skierinvermont

13 hours ago, Silver Meteor said:

Good morning. Long time lurker here, one who prefers listening over talking but do of course appreciate the talkers without whom there would be no thread to begin with.

Science has always been "in my blood." It started with my grade school years (1950s) in Maryland with a fascination in the shape of continents which suggested they surely must have moved over time. This idea was proved to be true years later when I was in high school. Also in high school we were taught the "Big Bang Theory" and the "Theory of Global Warming" neither of which were controversial at the time (I'd never heard of such a thing as "creationism", and it would be many years before AGW became politicized.)

Over the ensuing decades I continued learning about and keeping up with science at my own pace, first from books then from the internet as it developed. Watching in real time the continuous fine tuning in a variety of subjects as these many years have passed has helped keep my interest alive and healthy. So, what about climate? Oh dear, where does one begin...

To avoid dragging this out I'll just say I remain comfortable with my paradigms, none of which are "catastrophic." The best empirical evidence I see for AGW is clearly that which is occurring in the Arctic. Meanwhile, down here in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. the only change of note over the last 60+ years has been our tremendous population growth with its accompanying water pollution and its greatly expanded road networks and heat islands. Overall, I accept AGW but to suggest this is our greatest problem for the future, is, in my opinion, utter nonsense; this reeks of political expedience for the financial gain of a few without regard to the many serious non-climate problems lying in wait, problems our media is loathe to discuss. Moreover it implies technology will not progress, a ludicrous proposition.

The good, the bad, and the ugly...

The good will be technological improvements with power generation; I see little reason to doubt fusion power plants will be up and running before mid-century. The bad is an historical analysis of currencies that suggests our fiat dollar will not survive to mid-Century (perhaps or even probably not even to 2040.) And the ugly is multicultural demographics which will lead to a Balkanization of the U.S., also before mid-Century (likely to coincide with the economic earthquake of currency collapse.) All of this I'm sure appears fanciful to those who don't study such subjects and believe "tomorrow will always be like yesterday and today", but for them history always provides the rudest of awakenings.

However much climate change we see before the widespread use of fusion power will pale in comparison to the socio-political changes that will have staggering effects in the coming decades. I won't be around to see it but eventually the dust will settle and mankind will march forward, wiser and safer into a bright 22nd Century (where technology will be fantastically more advanced than it is today.) What I will do is all I can do, and that is to continue watching, learning, and enjoying science as I always have. To the rest of you, good luck and keep up the good work!

 

 

I think your overall point has some validity. There are a lot of pressing problems facing humanity today. There could be even more in the future, regardless of climate change. But I would suggest reading some more scientific sources about the effects of climate change. Increases in flooding, drought, and sea level will have huge costs to humanity. It affects the entire planet and the problem is not temporary. 

14 hours ago, Joe Vanni said:

I don't think we are going to get anywhere debating this when we are at the end of the global warming period, so you get the see the warm results of the past 36 years. I'm not debating that we have had great warmth, but I question the validity of saying the warmth is fastest on record. We are going to have to wait a few years when people actually see the cooling begin and that it has lasting power. We've been spoiled with this warmth but that's coming to an end. 

I've been listening to people like you say the cooling is coming for over 10 years. In fact, I had a radio show in college 10 years ago where I actually said we could see some cooling and AGW might be greatly exaggerated. Mostly I was overreacting to learning that some news articles, Al Gore, and even some science was skewed towards AGW and I went off too far in the other direction. I learned from my mistakes. Some never do.

We've already been through one very weak solar cycle for 10 years now. The earth didn't cool down. It didn't even stop warming.. it warmed a lot the last 10 years. This is where you introduce some magical lag period you read about on some internet blog that doesn't make any logical or physical sense. Let me tell you a secret.. these magical "lag" people were the same ones saying cooling was imminent 10-15 years ago. Then they invented the lag, because instead of the warming reversing or stopping, if anything it actually accelerated.

15 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

When, if ever, do you think we will have an ice free summer in the arctic?

With our current very low volume we could get an ice free summer if we got a summer weather pattern similar to or worse than 2007 or 2012. (if you use the commonly used convention that 'ice free' = <1,000,000 km2). 

If we don't see a rebound in volume, ice free could occur any year in the next 10 years with bad enough summer weather.

