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Arctic Ice Extent Tops 2012's, But Is 6th Lowest In History
We mentioned recently the rebound in Arctic ice levels compared to those found at the end of last summer; now that the 2013 minimum has been reached, Forbes' Alex Knapp points out that 2013's figures still show the 6th lowest ice extent in recorded history. "This pattern is expected to continue as average global temperatures continue to rise, leading to further Arctic Ice melts. The volume of sea ice – that is, how thick the Arctic ice is, has also been steadily declining over the same period. And although the charts above only go back to the 80s, the loss of sea ice began several decades prior to that. In 2011, a paper published in Nature estimating Arctic ice extent for the past 1450 years shows a sharp decline in Arctic ice beginning in the mid-20th century."
That's weird. I wonder what's causing it to do that.
If you want to speculate in real estate, go north young man.
Gently reply
... that the trend of annual extent minima was supposed to be monotonic?
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Why not fit an ARIMA model to the daily data along with some sin functions (or whatever oscillating function would be good) instead of taking averages
Reliable monitoring with authoritative of sea ice extents began only with the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR) on the satellite Seasat launched June 28, 1978.
Very spotty records before that time are not considered reliable.
Not just "science", it's a religion too!
We'll bend the data any way we can, to show it's all the fault of man.
that was supposed to be this year.
Looks like we may be safe from the impending ice age, at least for a while.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Wonder no more: it is a statistical effect called Regression toward the mean. Specifically: ... following an extreme random event, the next random event is likely to be less extreme.
Not that annual Arctic ice levels are entirely random. They are somewhat linked, hence this year's being among the lowest in observed history.
The idea that this year, following an extreme year, can be formally called regression toward the mean seems OK but it seem clearer to say something like a return to closer to the trend line. Anybody got a better description than that?
One or two more volcanic eruptions a year and we would be headed back to an ice age. Unfortunately the cooling hoax of the 70's was a bit more convincing.
And sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is growing:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
Yay! I'm declaring Global Warming over!
Much higher levels of sea ice in the Antarctic in recent years, who's the latest trying to stir their money || ego pot with imbalanced scientific scope in results?
Are you just playing dumb, or are you actually unaware of the fact that diminishing Arctic sea ice cover will significantly alter climates across the world* through ice-albedo feedback?
*Note: This includes the place where your food is grown.
Temps didn't bottom out until 1976. We came within a gnat's whisker of runaway snowball conditions.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"The volume of sea ice – that is, how thick the Arctic ice is..."
Er, no, "how thick the ice is" is called "thickness". Volume is thickness times area (or more precisely, thickness integrated over area).
That said, two data points (last year's area and this year's area) do not a trend make. I can't believe how many people don't get that (or enjoy telling lies so much that they don't care that it contradicts reason).
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
The cooling hoax as you refer it to was just a handful of scientists spouting it and no one believed them even then.
The oil industry has a long reach. Why they are so hell bent in terraforming the planet to be unsuitable for human life one can only guess.
Trolling solely to cause arguments or a sounding board to see if the public is willing to bite again after ClimateGate?
The oil industry has a long reach. Why they are so hell bent in terraforming the planet to be unsuitable for human life one can only guess.
The bigger players are not in the "oil industry" but the "energy industry". They'll sell you solar power, just no one wants to pay for it yet. We all throw money at them for oil, what are they supposed to do, have super-human morals? Might as well turn control of Exxon And BP over to the Vatican or something.
No, it was much colder at the peak of the last glaciation. I doubt we were all that close then, but who knows?
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
It is if you live in Colorado or other places in the Northern Hemisphere being seriously affected by the slowing of the jet stream. Then you have lots of reasons to care, especially if you like to eat.
Slowing of the jet stream leading to more slowly moving weather fronts is a direct result of the fact that the Arctic is getting warmer and as a consequence, the temperature and pressure differential means that their is less of a "hill" that gives the Jet Stream its acceleration. If you are a farmer that means that the weather patterns you have taken for granted as "in place" for the past few thousand years are rapidly changing, with a significant increase in the probability of much more extreme weather (severe flooding and severe drought). Severe, extreme weather means lower crop yields, which are already being witnessed across many different kinds of crops.
In 2040, the last chunk of Arctic ice will be swiped up, stowed in a regular fridge, and auctioned off on Ebay.
Table-ized A.I.
Nothing resembling "the arctic" is ever mentioned in the Bible.
Cue the cliimate-science-ignorant Slashdotters.
Look, let's get one thing straight. There's a common misconception floating around Slashdot that is a major cause of unwarranted self-importance, so let's get it straight now: computing science is NOT science.
