2011 Arctic Sea Ice Thread

[Trakar]

For those interested:

Arctic Report Card: Update for 2011 (from NOAA's site), particularly
Sea Ice and Ocean Summary.

By the way, Arctic sea ice volume for Nov 30^th was this year almost equal to last year's, according to PIOMAS' data so this year there's more ice formed -not surprisingly, as this has been a pretty much La Niña year-.

More, thin surface ice, does not concern me much. Thicker, increases in multiyear ice, might be interesting, but seems unlikely.

 

[aleCcowaN]

More, thin surface ice, does not concern me much. Thicker, increases in multiyear ice, might be interesting, but seems unlikely.

Regrettably, there's no much 3-year or older ice left. We have come to a volatile age regarding this subject. What I was pointing is the actual trend would project an ice volume minimum about 1,000 km³ higher for 2012, but it's still premature. That would be not recovery but variability. Don't forget that 2008 and 2009 minimums were 500 km³ higher than 2007, yet we are here running towards the demise of the icecap in summertime, though I wouldn't expect 2012 to be a milestone in this matter.

 

[Trakar]

Regrettably, there's no much 3-year or older ice left. We have come to a volatile age regarding this subject. What I was pointing is the actual trend would project an ice volume minimum about 1,000 km³ higher for 2012, but it's still premature. That would be not recovery but variability. Don't forget that 2008 and 2009 minimums were 500 km³ higher than 2007, yet we are here running towards the demise of the icecap in summertime, though I wouldn't expect 2012 to be a milestone in this matter.

As mentioned earlier, this is a mild la nina winter, but looks to be headed for an el nino spring and summer, so still a bit early for making annual ice minimum projections.

 

[aleCcowaN]

As mentioned earlier, this is a mild la nina winter, but looks to be headed for an el nino spring and summer, so still a bit early for making annual ice minimum projections.

Time to take a look at recent predictions as basically only three models -among dozens- predicts El Niño conditions before next southern spring and summer. In fact NINO3.4 Index has been Niño-like just 20-25% of time during the last four years and Niña-like about 30-35% of the time, which was normal a generation ago and doesn't contradict this one to be a phase of heat accumulation. In fact, if it weren't for near-to-neutral values of the weekly SST during last June, July and August we'd be living a span of 15-18 months of La Niña conditions.

Based on that slow rise of El Niño index and the amount of sea ice last November 30th I don't expect a spectacular Arctic sea ice melting next warm season making its way into the headlines. Based on that, a diehard denier would expect a lot of ice to be left and claim proved the myth of warming once again. Yet evident structural climate changes persist, as this daily product of COI is showing (not that he or she notices).

 

[BenBurch]

Yeah, we're going to have a year more like 2010 than 2011.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Yes, like 2010 or 2008.

As today we are around the date of a perfect Arctic night and a perfect Antarctic day, I want to share these images about outgoing longwave radiation for December 20th:

It's amazing how similar look both polar areas, showing that, a) such areas get most of their heat from lower latitudes -do you remember when we had to reply some dudes telling the myth that ice melted because of the sooth?-, and b) just the anomalies for the Arctic above the 1981-2010 average are about a 6-10% of the total solar energy a point in the equator gets. Amazing! The planet increasingly depending on polar regions to help "venting" the heat.

If only innumerate fellows were capable to understand the implications of this, they'd quickly get what's going on. That's why a sea ice thread is important.

 

[Trakar]

Time to take a look at recent predictions as basically only three models -among dozens- predicts El Niño conditions before next southern spring and summer. In fact NINO3.4 Index has been Niño-like just 20-25% of time during the last four years and Niña-like about 30-35% of the time, which was normal a generation ago and doesn't contradict this one to be a phase of heat accumulation. In fact, if it weren't for near-to-neutral values of the weekly SST during last June, July and August we'd be living a span of 15-18 months of La Niña conditions.

Based on that slow rise of El Niño index and the amount of sea ice last November 30th I don't expect a spectacular Arctic sea ice melting next warm season making its way into the headlines. Based on that, a diehard denier would expect a lot of ice to be left and claim proved the myth of warming once again. Yet evident structural climate changes persist, as this daily product of COI is showing (not that he or she notices).

I don't see what you seem to see, we had a rather spectacular melt this last spring and the temps and trends a year ago were much lower than they are currently. I seem to be seeing a rising temp trend, but not sharp enough to clearly say much beyond that. I, personally, feel that we have slipped into a milder, possibly transition state, where extreme ninas and ninos are again the outliers they more traditionally were, but this is far from my area of specialty or expertise.