On the other hand, we might not see an extreme summer weather pattern in the next 10 years. By the 2030s even a modestly bad summer weather pattern would likely put us over the edge. 

To get really statistical about it I'd put the odds like below. I think my odds are pretty consistent with CaWx's estimate above (maybe bumped back 5 years). A lot depends on weather and trends but it will probably be somewhere between 2020-2035.

<1,000,000km2

15% chance before 2020

35% chance before 2025

55% chance before 2030

80% chance before 2040.

If you define it more strictly as <200,000km2 (basically a few icebergs and bays that got filled with ice by the wind) I think the odds drop. Because of currents and winds, there's always a pretty good area of thick ice blown near Ellesmere and Greenland and you'd have to melt pretty much all of that (other than some that gets blown into bays) to get below 200,000km2

5% chance before 2020

20% chance before 2025

35% chance before 2030

60% chance before 2040

These odds factor in the reality that the earth will very likely warm significantly over the next 25 years (very likely 0.45C+/-0.2C). The arctic will likely warm 1C+/-1C. 

It looks to me like most of the ice is thicker than last year. It's just the ice north of Greenland and Ellesmere that is much thinner but that ice never melts out anyways. The only important area that looks thinner is the Laptev which looks a little thinner. That could get things going early there.

But the Chuchki, Beaufort, Barents, Kara and East Siberian all look thicker overall. Especially the northern Beaufort and northern Chuchki which look much thicker. And those two areas are critical in August/September.

On 3/7/2017 at 5:46 AM, Sophisticated Skeptic said:

the extent analog from 2006 looks similar to what's currently going on. 

the doom mongerers need to stay on pause for now.  

Yeah except the ice is barely half as thick. Be quiet until you learn something. Some of us have been following this thread for a decade. We've seen arrogant newbies like you come and go. A few stay and learn something. But nobody that's been around the block would say something as foolish as what you've just said.

The "back to 1870" project that the author of that blog post references hoping they will show less ice 1920-1940 than the early 2000s was completed recently. It did not live up to the author's expectations. It did increase the variability somewhat, but the lowest years of the 1930s is similar to the 1980s.

The study produced was titled " A database for depicting Arctic sea icevariations back to 1850. " and was published earlier this year in the journal Geogrpahical Review.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Walsh-et-al.-2016-Fig8.png

http://cires.colorado.edu/news/reconstructing-arctic-history

1 hour ago, tacoman25 said:

 

The honest answer is that it's an apples to oranges comparison, and no one knows for sure how extent from the first half of the 20th century compares to the satellite era. The graph above is one educated guess, but far from the only estimate. This post goes into great detail on the difficulties of comparing sea ice extent measurements back then to now: https://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/ You may not agree with the conclusion, but the reasoning is thorough and well laid out.

What we do know for sure is that the Arctic has gone through cyclical warming and cooling periods that are much more variable than lower latitudes. In the 1980s, the Arctic was in one of its cooler phases, and given the amount of AGW to that point and total variation that the Arctic climate sees naturally, it's not at all unreasonable to assume that some of the warm phases of the Arctic earlier in the 20th century were probably warmer than the final cool phase of the 20th century. Ice extent typically follows temperature, to a certain degree.

 

 

I read through most of that article and the comments and am fairly unimpressed. It's a stew of anecdotes (no saying how cherrypicked they might be) without any objective data compilation and analysis.

21 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

This is somewhat true, but it really depends on what part of the 20th century you're talking about. There's evidence that the 1980s probably had close to or higher extent than the 1940s-1950s, and perhaps the 1920s as well.

 

I would be greatly interested in such evidence. I hope you are not referring to anecdotal reports of submarines surfacing at the north poll etc.

Studies that actually compiled airplane recon and ship data come to a very different conclusion. The highest years of the early 80s might have been similar to the lowest years of the 40s:

Also I don't want to hear the same old dismissal of these studies because they look too "flat". As you go back farther on the graph the data is smoothed because there is less data and more uncertainty. To reduce uncertainty they combine data from multiple years. Thus it represents the multi-year average well, but doesn't capture all the annual variability. The data is smoothed. That doesn't make it "wrong" or "suspicious" as you and others have suggested.

1 minute ago, zenmsav6810 said:

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess we're all doomed.

Well I wouldn't say that. But as the climate warms we're going to see more and more extreme anomalies like this.