Computing science is NOT science. Computer scientists, please don't pretend you know the first thing about "science" just because it appears in your job title. Computing "science" does not involve hypothesis testing or discovering empirical facts about our world. Most computing "scientists" are ignorant of the process of science and the overwhelming majority of scientific findings in every single field.
Mathematicians and engineers are not nearly as conceited about their lack of scientific knowledge as are computing scientists. That's likely because they've not mislabelled themselves as scientists.
TL;DR. Computing scientists are not scientists. Please don't pretend to be an expert in the scientific process or about empirical facts in realms of science you know nothing about.
http://www.climatedepot.com/
2080 plus or minus 20 years, according to most climatologists.
2040 plus or minus 10 years, according to climatologists specialising in the Arctic.
2028 plus or minus 7-ish years (for under 1 million square kilometers of ice area at minimum), according to the trend.
Because, no matter what the news is regarding climate science IT'S ALL BAD!
WE IS ALL GONNA DIE!!!
So yeah, let's spend more money on cockamamie plans that have no basis in science or engineering.
Let's keep doling out cash for the whole "carbon credit" scheme!
Let's kill off half the population via starvation and societal collapse! Just so we can say we tried to help the planet!
And then talk about how we destroyed it anyhow!
At this point, it's a fucking religion. Relying completely on belief of adherents with a bunch of self-reinforcement and handwavium to cover up the panic that ensues when simple, straightforward questions can't be answered.
There is some discussion on this here.
In particular, these two images from the same article are interesting: Temperature anomaly for the medieval warm period and temperature anomaly for the period 1999-2008. Both are anomalies relative to the same 1961-1990 average, so they should be directly comparable, though of course the medieval warm period is a reconstruction with significant uncertainties.
So to answer your question. yes, you could say that "Canada was still frozen while Greenland was basking in warmth". Though temperatures slightly elevated in some parts of Canada, most of it was cold. And none of them were anywhere near as hot as they are now.
Yeah, and i already had a beach vacation reserved. I was gonna fish me one of those swimming polar bears too. Waste of money i tell you.
... showing the summer months...
Of course the ice cover dropped, it was SUMMER.
There is no such thing as 'man made global warming'.
www.climatedepot.com
What I don't understand is... Why should I give a shit. So the temperature rises by 5C. Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, etc all become more habitable, more plants grow, greater biodiversity occurs (as has happened every time the global temperature has been high). What's the problem?
The only one I can think of is that we've been dumb and built a lot on low-lying areas, which are liable to become flooded. Simply fix that, and there's no problem at all left.
Except that if you go and actually look at the data, you discover that the increased temperature and CO2 periods are correlated (with good reason too) with increased biodiversity, and massively increased plant life. We're actually at the moment, right on the lower limit of what plants are happy to deal with in terms of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
What, in the meantime is your confidence in the ice being on the road to recovery?
Unacceptably low, I take it?
The value for the standard deviation of TWO POINTS is infinity. That is because you divide the values or RMS error by the number of points minus 2. In the case of two points, that comes to divide by zero, which is infinity.
You cannot make a point of uncertainty with two points alone.
Meanwhile, the value against the long-term trend fit is within 1 standard deviation, therefore the trend continuing is not excluded.
Your intended null hypothesis is "The trend has stopped". That is NOT proven.
2016+/-3.
That means maybe 2013, maybe 2019. We haven't passed 2019.
And, again, the claim wasn't that the ice would be gone, it would be a summer extent. We'd get ice back.
Moreover, that's one guy.
Now what about other predictions that AGW would be falsified by 2012 being about the 1956 average? Your statement merely shows one man was wrong. Big deal. Doesn't disprove the general science which has there being no sea ice by maybe 2040. But deniers you DO listen to are wrong in damn near (95%+) all cases. Yet you don't decide that the case against AGW is wrong, do you.
Why?
Because you're a moron.
B...b...b...but weather isn't the same thing as climate!
Except when it supports your argument, I guess.
They only survived because they brought in lots of imported goods and denuded the local area of anything that could burn.
Greenland wasn't warmer, denierbot.
Look at any earlier period and you'll see similar things. Hell, the temperature record is one long catalogue of increases over the previous years' temps being touted by deniers like yourself as "AGW warming is over!!!". Every time, within a couple of years, you've been proven wrong.
But that doesn't stop you doing it again next time.
The 2012 value is within 1 standard deviation of the long term trend.
If you think that this means there's been a deviation from the mean, you have NO FUCKING CLUE about statistics.
The mandade was NOT to prove AGW but to determine what climate change would happen.
The fact of AGW was proven in the 1960's.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
"a paper published in Nature ESTIMATING Arctic ice extent for the past 1450 years shows a sharp decline in Arctic ice beginning in the mid-20th century."
Estimating translates to "using models to GUESS the arctic ice sea extent in the past AND THEN proffering that as PROOF that 2013 was the 6th lowest"
Hide the decline... Hide the decline...
