Various media have been reporting that in the Arctic about a million more square miles of ocean are covered in ice this August than just last year. This is apparently an increase of 60 percent. 
August is usually a low point in the annual cycle, and not so many years ago some were predicting the Arctic would be ice free by August of this year, by 2013.
But if you consider the longer millennial-scale temperature trends as detailed in the technical literature, it is one of summer insolation declining through the Holocene, summer temperatures being generally cooler and the area of Artic ice expanding.
For example…
“As the planet cooled from peak warmth in the early Cenozoic, extensive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets developed by 2.6 Ma ago, leading to changes in the circulation of both the atmosphere and oceans. From w2.6 to w1.0 Ma ago, ice sheets came and went about every 41 ka, in pace with cycles in the tilt of Earth’s axis, but for the past 700 ka, glacial cycles have been longer, lasting w100 ka, separated by brief, warm interglaciations, when sea level and ice volumes were close to present. The cause of the shift from 41 ka to 100 ka glacial cycles is still debated.
“During the penultimate interglaciation, w130 to w120 ka ago, solar energy in summer in the Arctic was greater than at any time subsequently. As a consequence, Arctic summers werew5 C warmer than at present, and almost all glaciers melted completely except for the Greenland Ice Sheet, and even it was reduced in size substantially from its present extent. With the loss of land ice, sea level was about 5 m higher than present, with the extra melt coming from both Greenland and Antarctica as well as small glaciers. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) peaked w21 ka ago, when mean annual temperatures over parts of the Arctic were as much as 20 C lower than at present.
“Ice recession was well underway 16 ka ago, and most of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had melted by 6 ka ago. Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) w11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1e3 C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present. Early Holocene summer sea ice limits were substantially smaller than their 20th century average, and the flow of Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean was substantially greater. As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean diminished. Late Holocene cooling reached its nadir during the Little Ice Age (about 1250e1850 AD), when sun-blocking volcanic eruptions and perhaps other causes added to the orbital cooling, allowing most Arctic glaciers to reach their maximum Holocene extent. During the warming of the past century, glaciers have receded throughout the Arctic, terrestrial ecosystems have advanced northward, and perennial Arctic Ocean sea ice has diminished…
from Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
Miller et al. 2010. Quarternary Science Reviews 29:1679-1715
Image of sea ice extent from http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/. Click on this image for a larger and better view.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Dana disagrees:
Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/09/climate-change-arctic-sea-ice-delusions
Dellingpoles response is funny, something about ploppy poo and:
“So there you have it: all this wicked denialist nonsense about Arctic sea ice may be trivially true but if you take this “factoid” seriously then basically you’re a lying greed-capitalist Nazi sympathiser who was tacitly responsible for a Guardian reader’s uncle getting his legs blown off – and you’re also a complete idiot because you’re (probably) not a climate scientist and climate scientists are trained professionals (a bit like Bodie and Doyle, only with white lab coats and PhDs and bunsen burners instead of Walther P38s) whereas you’re just a rubbish layman.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100235012/arctic-ice-melt-is-a-problem-because-right-wing-newspapers-smell-explains-guardian-climate-expert/
Thanks SP. Have to copy and past the following from your link.
The first para suggests September is the critical month?
The text following that is really priceless introducing the concept of ‘regression towards the mean’! What about tipping points? I thought that as the ice melted there would be more incoming solar radiation absorbed by the dark ocean and then runaway ice melt and then a full blown climate catastrophe ;-)!
Quoting from the Guardian…
“Both articles claimed that Arctic sea ice extent grew 60 percent in August 2013 as compared to August 2012. While this factoid may be technically true (though the 60 percent figure appears to be an exaggeration), it’s also largely irrelevant. For one thing, the annual Arctic sea ice minimum occurs in September – we’re not there yet. And while this year’s minimum extent will certainly be higher than last year’s, that’s not the least bit surprising. As University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins noted last year,
“Around 80% of the ~100 scientists at the Bjerknes [Arctic climate science] conference thought that there would be MORE Arctic sea-ice in 2013, compared to 2012.”
