watch the snow fall in the warm times when the Polar Waters are Warm and the Ice Thawed. That puts an upper bound on Temperature that will not be violated.
terminal post and on Arctic but
Antarctic set to break all records in next 3 days
currently 1.69 million over but watch that narrow area fill in another 200 for the record!
Angech,
You do realize that numerous studies are looking at anthropogenic causes for the changes going on in Antarctic sea ice, right? And as counter-intuitive as it seems, the growth in sea ice in Antarctica means more heat is staying in the deeper Southern Ocean, adding to more melting of the more important glacial ice.
Also, as counter-intuitive as it seems, pigs really can fly
So if the facts don’t give you the explanation that you want, you keep looking until you find some way that they do. And then (and this is very important) you immdiately STOP looking and declare that the science is settled and anyone who disagrees is a filthy denier. Have I got the methodology right?
Odd, the actual measured Antarctic regional air temperatures have showed a general and many-year long decreasing trend.
Doesn’t look like the data match that excuse (er, theory) for the 29 June record-setting Antarctic sea ice anomaly of 2.07 million “excess” square kilometers …
My prediction for the Arctic minimum this year is 3.4 M square kilometers sea ice extent.
Hmmm… it should be less than zero – it is a year after Chakra algore’s ice free prediction deadline.
The only credible ones I know of were for 2016 +/_ 3 years
Still a ways to go for that
I so don’t think you can produce a cite that says Al Gore said it would for sure certainly by 2013. He may have said it might though.
His actual words are “may be” gone. I guess his predictions are as good as the climate models. I would not bet money on any of his prognostications if I were you.
And the prediction, made in 2008, was 5 years, so that is 2013.
http://youtu.be/MsioIw4bvzI
Good job Phil, you made me listen to a man I have little regard for and no interest in defending him,
BUT
he said 5-7 years in 2009,
So we got three more years until that prediction is false
AND
Oh by the way, he said a 75% chance of all gone in summer in 5-7 years.
Your evaluation of algore is duly noted. However he did make the prediction (projection, whatever) in 2008, not 2009. He has since repeated it.
But the conference he was speaking at was in 2009, got any cites for him saying it in 2008?
Sure. Check the date of the article. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/14/gore-entire-north-polar-ice-cap-will-be-gone-in-5-years/
BTW – that is one way to never be wrong. Keep making the same prediction year after year. Eventually the 5 year number will be correct as some day, the Arctic will again be ice free.
Yes, Al hedged his bet, he did say 75% chance of ice free in 5-7 years in 2009, your 2008 WTFUPWTHAT linky no worky.
You have at least until 2015 for him to be wrong at the 75% confidence level.
By the way 2014 is holding steady in third place with 2012 and 2011 ahead by a mere 150K.
It’s all up to weather and what kind of cyclonic activity we get up north, but one thing is for sure, the sea ice extent recovery is like Mick said
“It’s all over now”
The WUWT link works for me. If it does not work for you, just go to the site and do a search on the title (contained in the link). It will take you to the article.
I am glad we agree it is all up to the weather. And yes, wind has as much to do with extent as temperature. But then unless you have a way to project weather over the next 2 years (which no one else has been able to accomplish), your song is a bit premature.
But we do not have a life time to wait to see if your prediction bears out.