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
Lots of people want to pay for it. Indeed, the call for self-installed (and therefore theoretically off-grid for you suvivalists) renewable generaltion of power is so high that commercial companies in Germany have threatened to leave for Turkey because business for power companies' products is so poor.
which is why the fossil fuel industry is fighting tooth-and-nail (and anus, nostril, gastric juice and bile) renewables with ANY OLD SHIT excuse as to why nobody should be using it and governments should ban it (by removing the subsidy they got when they started out).
How can you measure something that wasn't there? 2013 - 1450 = 563 AD. I wonder what satellites were in orbit back then?
And even if we had 1450 years of accurate data, how old is the earth again? How old are homo sapiens according to the most recent scientific views (about 100K).
I call B.S.
OMG, Ice is 6th lowest since we decided to give a rat's ass about it. But hey, it was lower 5 more times than now but the green alarmists won't consider that an upward trend.
Recorded history is only 0.00000000625% total of actual history, give or take a few zillionths of a percentage.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Have a look at the NASA time-lapse imagery of the Aral Sea. There was a period a few years back where is appeared to have a slight improvement. Then google news paper stories around the same time, you can see some hopeful (but ultimately hopeless) stories about a recovery. No doubt the arctic will be just te same. Very sad, but a good example of human induced major environmental catastrophe.
Yeah, right.
So a long time before the IPCC. And they'd only just worked out (Callendar) that the saturated gas argument was not valid. And the computers they had at the time were just about able to say "Sensitivity is between 1.5 and something above 6.5 C per doubling CO2").
Oh, and New Scientist isn't a published journal.
Because the deserts will spread, current areas which provide massive amounts of food will stop being able to do so (unless you want to move all the farmers thousands of miles across the world), the seas will heat and become more acidic, which will kill off or severely affect massive amounts of flora and fauna which live in and off the sea, including the massive amounts of plant life which converts CO2 into oxygen, which in turn will make the world warmer. Then the vast areas of permafrost across the world will start to thaw, which will release their sequestered greenhouse gasses, which will make the world even warmer. Then the Antarctic will lose more of its cover, reducing the albedo of the planet, which will increase the warming effect even more. So yeah, "5 degrees" doesn't sound so much, but it won't stop there. That 5 degrees extra will cause lots of other processes to be massively altered which will tend to create more warming, and make the world a far less pleasant place to live. You think international politics is complicated now? Just wait for half the world to be destabilised by food supply difficulties and massive loss of local, environment-specific industry. Your view is massively short-sighted, almost as if you don't even care what's going to happen. You are either selfish or an idiot - pick one :)
This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."
Too fucking easy.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
As a skeptic, my starting point facts are as follows:
1) Burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment due to polution like strip mines, spills, smog, and acid rain.
2) Land temps are up a bit over the same time period over which most of the fossil fuel has happened.
3) Mandkind is not doing anything else of the same magnitude except possibly deforestation, dams, and population shifts.
4) We have atmospheric weather models which are often right 3 days out, sometimes right 10 days out, and useful in special situations further out (hurricanes).
5) There is a general feeling, backed by anecdotal statistics, that the weather has been 'strange' over the last few years.
6) The use of energy (for now fossil fuels) has an essential, positive effect on society.
The science needed to understand the problem is a long term weather model. (Think ice age timelines yielding a climate model)
To, the state of these is limited by two things.
1) Long term measurement data is unavailable, and only a few proxies (ice cores) for parts of this this have been found.
2) To predict longer terms, more of the planet's weather has to be modeled. This is mostly a water planet, but to date, the study, measurement, and modeling of sea weather is very limited.
This is highlighted by the inaccuraties of recent predictions, like the sign of the temperature change (ice age or warming) or the magnitude of the expected warming.
The enviromental movement has been a good force, but to much of a good thing here would result in economic disruption backed only by good intentions.
We desperatly need a better scientific understanding here, but this is a daunting task.
The task also appears partially hindered by the better safe than sorry attitude (among the scientists?) that we should skip the science and go straight to the cure.
I just hope that society and planet survives the cure.
It would be tragic if folks pushing their agenda to save the planet end up killing it.
Never underestimate the potential of folks 'here to help' to do otherwise. (Maybe the FEMA principle?)
Too bad that energy isn't directed into actually studying the climate.
Weather is a short-term, cyclic effect *of* climate (and a number of other more localized and/or more variable factors). When the climate changes, so does the weather. If the the major air currents over the Midwest US, for example, were to change, then something like the Dust Bowl could become a long-term fixture of the 'bread basket of America'. The Sahara used to be a lush and fertile plain.
