Ice Caps: No Danger of Melting In Next Few Years!

It's only good news if you believed the doomsayers that it was going to be gone in 2013 or some other silly prediction.

Those with common sense and without an agenda knew that the caps were not going to melt overnight and that the Himalayan glacier is not going to disappear tomorrow.

 

They could be completely melted already, just a bunch of styrofoam chunks and starbuck cups floating really close together fools the satellite image...

 

yes, and jimmy carter was right, we hit peak oil in 1980. The gas in your cars comes from whale oil. And those tidal waves destroying NYC from global warming are coming on 10/10/10, oh no that's in less than a month. Where is that tin foil hat? I would make one but we ran out of tin too, all I can seem to buy is aluminum foil. When that is gone zombies will walk the earth.

 

I hate to be the reality-based person here, but:

You do realize you're celebrating the fact that the ice extent is slightly above the all-time minimum, which occurred way, way back in 2007.

Total ice mass continues to decrease, at what appears to be an increasing rate.

For ice extent, see here:
Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

By contrast, for ice mass, see here:
Polar Science Center - APL-UW - Arctic Sea Ice Volume

The arctic is still warm by historical standards. Nothing is going to change that. People who either have business opportunities or serious obligations from an ice-free arctic are planning on it. The only difference of opinion among those who have skin in the game is how soon.

The US Navy appears to be betting on "no later than 2030". The oil companies look like they're betting on some time before that. I'd say the consensus of informed opinion puts the likely time around 2030, but with wide confidence interval around that. Although, I have yet to see any exact definition of what "ice free summer arctic" actually means, so trying to specify an exact date for a poorly-defined event is kind of dumb.

The 2008 prediction was for the area around the pole to be ice free, not for the ice cap to disappear. No one predicted an ice-free summer arctic. It made the news because "North Pole" resonates with popular culture.

There is one researcher for the US Navy who predicted 2016 +/- 3 years for an ice-free arctic by end-of-summer. That was just simple extrapolation-of-short-term trend. And it's his job to try to get the Navy ready for contingencies. I have to guess that's where the 2013 number comes from. And I wouldn't yet rule him out at the upper end.

What you have now in the arctic is more-or-less a veneer of thin, first-year ice. More recently, surveys are finding that some of satellite data that had been interpreted as multi-year (older, thicker) is not actually solid, multi-year ice, but is chunks of old ice with an overlay of thin first-year ice. That appears to be a new phenomenon, at least based on an interview with one researcher:

Satellite images of healthy sea ice prove to be thin "rotten" ice up close - environmentalresearchweb

Again, why does that matter in a practical sense:

""Ship navigation across the pole is imminent as the type of ice which resides there is no longer a barrier to ships in the late summer and fall," Barber says. "

Anyway, it's the "skin in the game" aspect of this that I find so striking. Near as I can tell, from where I sit, everybody who actually has to work in the arctic knows what's going on and is planning on the disappearance of the ice within the next couple of decades. It's only the spectators with no real interest in this who sit on the sidelines and jeer at the concept.

I read (but can't find now) that estimates based on sediments on the sea floor suggest that there has been summertime arctic ice, continuously, for the past 12M years or so. (How they could know that, I'm not sure). If true, well, the difference between disappearing in 12,000,000 years or 12,000,020 years does not strike me as being all that significant in the grand scheme of things.

The minimum ice extent figure reflects the random effects of current and wind. But I would cheerfully take a $10,000 bet on a new summer minimum ice extent sometime in the next five years. I'd cautiously take it for four. I'd guess three is getting close to 50/50 odds, which is too much like betting on a coin toss.

Finally, I'll point out that somehow, incredibly, perhaps for the first time every on these boards, you all missed out on a easy opportunity to p*ss on Al Gore, who is on record with a "might melt as soon as" number. Can't imagine how you let that one slip past.