We're so far below even the modern average for the date. And what so often gets forgot in discussions of sea ice is that 1980-2000 is not "average" or normal for sea ice. There's strong evidence that there was lots more sea ice earlier in the century. The highest years of the early 1980s might be a little closer to an early 20th century normal.

1 hour ago, zenmsav6810 said:

Important to remember methodology here. It's done by satellite imaging so, measurements are intermittent (depending on orbit) not to mention accurate record history might be difficult for before 1990ish. As with all optical remote sensing, these measurements are prone to occlusion error (in this case  by clouds/sea water.) Also, I don't know what technically constitutes a "loss," true melting (calving events [breaks "up])  or just the loss of continuity of the Antarctic ice mass (meaning a large but complete ice shelf breaks "off") . Neabulous but important issues that probably get glazed over in non-scientific journal reporting and clickbait). 

Given this decline has been persistent and today's value is 160k lower than the value 3 days ago it's not due to cloud cover or measurement error. If we saw a 100k blip down and then it went right back up the next day then a big portion of the dip could have been measurement error. But when the measurement is consistent across 3 days, and in fact just keeps getting lower, it's not measurement error. 

A calving event or ice shelf breaking off would have no effect on sea ice area. If anything land ice or ice shelves calving would increase sea ice area because previously land bound ice would now be afloat and thus newly within the sea ice boundary area.

Nor does an area of sea ice separating from (IE getting blown away from) the rest of the sea ice pack, decrease sea ice area. The resolution of the satellites measurements is such that this separated ice would still be included in the total. Obviously small icebergs would go unnoticed. But 100,000 sq km is several orders of magnitude bigger than what might go unnoticed.

Sea ice decreases this time of year are probably largely due to wind compaction. We could also be seeing newly formed ice from the last week or two melting. When it first freezes it would be very thin and then if the weather changes it might melt again.

Normally any compaction would be compensated for by the rapid freezing going on elsewhere. The ice area and volume should be exploding this time of year. So what we're really likely seeing is a general arctic-wide lack of rapid freezing combined with either compaction and/or melting of newly formed ice. 

55 minutes ago, tacoman25 said:

Is joking illegal here?

 

troll

43 minutes ago, tacoman25 said:

Setting up for record gains in December!

troll

42 minutes ago, Mallow said:

That's not entirely true. The projection shown in that temperature plot looks like a polar stereographic projection, which is much better than, say, a mercator or equirectangular projection when looking at the accuracy of polar regions.

You're right it doesn't exaggerate it as much as I thought. But I think it does still exaggerate it somewhat. The area of Russia is 6.6 million square miles. The area of the arctic ocean including the Kara, Barents, Hudson and the seas on either side of Greenland is 5.4 million. Probably around 4 million if looking just at the high arctic ocean.

It's also worth mentioning that square depictions of the earth from the north pole (sorry don't know the cartography term) greatly exaggerate the size of arctic ocean relative to the lower latitudes. Those negative anomalies over Asia encompass an area several times the arctic ocean.

On 11/5/2016 at 5:05 PM, tacoman25 said:

I never said there was. Read it again. I said record fastest freeze, or a high point in the fall, I never said record high extent.

 

On 11/6/2016 at 11:52 PM, tacoman25 said:

I never claimed the rate was signficant, or high points in the fall, or dismissed volume decline.

 

It seems like you are confused about what you are trying to say. You say one thing and then 2 posts later say you didn't say it.

22 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

Sorry man, you were just reading too much into what I said. Made a couple of false assumptions.

And you can say nobody claimed that, but I absolutely know they did. Defend yourself sure, but it's silly to say no one here said that. And I'm not a liar.

 

 

OK let's try it again. What exactly are you trying to say?

So far all I've heard is talk of previous "fall peaks" (IE back to historical averages) and "record fast re-freezes" (an inherent result of the faster decline in summer) and I have no idea what they have to do with the current 3+ standard deviation record and how people dismissed this (allegedly) positive data but are hypocritically not dismissing this negative record.

And those are quotes.

6 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

Whole bunch of straw men here. I never claimed the rate was signficant, or high points in the fall, or dismissed volume decline.

I simply pointed out that some people on here have claimed in the past that the summer minimum, the max amount of open water, is what matters most. Inconsistent with current claims that record low extent in early November is just as significant as a record low min.