"Recorded History" on arctic ice extent is pretty damn short. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) used to list something they called the '1979-2001' average and then showed that, based on that, the current ice extent was pathetically low. Lately, they have switched to showing the '1981-2010' average because the early years of satellite measurements have been found to be wildly inaccurate. Better quality data has only been available since 2002 and, based on that, 2013 is the 6th highest ice extent minimum on record.
It's expensive to rebuild all of the world's largest harbours, plus neigbouring infrastructure, in a different, few meters higher, place.
It's expensive to move all the farms where wheat can be grown productively now, a few hundred kilometers more north. And rice and sago etc. have MUCH less protein content than wheat.
It's expensive when more workers get afflicted with formerly tropical diseases such as Dengue, West Nile Virus and Malaria, because less insect vectors are killed off by the milder cold seasons.
You can read the IPCC report from WG II (impacts, adaptation an d vulnerability) for yourself; the old AR4 one from 2007 because WG I reports this week, but WG II not until march 2014.
They released a report in 2009 and 2011:
http://nipccreport.com
* Absurd questions demand surreal answers, and the surreal answer to every question is "a fish".
So it has come to this.
The ice shelf hasn't just increased, it's 6 times better than last year! Problem solved!
"The Sahara used to be a lush and fertile plain." When was this and why would it be bad for it to be that way again?
Have you thought about getting a brain transplant, you imbecile? Oh, never mind, that is beyond your mental capabilities.
This would be funnier if it weren't completely retarded. Let me draw you a map.
I've explained enough times to want to make this short, but most of the ground up here is some variant on permanently frozen. At some point, all of that is likely to melt, and subside. We Alaskans know a lot about what that looks like, because if you build in the wrong way in the wrong place, you'll be filling out your cross-stitch with "Home Sweet Bog". Houses built on permafrost are built on stilts.
Also, while the Arctic is warming at a significantly greater pace than the rest of the world (1.6 degrees C up from last century, compared with .8 degrees C globally), the winters are still going to be cold as fuck (<-40) for a long time to come.
Plus, there's <1% of the land up in Alaska that's actually owned privately. The rest is owned either by the Feds, the State, or the Natives.
This is really just the tip of the iceberg. Your suggestion, and its underlying premise, are so wrong-headed that it's turning my stomach. Perhaps you can go be a real estate agent in Shishmaref, or one of the other villages that we're having to relocate due to climate change. Hopefully at that point you might understand exactly what it is that is offensive about your comment.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
It's now consensus. Sorry earth worshipers and bovine flatulence taxers...
specifically, regression to the mean. And expected and predicted event. It's a single event among many they clearly show the earth is warming form increased infra-red trapping from CO2.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
More habitable? What are you smoking?
Maybe in 10,000 years when all that melted permafrost (do you even know what that is?) stops being a bog, that land will be usable. Maybe you can ignore the outgassing until then. You can't have agriculture without soil, and that either already exists and is being farmed (Matanuska Valley) or it does not exist and won't for millennia.
It cannot be said enough: Nothing good will happen to the Arctic because of AGW. It is the purest horseshit to suggest otherwise.
Oh, going straight for the "they're making us into communists!" scare? How about this: "finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" is a long way from "all economic activity is controlled by the government".
(Or maybe the US government already made us into communists with their "reducing cloroflorocarbons + ozone" scare. Remember that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion )
" 1) Long term measurement data is unavailable, and only a few proxies (ice cores) for parts of this this have been found."
also trees, which give us very accurate data, btw.
"To predict longer terms, more of the planet's weather has to be modeled. "
More model is nice, but there is more to it. You aren't even looking at the primary data we know:
CO2 is invisible to visible light, and opaque to infrared light.
So when visible light strikes a surface, it creates infra-red. Since more CO2 equals more material to trap infra-red light, the prediction is teps go up.
All this 'discussions' is either based in ignorance, or cherry picking small piece of data while disregarding the bigger picture.
It's not like we don't know why increased CO2 cause the temp to rise.
So take you opinion and put it where it belongs: 1970. Find out what facts we actually know before droning on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just last night on a radio show called Q&A the first question put to Dr David Suzuki was about climate, was from somebody that was insisting that the climate is not changing and that the trend was flat for the last decade.
The people I'm writing about are out there and making a lot of noise.
As a Republican, I saw "Arctic Ice Extent Tops 2012's" and then stopped reading because that's all I need to know to conclude that all climate science is a hoax and we are headed toward a snowball planet. FUCK YOU SCIENCE!
If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail - hence the accusation of "new religion".
And you just conveniently ignore that he qualified it by starting out " At this rate, ... ".
You're insane. There have been no weather patterns "in place for the past few thousand years" anywhere on the planet, at least not anywhere where agriculture is taking place. Frankly, people like you are at about the same level of scientific literacy as young earth creationists.