“The reason so many climate scientists predicted more ice this year than last is quite simple. There’s a principle in statistics known as “regression toward the mean,” which is the phenomenon that if an extreme value of a variable is observed, the next measurement will generally be less extreme. In other words, we should not often expect to observe records in consecutive years. 2012 shattered the previous record low sea ice extent; hence ‘regression towards the mean’ told us that 2013 would likely have a higher minimum extent…
Because the rusted-on catastros have hitched their wobbly wagon to this 0.9% of the world’s ice that has been ever-increasingly egg-beaten by nuke powered ice-breakers in the search for more fossil fuels, ya gotta larf at the pickle they now are in.
They put their foot in it and can’t even row their boats through it.
You’d have to be having a lend of yourselves
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2013/09/Figure2.png
Back to 2009? sigh ….
“Back to 2009? sigh ….”
There you go, sighing again.
Whatta ya think might be the average for 1934–2010?
Ever been on a ship that doesn’t go to windward? In that situation exactly half of the world’s oceans is denied you at any one time. Add to that the incredible risk of running downwind into ice floes and not being able to extract yourself. You need enormous “sea room” to leeward in those situations as well.
As I have said before, explorers like Cabot, Frobisher, Davis etc sailed Arctic waters in wooden clunkers centuries ago and for that to happen there must have been less ice than there was this summer or even last summer.
Thanks Luke. But you’ve really got to go back before 1981 to find periods of relatively low ‘recent’ Arctic Ice… I don’t have my book on Arctic sea ice cycles with me in Central Queensland… but when were the recent low Ice periods… around 1914? What about 1860… was this a high or low for Arctic sea ice?
The average date of arctic sea ice minimum is around September 14 if I remember correctly. Meanwhile the antarctic has been having record or near record highs for sea ice extent this year.
This past spring the Nenana Ice Classic in Alaska had a record late ice out date. They’ve been wagering on that annually since 1917. Some lucky couple won $318,500 for a $2.50 wager this past May.
http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/
Goal post shifting
In the saga of Arctic sea ice a bit of context never hurts.
The Russian records have been largely ignored re 20th
century research. Tony Brown posting @ Judith Curry
10/04/13, “Historic variations in Arctic sea ice. Part 11
1920-1950” includes this observational data.
Bts.
http://mclean.ch/climate/Arctic_1920_40.htm
Good link Bts.
“Goal post shifting”
So as to avoid your cherry picking.
The more things change the more they stay the same:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/arctic-ice-is-the-same-thickness-it-was-70-years-ago/
Say Spangled,
Yer gotta say that in French.
‘Plus ca change plus meme chose.’
bts
Comments to this post are well worth reading through…
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/08/arctic-sea-ice-minimum/
Beth, I didn’t realise you were such a frank serf. ☺
Frank or ernesT ? )
Unfortunately I’m in Paris at the moment and nothing comes out in correct French 🙂
They have discovered a range of 100 active submarine volcanoes between Iceland and Svalbard that extends for another 2000 km into the Siberian sea. They also suggest that some of these volcanoes are only metres from the surface and a new island group will be created.
It appears to explain why the ice in that area is melting yet the Bearing Strait ice isn’t.
As Mark Twain would say:
The death of Arctic sea ice is greatly exaggerated.
Bill Illis is one of the best bloggers at WUWT and has just graphed the temp increase since 1958.
Bill Illis says:
September 10, 2013 at 11:39 am
The underlying warming trend (after removing the ENSO, AMO, solar cycle, and volcano influences) of the UAH/RSS average and the lower troposphere provided by the radiosonde balloons/HadAT going back to 1958 is a pretty steady 0.056C per decade.
http://s22.postimg.org/jyr62xv35/UAH_RSS_Had_At_Warming_Trend.png
The warming trend of 0.056 C per decade isn’t much when you remove the NATURAL influences above.
Hardly CAGW at all.