 

Nobody has ever claimed that. I do remember people including myself saying that the trend in summer is more significant than the trend in winter because global warming is expected to cause greater declines in summer sea ice. But that's different.

And you did reference "record fastest refreeze" or "high point in the fall" in relation to their significance vs a record low summer min. One is irrelevant and the other is a an apples to orange comparison.

19 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

I never said there was. Read it again. I said record fastest freeze, or a high point in the fall, I never said record high extent.

You're actually the one playing "gotcha" here, but on a misunderstanding.

My point was that several times on here we were told that the summer min is the most important thing, not what happens in fall, winter, etc. But now we have people, probably some of the same ones, claiming this is just as significant as a record low min.

First of all, the rate is really not relevant at all. Since the decline is expected/predicted (by climate models) and observed to be fastest in summer, the rate of ice growth in fall will continue to grow.

That's why I'm sure when you've mentioned it, I and others have dismissed you.

Second, we've never had a real "high point in the fall" anytime recently. Some years have been higher than others which I suppose has some very slight immeasurable benefit in slowing the decline. But none have been 3SD above the mean, as we are currently 3+ SD below the mean. You're comparing apples to oranges. You're comparing a "high point" (which is really just a temporary return to average) to a 3+ standard deviation drop below the mean.

Plus the fact that sea ice extent is a much less comprehensive metric than volume. And we've never had a meaningful volume recovery. Extent has to be taken in the context of near perpetually decreasing volume.

I don't remember anybody saying "what happens in winter is not as important as summer." If we actually saw some serious volume growth in winter, that would be significant. We've had some recent years with better volume in winter than others. And that has been discussed extensively.

Anyways, I'm done. I don't really have an interest in debating the "significance" of individual extent days. The trend is clear.

14 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

I specifically remember members on here claiming, for one reason or another, that the summer min is WAY more meaningful than anything in the fall/winter.

I'm afraid you don't speak for everyone, so no, you cannot claim there is no inconsistency.

As I said before, the main problem is part of your previous post was simply false. There has not been record high sea ice extent in the fall anytime recently. There have been many record lows, including this fall.

If there had been, that would be significant, but it still wouldn't mean much of anything in the big picture. Likewise, I don't think anybody here is saying a record low min on 11/4/2016 means much of anything in the big picture, but the trend certainly does.

It seems, as usual, you are more interested in semantics and playing "gotcha" than the actual issue.

21 hours ago, tacoman25 said:

A little bit of inconsistency going on in this thread. In recent years when we set a record for fastest fall freeze-up, or reached a high point for that part of the fall, we were told it was meaningless, the min is what really matters.

Now we have a people saying record low ice 2 months past the min is just as meaningful as a record min. 

I don't believe we have ever reached a record high sea ice extent in fall in the last 10 years. That is false. What's impressive is not the rate of refreeze but the fact that we are now well below the previous record for the date. The slow rate of re-freeze would not be all that impressive were we starting at a more normal minimum. But we started at a near-record low minimum and followed it with slow re-freeze to produce a record low extent for this date that is far below the previous record. In other words, highly anomalous.

So no, there is no inconsistency. Your post kind of comes off like you are looking for one where there isn't anything.

On 10/17/2016 at 3:55 PM, Sugarloaf1989 said:

Does this have any bearing on how fast next summer's melt may happen with such a late start the re-freeze. I guess that ice thickness overall would be less with a shorter winter season?

It probably doesn't help to have such warm temps the last month or two, but there's lots of other more important factors at play.

On 9/13/2016 at 1:49 PM, frontranger8 said:

 

I'm such an idiot.

I didn't disagree.. just skeptical given that we *do* hear it every year (a broken clock is right twice a day) and it would have been a near record early min.

 

Given the upcoming pattern, a late minimum (past 9/12) looks very unlikely. Good chance the min is before 9/10.

We hear this every year..

Just now, Jonger said:

how?

Just put the CO2 back in the atmosphere... we're pretty good at that already without even trying.

44 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

We're taking geoengineering projects. 

I know. The most common geoengineering involves blocking the sun or sequestering CO2... both of which would have minimal impact unless done on a massive scale and sequestration is pretty reversible. 

I think the bigger issue with geoengineering is the side effects.