• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

2011 Arctic Sea Ice Thread

So is it true that scientists today are expecting the next big ice age to occur soon? It can happen within a single season? oh joy, oh r...:rolleyes:
 
CapelDodger said:
Perhaps we should have an ENSO thread for NH winter/SH summer? :)
Click to expand...
I would be a very interesting topic but owing to this phenomenon's intricate relation with "forcings" I'm afraid the thread will be soon colonized by the inhabitants of the nine circles and immediately flushed into Dante's moderated thread ("Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate").
 
aleCcowaN said:
With your permission, I'll use your paragraph in my courses.
Click to expand...

But you didn't answer my question. Scientific articles keep popping up about this. I wanted to know the likelihood as my parents keep pushng me to marry and procreate. I don't want to give birth only to have the offspring frozen in ice you see.
 
I think it's something to take seriously. As everyone knows, trolls comes from Scandinavia, and Scandinavia is cold. I'm seeing more and more trolls around of late ....
 
aleCcowaN said:
I would be a very interesting topic but owing to this phenomenon's intricate relation with "forcings" I'm afraid the thread will be soon colonized by the inhabitants of the nine circles and immediately flushed into Dante's moderated thread ("Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate").
Click to expand...

Far too easy to visualise, but if it were an ENSO-Watch plus short-term speculation, hypotheses and research on the phaenomenon, moderated in the manner of this one ...?

Jut a thought. I look in on http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/ regularly - talk is of another La Nina, which is starting to resemble a pattern. Off-topic for here, and liable to swamping in the Global Warming thread.
 
aviolet4u said:
But you didn't answer my question. Scientific articles keep popping up about this. I wanted to know the likelihood as my parents keep pushng me to marry and procreate. I don't want to give birth only to have the offspring frozen in ice you see.
Click to expand...
I you don't mind, I'd use this too.

Your concern and its motivation are beyond this thread's topic, though you may cut and paste your posts here and start a new thread in the same sub-forum if you find that one of the many threads that contains exactly what you're asking -including ruminations about procreation of the self- don't suit :).

If you're going to reply, please tell me if I can use that reply too, because your posts and my replies to them are likely to end up soon moved to the sub-forum "Abandon all hope" and closed, so I won't be able to ask.
 
CapelDodger said:
Jut a thought. I look in on http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/ regularly - talk is of another La Nina, which is starting to resemble a pattern. Off-topic for here, and liable to swamping in the Global Warming thread.
Click to expand...
I think it would be a very specialized topic, more suitable for skepticalscience.com and other internet venues. It will be well moderated there because their moderators do know the whole subject.

By the way, if what that BoM's outlook states is right, then buy soybean futures as the market will skyrocket. But the swarm of modeling products are predicting near to neutral conditions in the short term. That may mean regarding this thread's topic and its future successors that we are going to experience "just" systemic loss of sea ice in the near future -when compared with previous decades- and it'll have to wait until a combination of events -like 2007's- to see a major downsize or a seasonal demise of Northern sea ice.
 
Well, NSIDC said we already hit this year's minimum

...

Overview of conditions
On September 9, 2011 sea ice extent dropped to 4.33 million square kilometers (1.67 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest extent of the year, and may mark the point when sea ice begins its cold-season cycle of growth. However, a shift in wind patterns or late season melt could still push the ice extent lower.

...
Click to expand...
The error margin is said to be +/-0.05 m.s.k.
With IARC-JAXA giving 4.53 and IUP a debatable 4.24 the day before and an increase of 0.15 during the last 6 days, I'm pretty confident that the "warm" weather expected in the area for a few days starting next 17th won't break this year's record. [I had predicted 4.55 earlier in this thread, so I was off by 0.22]

It would be interesting to review different predictions in SEARCH outlooks, including some "heuristics" in it, an euphemistic term in some cases, such as Sean Egan's -who seems to be John Doe's doppelgänger-, who submitted this full-fledged document, or dear Anthony Watts' poll who surveyed the gang. Those predictions where off by far in excess one million square kilometres and in fact somewhat half way the real value an the usual values for the seventies -what is surprising as many strayed websurfers were compelled to compensate Watts' acolytes by voting the lowest value available-.
 