0.056C per decade, a pleasant half a degree rise in a century. Why if
I were around then I would not complain. And in context, here in ol’
Melbourne town we have temperature anomolies on one Spring day,
far greater than that.
bts
“Hardly CAGW at all.”
Not much catastrophe there Neville.
And how many other influences are included in this tiny amount of warming such as 7 billion people with all their heating from energy consumption [apart from their CO2 emissions] as well as land-use changes and urban heat islands where all the thermometers are doing the recording etc, etc.
Could the “dragon slayers” possibly have a point:
http://principia-scientific.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=297
But AR5 is about to stop the nonsense:
“It was established doctrine that witches were not witches by their own volition, but by Satan’s, and so burning them at the stake would purify them by pain so they could enter Heaven. The IPCC Church actually believed, and led the populace to believe, that it was doing witches a favour by torturing them and burning them to death.”
Wrong,wrong, wrong.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23964372
What a bunch of deniers you all are
The real measure is ice volume – lowest ever
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23964372
hahahahahahaha
NEXT !
(and the real science story is the paper covered here in superb discussion http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/seasonal-nino/#comment-83156 ) much more important
That’s the way Luke. Scream the D word and hit us with a BBC story on a dubious satellite-measuring system starting in 2010.
How about the SUMMER ice? That’s what’s grown.
And it’s good to see Foster realises that his models and stats could do with a scrub-up.
extent when it suits, volume when not!
can you guys come up with somet new?
The latest big accepted fact in the alarmist MSM without the hint of a query:
The Woolly Mammoth is now [like us] a victim of Global Warming too.
More BS from the science challenged?
As a huge grass-eater you would wonder why better grass-growing conditions would wipe it out:
“I really like the last point about the future need to look at why mammoths survived the previous warm periods, but died out in the recent one”, said evolutionary biologist Tom Gilbert, a professor at the University of Copenhagen. Professor Gilbert was not involved in this study.
“That’s really to me the most interesting question out there.”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2013/sep/11/woolly-mammoth-extinction-warming-climate
But Luke?
Isn’t the Tamino blog just another blog that pretends to be science based but is really just advancing a political agenda? Foster’s comments are no more ‘peer reviewed’ than Bob Tisdale’s or Nova’s or Watt’s or Cook’s or Rabbet’s or Lambert’s etc. . .
I have noticed that you say anyone who invokes DK or Feynman etc loses. 🙂 🙂
I’m adding anyone who invokes ‘denier’ or any other permutation of ‘deny’ also loses.
Duh volume of duh ice is now a ruse. Gawd !
Dumb bum comment Deb – you could RTF Nature paper instead and make an intelligent comment …. until then BORING !
But Luke? 🙂
You linked to a BBC news site and Tamino. . . and used ‘denier’
@Luke
“Duh volume of duh ice is now a ruse. Gawd !”
No, it’s not Luke but when the extent was decreasing but the old ice volume still held up in comparison all the cry was, look at the ‘extent’, now it’s reversed and the argument goes the other way.
You ppl. say what’s suits you at the time!
You are worse than a politician, at least for them fibbing is in the job description.
The Wooly Mammoth is now a victim of global warming, sd?
I remember these pctures in books of Wooly Mammoth being
driven off cliffs by ice age hunters, but perhaps not.
Say, what happened ter the GIant Diprotodon in Oz? Thought
bones of GD had been found which appeared ter show marks
of butchering but doubtless their passing will be attributed ter
globul warming.
bts
SBS “news” also attributes mammoth extinction to climate change (courtesy of BBC of course)
Comment from: spangled drongo September 12th, 2013 at 7:28 pm
“The latest big accepted fact in the alarmist MSM without the hint of a query:
The Woolly Mammoth is now [like us] a victim of Global Warming too.
More BS from the science challenged?
As a huge grass-eater you would wonder why better grass-growing conditions would wipe it out”
Natural climate change is more than just warmer vs colder. My understanding is that 15k years ago, Alaska, for example, was also much drier. There was less forest, and less grassland.