Ah, and as a matter of statistics, I feel the need to point out the analogy between comparing all global temperature readings to the most recent high, and comparing all sea ice extent measurements to the most recent low. It has a natural appeal, but because both both time series have large transient (one-year-random) components, it's not a good way to grasp what the underlying trend is. Here's the most recent trend data (August) posted at the National Ice and Snow Data Center:



What I haven't yet seen is the analysis that is routinely done with temperatures, where you take the lowest number, play connect-the-dots with the current year, and talk about "global cooling" for temperatures. I guess the analogous term here would be "Arctic freezing", by connecting the dots between 2007 and 2010. That doesn't have the same ring to it as "global cooling", but basically it's no stupider to do that with the ice extent than it is to do it with temperatures. I guess it's only a matter of time before somebody does that and makes a big deal out of the difference between the 2007 and 2010 ice extents.

 

The fact that the OP considers this "good news" belies his own ignorance on the subject, and indeed the importance of high latitude ice. (and the effect of climate change on it!) Whether or not summer sea ice disappears this season, or next, or "in a few years" is largely academic.

The fact is (spelled out so many times before in this forum and elsewhere for those that wish to read real information) is that the Arctic is and is going to be subject to dramatic changes in climate far faster and far greater than mid latitude climates, and the consequences of that change has the very real prospect of catastrophe. (See also perma-frost melt, methane release etc, etc, etc.

 

Icky, you're my hero!

 

The fishing looks pretty good over here.

 

I wasn't saying no one was predicting it. I was just saying no one that understands science and is reasonable without a political agenda was believing it. A non-record is a lowering trend is often just a statistical anomaly, unless you start predicting doom based on just a couple of years of data. British papers seem to have an almost anti-science bent.

skin in the game normally means they have a vested or political interest. The tobacco institute studies are not exactly good science. Let's base our research on those without a vested interest and with good experimental design. That is unless you want our science to come from those that can make the most money with a theory.

Isn't that just a bad excuse for bad science. These people are yelling the sky is falling without real numbers to back it up. Then when the bad numbers and shotty reasoning come out, they make excuses. There is not a consensus of climate scientist that the caps will melt in 20 years. That simply is not true. Their is a consensus that there is a chance of melting. These two things are very different.

Are you calling Al Gore a politician that put out alarmist data to make money and serve a political agenda. Why would anyone care? Why are you bringing him up. Do his mistakes reflect at all on the conversation.

The connect the dots was done to get the 2013 alarmist numbers from people that want to poke the AGW pooch. Looking at only a couple of years of data is wrong on both sides. How about making a real graph with the y-axis going to 0? If the ice will be gone by 2013, which it won't, there certainly is nothing we can do about it now. Get rid of the A in AGW, and stop using stort term weather to talk about long term climate change and reasonable people can have a reasonable discussion. The real odds of the Northern ice cap melting completely in the next 20 years seems really low. If you start looking out 30-50 years it becomes more likely.

 

Most seem to prefer to look at the growing Antarctic sea ice extent growing and point to that saying "see it's all balancing out!" while completely ignoring the effects of increased precipitation around the Antarctic...

 

that's good, i wasn't sure if i should take my sled or kayak with me to the pole this Christmas.

 

And in an odd turn of events, from the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

"
Update: 21 September 2010
Although ice extent appeared to reach a minimum on September 10, rising afterwards for three straight days, it has subsequently declined even further. NSIDC scientists are closely monitoring the ice extent and will provide another update on the data, as conditions develop."


Perhaps related, perhaps not, this was also the year that the ice maximum occurred about a month later than usual. In fact, in their discussion of the caveats for calling the minimum before, they noted that this would have been the shortest melt season on record.

Looking carefully at the graphs, this is now below the 2008 minimum, making this the second lowest in the satellite era, maybe 5% higher than 2007.

But that all really misses the point. When the 2007 minimum blew through all the prior records, the issue was whether that was some one-year anomaly or whether it marked the start of some new, lower, level of "normal" minimum ice extent. With just three additional years to look at, its tough to say, but I'd say it's starting to look like the latter.

 

Must be because the elections are coming soon... all the hot air and all.

 

i may be oversimplifying this but:

hasn't the ice been receding since the end of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago? i mean for god's sake....the earth moves through cycles.

 

You know what's ironic? That people who don't understand science and have a political agenda accuse statistics that show climate change is real of "not understanding science and having a political agenda." Stupid numbers!

 

I guess if you purchased your Prius on a 60 month payment plan you might actually have to write that final check......

 

Right - because humans couldn't have anything to do with the recent rate of climate change?

What does past climate change tell us about global warming?