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Arctic Sea Ice Rallies a Bit
radioweather writes "Like the recent stock market rebound, Arctic sea ice is making a big rally over the record low set last year. According to the Alaskan
IARC-JAXA website, satellite data which shows sea
ice extent as of 10/14/08 was 7,064,219 square kilometers, when compared
to a year ago 10/14/08 it was 5,487,656 square kilometers. The one-day gain between 10/13/08 and 10/14/08 of 3.8% is also
quite impressive. On May 5th, The National Snow and Ice Data Center suggested
the possibility of an ice-free north pole
in 2008, but so far, this year has been a banner year for sea ice recovery."
Uhh....what? http://moneycentral.msn.com/detail/stock_quote?Symbol=$INDU
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
News reports have indicated that the earth's weather climate has been constantly shifting over millions of years.
Seriously, I wish people would stop getting so shocked about this. I remember reading in school about things like Ice ages and constaly changing climates, and I'm not that old. I beleive man's impact on the enviroment, while measurable, is severly overblown.
According to the study's website, the extent of the ice coverage is an estimate "calculated by certain algorithm."
It would be premature to suggest this as a panacea without knowing the statistics behind this estimate. Without this, we don't know if 3.8% is even statistically significant? They don't even offer a margin of error.
Even the "Data Download" offers only the bottom line estimate at a given point in time. What is the formula that feeds into that?
2008
is the coldest year of the 21st century and output from the sun is declining.
Maybe Al Gore and his carbon cult followers were...wrong.
The Mauder Sunspot Minimum in the 17th century has been arguably tied to the Little Ice Age, a cool period. The new 11-year sunspot cycle #24 has been very slow to start as predicted in late 2007. There have been as few as five sunspots in all of 2008. During the active part of the cycle there are up to 150 at a time. The sun is about 0.1% weaker during the cycle minimum. Perhaps this correlates with cooler weather. There are better tools now for tying solar weather with earth climate and maybe someone will find a causal tie.
No, and they're being *deliberately* misleading. Arctic sea ice this year hit the second lowest level in recorded history. Last year was the lowest.
Arctic sea ice extent during the 2008 melt season dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979, reaching the lowest point in its annual cycle of melt and growth on September 14, 2008. Average sea ice extent over the month of September, a standard measure in the scientific study of Arctic sea ice, was 4.67 million square kilometers (1.80 million square miles) (Figure 1). The record monthly low, set in 2007, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles); the now-third-lowest monthly value, set in 2005, was 5.57 million square kilometers (2.15 million square miles)./I.
To report values now, from *October*, during the refreeze is just bloody ridiculous. Yes, different years melt and refreeze at different times; there's a lot of spring and fall fluctuation. What matters are the maximum and minimum extents.
FYI, arctic sea ice normally low in years after El Nino winters and high in years after La Nina winters. Winter of 2006-2007 was in El Nino conditions, leading to the record 2007 melt. But winter of 2007-2008 was in a strong La Nina. The fact that we got the second lowest ice extends on record despite this is incredibly disturbing.
If I ever become wealthy and mad, I'll leave Companion Cubes on desert islands for shipwreck survivors.
I'm sure President Palin will fight back the ice fantastically efficiently, for the good of the economy. You betcha!
http://rocknerd.co.uk
It's important to keep in mind that this isn't a measure of how much ice there is in the arctic.
The figures they are reporting are sea ice coverage estimates, and typically work as follows: the arctic is broken up into a grid, and for each area of the grid which does not fall on land they ask the question "is >15% of the surface covered with ice?"
If the answer is yes, it's counted as "ice;" if not, not.
There are several ways this can give results you wouldn't expect:
--MarkusQ
No, this report only discusses extent. There are other people who report ice volume, which is more difficult to estimate. I don't know what the current volume estimate is.
Michel Jarraud, who is a big fan of global warming, of the World Meteorological Organization reluctantly admitted that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, according to a BBC article.
That's a pretty misleading representation of what he said.
Global snowfall is at record levels
I haven't looked at snowfall records, but global precipitation is expected to increase in a warming world.
and there are fewer, not more, hurricanes.
AFAIK, there are more hurricanes. Some research suggests that there will be yet more in the future, some research suggests there will be fewer; some suggests they will get stronger even if fewer. Hurricanes are a legitimate area of deep uncertainty in climate science; it's not clear how their behavior should change.