There was even less tundra. There wasn’t enough precip to form permafrost in most places where one would expect to find it. For much of the state, shrubs dominated the landscape. If I were a mammoth, I would have looked for greener pastures elsewhere.
Boring Johnathon – it’s not a matter of what suits – as usual the denial industry NEVER gives you all the facts. WHY NOT? The old selectivity game.
Your good mates have failed to look after the duty of care in not giving us the full picture. Shoddy stuff Wilksey
“when the extent was decreasing but the old ice volume still held up” like WTF !!!!!!!!!
You’re talking utter crap http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/p/arctic-sea-ice-extent-and-volume.html – note the ice volume words !!
This is an example of the updated wording from the link Luke provides.
Instead of 2013 (which was DEFINITELY about ice extent NOT volume!) We’re now going for 2015 on yet another trend graph.
……
The accelerating rate of decline of ice volume may be a more accurate indicator than the rate of decline of ice extent when attempting to predict the time horizon for an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Ice volume data helps to put the recovery of sea ice extent since the 2007 minimum into perspective. Sea ice volume continues to decline rapidly and has occurred at an exponential rate since 1979 according to this graph created by ASI blog commenter Wipneus using ice volume data provided by PIOMAS. If this trend persists over the coming years we could experience an ice free Arctic Ocean by the summer of 2015.
whatever you say Luke whatever you say!
“Your good mates have failed to look after the duty of care in not giving us the full picture”…hahahahahahahaha thx for the laugh Luke! Pot / Kettle??!! hahahahahahahah priceless thx so much.
You may be right, but goodness me the reason CAGW has any legs at all is because of exactly what you try and point out here!
I needed a laugh thx!
Larry, I’m sure they died out for a number of reasons but I’d be surprised if warming [as claimed] was one of them.
They claim that trees overgrew their grassland but I thought that WMs, like elephants, fed on trees awa grass.
Droughts would always contribute, particularly in areas where they couldn’t escape like the polar islands near the Bering Strait where they finally died out but I bet increasing numbers of humans, wolf packs and polar bears ☺ did more damage.
Comment from: spangled drongo September 13th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
“Droughts would always contribute, particularly in areas where they couldn’t escape like the polar islands near the Bering Strait where they finally died out but I bet increasing numbers of humans, wolf packs and polar bears ☺ did more damage.”
Polar bears have been around at least since the Eemian Interglacial. They eat best when there’s lots of pack ice for them to use as bases when hunting their favorite prey, seals. It’s not obvious to me that natural warming would increase polar bear populations. And I’m not sure how a PB would fare going ‘toe-to-toe’ with an adult mammoth.
Here’s Pat Michael’s take on Greenland temp study by Vinther, Jones and Briffa etc.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/11/17/cooling-the-debate-a-longer-record-of-greenland-air-temperature/
That fig 1 box is very interesting and shows warmer period in the 1930s and 40s, well before co2 could have made any impact. 1941 was the warmest year.
It also cooled until the mid 1990s or the next 40 to fifty years. Looks like those changes could be linked to the NAO and certainly not co2.
But that would rather wreck a lot of the warmist theories I suppose.
Comment from: BethCooper September 12th, 2013 at 11:06 pm
“Say, what happened ter the GIant Diprotodon in Oz? Thought
bones of GD had been found which appeared ter show marks
of butchering but doubtless their passing will be attributed ter
globul warming.”
I read about that at convictcreations.com. There’s also informed albeit Politically Incorrect speculation that the big fellow was domesticated, and used as a meat source. *genuflects* However there was nothing to prevent the locals from killing or scavenging, and then butchering the wild Diprotodons. The butchering marks don’t qualify as a gotcha. Giant Diprotodons also survived longer in NSW than in other parts of Oz.
“And I’m not sure how a PB would fare going ‘toe-to-toe’ with an adult mammoth.”
How about a starving, drought stricken, ice bound WM against a fit and active PB?
And size doesn’t always matter. Foxes wipe out many larger species here because they just keep on killing and eating their kids.