Recent changes of Arctic multiyear sea-ice coverage and the likely causes

Though it doesn't includes this year's data yet, it lists the main intervening factors regarding the topic of this thread. The introduction gives a summary of current trends and we can imagine how it'd look once this year's data are included:

Changes in the arctic ice cover over the past several decades have been remarkable. Over the period 1979-2010, Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent for September, the end of the summer melt season, is characterized by a linear rate of decline of more than 11% per decade, and the trend appears to be steeper for the last decade. For every year since 1996, the September ice extent has fallen below the 1979-1999 mean. The four lowest September ice extents, including the record minimum in 2007, have all occurred during the past four years. Winter ice extents are also declining but at a slower rate, and the 2011 winter maximum ice extent was close to the lowest in the satellite record. The observed decrease of ice extent is accompanied by thinning. Using a combination of submarine and satellite records, Kwok and Rothrock (2009) found a ~1.8m decrease in mean winter ice thickness in the central Arctic since 1980, with the steepest rate of sea-ice thickness decline, 0.10–0.20 m/yr, during the last five years.

In addition to the diminishing extent and thinning, the ice cover has become younger. At the end of the 2010 summer, only 15% of the ice remaining in the Arctic was more than two years old, compared to 50 to 60% during the 1980s. There is virtually none of the oldest (at least five years old) ice remaining in the Arctic (less than 60,000 km 2 compared to 2 million km 2 during the 1980s). Between 2005 and 2008 (Figure 1), the Arctic Ocean lost 42% of its multiyear ice (MYI = ice which survives at least one arctic summer) coverage.
Click to expand...
 
It would take something unprecedented to have a deeper minimum this year, freeze season has begun.

One thing that is significant is the amount of ice loss in the Canadian Archipelago.

In prior years, this has been multi-year ice in no danger of melting out, but significant portions did this year.

This means that similar conditions if repeated next year will melt that ice out sooner, and possibly cause warm water conditions that may effect the ice pack to farther north.
 
Mikemcc said:
More confirmation that the ice pack is increasingly formed from single-year ice, rather than thicker multi-year ice.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111006102617.htm
Click to expand...

'Compared to their measurements from 2007, when the extent of the sea ice had di-minished to a record minimum of 4.3 million square kilometres, the researchers have not yet found any differences, however. "The ice has not recovered. This summer it appears to have melted to exactly the same degree as in 2007. Yes, it is exactly as thin as in the record year," says Hendricks.'
Click to expand...

This seems at odds with a lower volume, but I assume it only applies to the Central Arctic and not to the whole. It may, for instance, exclude the Canadian Archipelago.

I hear land's cheap up there ...
 
aleCcowaN said:
According to PIOMAS, minimum sea ice volume was 4,007 km3 on September 10th (day 253).
Click to expand...

That doesn't seem like much, even picturing a one-kilometre ice-cube. Of couurse, I was raised on miles so I probably don't give kilometres due credit in mental imagery.

How does it compare to previous years?
 
CapelDodger said:
That doesn't seem like much, even picturing a one-kilometre ice-cube. Of couurse, I was raised on miles so I probably don't give kilometres due credit in mental imagery.
Click to expand...

More than 4 million square kilometres (India's area), more than three feet average thickness

CapelDodger said:
How does it compare to previous years?
Click to expand...

year|minimum ice volume (km 3 )
2001|12179
2002|10792
2003|10240
2004|9881
2005|9159
2006|8993
2007|6458
2008|7072
2009|6893
2010|4428
2011|4007

Not surprisingly, the less ice is left, the more variability is observed and the more the prophets of carelessness label circumstantial growths as changes of trend. That will be the downside of dreaming with a sheep ranch in the Isle of Baffin: in a warmer Arctic we'll have a year with a 10°C average followed by another -5°C year just to have all the sheep frozen, in a similar way millions of Bolivian fish died during recent La Niña (another example of variability cast into change of trend by the usual suspects -who, as a social problem, seem to be the only constant-). Losing Arctic ice will mean the lost of a climatic anchor, not the gain of more temperate land.
 
aleCcowaN said:
More than 4 million square kilometres (India's area), more than three feet average thickness
Click to expand...

Of course India's not what it was under the Raj, but still sizeable, I agree :)

The 2009-10 drop is bloody dramatic. I didn't register that at the time.


Losing Arctic ice will mean the lost of a climatic anchor, not the gain of more temperate land.
Click to expand...

Haven't you heard? Greenland will be the new Hamptons.

The geo-political effects of a navigable Arctic will work out over a considerable period. That should be interesting to watch.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom