We’re doing a 4 day weekend here. So, a more detailed sea ice post will not arrive until a bit later. But it’s clearly time to start monitoring for the 7 day minimum. Still, it’s worth having a screen capture from Sept. 1, 2013:
Even without doing any calculations, I’d say the changes of a record low are slim to none.
21 thoughts on “September is here! Sea Ice.”
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May be a very early (record?) minimum this year and a very slim chance indeed to none for a low record. Looking forward to this years press relases and headlines:”Coldest Arctic summer in decades bring back the summer ice. All time record increase since last years low”.
By tradition I expect a drop from Christy and Spencer for August and chilly and windy last week in September for Stockholm.
With neither nature nor science helping in building momentum since the cutoff dates the mood in IPCC can’t be good.
Sigmundb
We could have an early minimum…. or… not! But yes, we’ll see!
Recovery! Global cooling is upon us! Impending new ice age!
The gain of 37,813 km^2 on August 29th, hasn’t yet been revised, so remains the highest gain before Sept. 12th since 2002 (I don’t have access to earlier figures).
The decline has since continued but the rate is falling and the 7 day is rising slowly.
I currently expect a minimum of over 5 million km^2 around the 9th, which would unfortunately make my original bet about 0.5 million km^2 too low.
I have a database of the Arctic sea ice extent going back to 1972. Jaxa uses a similar algorithm to that used by the NASA Team which goes back to 1972, so the numbers are relatively easy to match up.
http://s13.postimg.org/u77hbdy1z/Jaxa_NHSIE_1972_2013.png
http://s14.postimg.org/h4rdlayu9/Jaxa_NHSIE_Trends_1972_Sept1_2013.png
Based on the climatology, Jaxa’s minimum is coming in at 5.13M km^2 versus 3.49M in 2012 and the average of 6.09M km^2. Zoom-in chart so one can see it pretty clearly.
http://s12.postimg.org/8gs9c8r8t/Jaxa_Min_Projected_Sept1_2013.png
The Arcus sea ice outlook is based on the NSIDC estimates for the month of September average which is coming in at 5.25M km^2 versus 3.63M in 2012.
http://s22.postimg.org/7bjhsuj1d/NSIDC_Sept_Min_Proj_Aug31_2013.png
Since Arctic ice has to hit lower and lower minimums every year to validate AGW, this means that the deniers have won, right?
I made the following comment on Aug 23 on WUWT
So far that’s holding up fairly well. My rough calc shows the melting should end about the 11th if the rate of change holds. My estimate is between 5.09 and 5.19 which places it between 2010 and 2009
If you think of the the huge MYI export in 2007 as a break point in the long term trend then it looks like this year is going to be at the high of the ‘new post-2007 normal’. I don’t think that means we can draw any particular conclusions about ‘recoveries’ or accelerating long term decline trends.
It might be interesting to see what happens with MYI survival going forward.
A neglected part of the arctic sea ice story seems to be the re-freeze season (sept-mar). I looked at the numbers based on The piomas model and discovered that the volume of ice formation during the freeze season has actually been steady over most of the satellite period, although has jumped a little higher since 2007. I never quiet got around to comparing volume production to ice extent but it looks like the arctic winter is still an effective ice-making machine.
Some people on other blogs are making a big deal about the fact that this year has seen the largest recovery in arctic ice on record.
However, that is surely only because last summer saw a record low ice extent?
Such a rapid recovery in ice as this year would not have been physically possible in previous years.
Of course, just because a recovery was possible, didn’t mean it would happen, so I suppose the fact that it has recovered is good news, although those who predicted an “ice free” summer this year might not think so.
IMHO, the more significant fact is that the extent this year will probably be higher than 2011,10,08,07, although of course, the extent figure doesn’t tell the full story.
I wonder if we will hear much about this in the “mainstream media”.
Ray,
Watching the ice has elements of ‘the horserace’. As for rhetoric, we are certainly going to read arguments about what this means. All the following look like they will be true at the end of September:
1) In the sense that the area is larger, the ice area will have ‘recovered’ relative to last year (and possibly a few years before.)
2) In the sense that any longer term trend will remain negative, the ice area will not have recovered.
And of course, in terms of more rhetoric:
1) In years where the ice area hits a record low, we hear the catastropic AGW peeps go on and on and on about the importance of the record low. (And.. uhmmm. yes some people do do this.)
2) In years where the ice ‘recovers’ relative to last year, stone-cold coolers talk about ‘recovery’ as if a one year rise after a record low can clearly imply the 10 or 20 year noisy downward trend has reversed.
Both do this even though we know the weather– even for ice– is noisy. Under AGW, the trend is anticipated to go down. Models probably can’t quantify this well. But the trend has been down– and faster than in models. So, quite likely, this ‘recovery’ won’t last any longer than the post-2007 ‘recovery’ did. But… who knows?
Nobody knows what the September minimum will be 10 years from now. Given the range of predictions on the web which likely which span from 0 to ‘ice age levels’ someone’s ‘prediction’ will be correct. Some brave people have put money on their own predictions.. me… uhmm. Nope!
Ice melting would seem to me to be something that doesn’t even need a warming “trend”. If it’s enough warmer in the summer to melt ice, more of the “multi-year ice” will melt each year until it reaches a new equilibrium which might indeed have no ice in summer.
I guess it is a little surprising that a line was crossed somewhere with the small temperature rise that has happened so far (between lots of ice in the winter and no ice in the winter); it fits better with the narrative of the CAGW people that we have to worry about “tipping points” where enormous shifts will occur seemingly quite suddenly.
Ray, there is a chance that Arctic Sea Ice Extent could tie 1987 for the earliest minimum ever.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/arctic-sea-extent-gained-63000-sq-km-on-day-245-minimum-is-near/
MikeR, Antarctic has set 37 daily records for most ice in 2013 so far.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/36th-daily-record-of-year-for-antarctic-sea-ice-extent/
2012 set a record for highest maximum and 2013 has chance to break that record. Is that not a tipping point too?
(NSIDC Extent Data)
A fall in extent of 111,875 km^2 for Sept. 3rd, according to Jaxa.
This is the largest fall since July 22nd and it is surprising that the decline should be apparently speeding up again so late in the year.
If this continues, the extent will fall below 5m in a couple of days!
@MikeR
I think you make a good point. As long as there is even a slight loss of multiyear ice there would be a downward trend, so if the summer temps stays above that threshold you’re going to see that happen. Seems consistent with the temperature “hiatus” too.
@Ray
Quite possible. 2010 took a late nosedive. We need to see if this is just an anomaly. July had some wild swings in melt so this may or may not mean anything.
Re: BarryW (Sep 4 10:54),
I think that’s just JAXA catching up. MASIE and NOAA had been ahead of JAXA for several days. Now they’re about even. We’re still very near the bottom. Satellite sea ice measurements are subject to systematic and random errors that have different effects on the different algorithms used to convert pixel intensities to sea ice concentration.
Ray, NSIDC Extent has Sep 3 as a 63,000 gain and the 4th as a 74,000 loss.
It will take a lot of 10,000 losses every 2 days to move 5.26 million to under 5 million.
Re: MikeR (Sep 3 07:35),
I think you’re forgetting that new MYI is created every year from surviving two year old ice. Also, the average life of MYI was never more than about five years. The big problem has been export of MYI through the Fram Strait rather than melting in situ. Eyeballing the sea ice extent in the Greenland Sea, it looks like there has been much less export this year. If so, then we may see an increase in MYI and PIOMAS volume.
Bruce
I think if wind conditions set up right that could still happen. After all, rapid losses aren’t always through melting but with ice being blow out the Fram. I snagged the newer data and proof read more of my old code and my best prediction is for the September NSIDC average to be above 5 million. But the 7 day minimum is lower than the monthly average and so could fall below that.
Based on the average loss to minimum of 2007-2012 and a minimum date of 9/17 and averaging over the last ten days the expected minimum JAXA extent is 4.96 Mm² with a range from 5.17-4.74 Mm². The seven day average would be slightly higher than that. I was entirely too pessimistic.
Eyeballing the 30 day animation at Cryosphere Today, it looks like the export through the Fram Strait is lower than it has been the last few years. The ice extent in the Greenland Sea is lower than it was in 2011 and 2012.
Saw a comment that lots of big storm activity this summer in the Arctic halted the melt. All extreme weather is now attributable to AGW, therefore, the lack of expected melting must be proof of AGW.
On an unrelated note, fellow birders agree that raptors in general appear to be in greater numbers and the far northern ones (e.g., rough-legged hawks) are doing very well–a snowy owl appeared in downtown DC a while back. AGW seems to agree with Arctic tundra fauna.
That sort of thing used to be considered environmental good news–if the top of the food chain is thriving then the lower layers must be healthy too. However, I am sure there has to be an official AGW-related downside. I just don’t know what it is yet.
The long-term decrease in Arctic Sea Ice requires relatively little input of energy. The average volume of ice in the Arctic has diminished by 310+/-100 km^3/year over 1979-2011 (PIOMAS). The average sea ice extent is about 10,000,000 km^2 giving roughly 31 mm/yr of decreasing ice thickness. The enthalpy of fusion for ice (334 kJ/kg) times 917 kg/m3 yields 306,000 kJ/m3 or 306 kJ/m2/mm. 9,500 kJ/m2/yr or 0.3 W/m2 (+/- a factor of 2) would account for the observed decrease. This energy could come from a variety of sources (SWR, DLR, convection, export of ice by storms)