The AGW true believer obsession over Arctic ice has always been entertaining. It was polar bears, until even the believers could not ignore that the polar bear population has increased- a lot. In reality Arctic ice is highly dynamic, even in the written historical record. And as for the panic that summer solar heating of the an ice free Arctic ocean will cause some apocalyptic climate outcome…..that was historical ignorance meeting under educated gullible public masses by way of rent seekers, con-artists and kooks.
What will be more fun is to watch how the AGW community pivots off of ‘Arctic ice death spiral’ to their next climate apocalypse touchstone without addressing the implications of being wrong. Sort of like how your climate extremists pivoted off of the massive flooding or that tragic bushfire.
As to volume, that only became an issue after the repeated serious predictions of ice free Arctic by 2013 were as palpably wrong as the great Tibetan glacier disappearance prediction. Iow, it is just mealy mouthed whining for the gullible twits to keep their faith ginned up and their money (and tax payer money) flowing.
Just looking out my window the pair of wild geese are grazing on the lawn. They have only one gosling left from the original 6 of a week ago and they are absolutely ground bound until that last gosling flies or dies.
They are very nervous and realise the house is one of the safest places to be.
hunter
‘As to volume, that only became an issue after the repeated serious predictions of ice free Arctic by 2013 were as palpably wrong’
This is what I was trying to tell Luke.
While the area annually freezing and thawing ice sheet kept growing the warmists were happy enough with quoting the extent, but as soon as the area started to grow again they switched to volume.
Pathetic bunch of wastrels and shonks.
grrrr!!!
‘While the area annually freezing and thawing ice sheet kept growing’
‘While the area of annually freezing and thawing ice sheet kept shrinking!‘
edit facility or more care on my part is badly needed
Not going to win this one, John, no matter what happens. If Arctic ice has a big increase, as it did after it did after the late fifties, it’ll be put down to “new climate”, “climate disruption”, “extremist climate”, “Frankenclimate” etc etc.
If Arctic ice continues to dwindle – no (known) reason why it should or shouldn’t – it will be put down to….well, I just said it.
If Arctic ice stays much the same (not bloody likely, of course) the eerie stasis will be attributed to…what I just said!
Since we know a bit about the earth’s crust and atmosphere, bugger all about the oceans and the great bulk of the planet, to win the game you just need more hide than the other guy. The klimatariat runs on sheer hide.
Day 243 2012 Arctic sea ice area 2.49 million km2, data from Cryosphere Today
Day 243 2013 3.78 million km2… difference 1.3 million km2
….or about 500,000 square miles, and closer to 50% [52%] than 60% greater than 2012 equivalent day extent.
So, ‘about a million square miles’ and ‘60% increase’ is a monumental media rounding fail. Any common ground there?
Is this easy to find out? Apparently not for a well-resourced professional researcher known as ‘species Murdoch journalist.’
The ‘now they’re more interested in volume than area’ meme is akin to ‘they changed global warming to climate change’ Demonstrably untrue, but resilient. It’s true that extent and area data was more easily available but as PIOMAS penetrated public awareness it was added to consideration. So ‘now they are interested in volume and area’ seems uncontentious,and the interest started in 2010. With the launch of Cryosat2 in mid 2010, PIOMAS’ volume modelling got more observational support, and volume was in town. Please do not attempt to rewrite history, it’s the internet…
Of course, if one refers to low summer ice minima post Waterloo and post WW1, they’ll ask to see your sat record. The great good luck of being able to draw that line downward after 1979 is their winning ticket. You won’t be taking that away from them. No, not from their cold, dead hands.
“Now, children, once there was a stable climate, when ABBAsaurs roamed the planet and men wore these funny flared jeans and platform shoes, obviously because of all the ice…”
Look I said it in me serf essay on history’s chequered history. Hegel
got on to it because it’s useful. yer can inocculate yr theory by the
dialectical er … argument. Abandon critical thinking and scientific
method of error emimination, contradictions are welcome.
bts
‘Tsk! Errors in spelling. ‘inoculate’ and ‘elimination.’ (
Wild goose chase haku fer sd.
Wild nights. The wild geese
fly. Time’s arrow confusion,
going or coming?
poly
Please do not attempt to rewrite history, it’s the internet…
Now that is what I call rich or even hypocrisy.
The warmist brigade did nothing but rewrite history and ‘adjust’ records to suit.
Please tell us about the ‘Demonstrably untrue’ nature of changing terminology!
Yes Poly please do tell.
Are you claiming that AGW didn’t morph into Climate Change?
Seriously?
And did you actually notice that the language has indeed changed from ice extent/2013 to ice volume/2015?
“So, ‘about a million square miles’ and ’60% increase’ is a monumental media rounding fail. Any common ground there?”
Try this Poly. Looks like better than 60% to me for the 14th Sept both years. 4.2million this year compared with 2.6 million last year:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/old_icecover.uk.php
But like the current change in the up-trend in GAT, the change in the down-trend in Arctic ice cannot be contemplated.
Natural variation just does not happen, EVAH!
And besides, we have an AR5 to get out very soon.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/the-specious-long-term-trend/
Steve Mc is also worried about that AR5:
“Mann et al 2008 did not only use bristlecones and contaminated Tiljander sediments for its NH reconstruction, but for its Southern Hemisphere reconstruction. While IPCC did not place great confidence in Mann’s SH reconstruction, it is not clear that it contains any usable scientific information on SH temperature history.”
I know this is a little OT (alright, a lot!), but does anyone know if there is a decent record of temps (actuals, not anomalies) from 1650 until today? I saw the CET one posted here a while back but wondered if there were others? I’d also be interested in any graphs for Australia from as far back as possible until today? Without adjustments, ie raw.
I ask just because I have never actually seen what is going on for Australia in raw temp terms. I play with Wolfram Alpha and it never shows anywhere in Oz having any noticeable trend one way or the other (a bit up for some, a bit down for others).
For example:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=temperature+canberra+australia+since+1900
Graeme the CET is the oldest temp record in the world. There are other messy records from Holland, Ireland etc but they start in the 1750s I think. But all NH.
OZ records are not used pre 1900 by our BOM and perhaps after 1910 is the new norm. Most USA records only exist from about 1850 I think but may be used more generally from 1880.
But just about everyone agrees that there was a LIA during which many glaciers reached max advance for the holocene.
But the planet has been slowly warming for about 300 years and most claim the LIA finished about 1850. Some say 1900.
Yeah, I was generally aware of those things but I am curious about the actual magnitude of real temps, especially in Oz, for specific locations. This comes from discussions I was having elsewhere. What is the actual temp data for a specific location? The CET gives us an example from way back that includes the LIA so provides some sense of the bigger picture. But of course we don’t have that for Oz, so what is actually happening here? I know that’s really two questions, but still…
So if I looked at the temps for say Longreach or Cowra as they are recorded, what would it show for as long as we have them. I guess that data is on BoM? Does Wolfram just use that?
Looking at the bigger picture, is there any idea what temps were on average BEFORE the LIA? If sceptics argue we are recovering from the LIA, what are we recovering to?
I am sure this has been discussed add infinitum over the years, I just haven’t seen it summarised in handy graphs or in real temps.
While raw temps may have drawbacks, I’d like to see them as unadjusted as possible because even with whatever observational errors are involved, they will still show the broader trend.
So I just wondered if anyone knew of some obvious places to look…
Graeme
Go to the BOM website and and look for their ‘high quality’ sites… they provide daily data for rainfall and also temperature for many localities… and you can download as an excel file… then start charting…
rainfall data tends to go back further in time for more localities. if you want a long temp series for Brisbane, as an example, you need to string three sites together because they keep moving the site…
but there are sites with long series, for example, find Bathurst and also Observatory Hill as follows…
this is what some of it looks like… http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/05/basil-beamish-for-climate-commissioner/