It’s still not to late to bet (or revise your bet) on the 7 day sea-ice minimum. (Bet here.)
Ice melting continues to be exciting. Last week I mentioned that the Jaxa NH ice extent record was at an all time low (for Jaxa which began reporting in 2002.) The ice extent loss rate slowed, but the total extent remains neck-and-neck with 2007 as you can see below:
For those who want to view the loss rate, I created this:
Over the last week, the loss rate was quite low. How? Why? I don’t know. Just tracking the numbers, there remains a pretty good chance that we’ll see a new record low (after all we are neck and neck with the record low for this time of year). However, the likelihood seems a bit lower than last week. (I have not done any formal estimates; I really mean ‘seems’ and just based on eyeballing graphs.)
There are only a few days left to revise your bets. My youngest nephew is visiting. I may try to get him to bet. Maybe he’ll beat you all! 🙂
Update: Kenneth ask for 2007 and 2011 only:
This is why one should not jump to conclusions about very short term changes. I think a lot of people expected the briefly elevated loss rate to mean persistently high loss rates continuing on to Minimum. It looks to me like fifty-fifty whether a record will be set. Previously it looked like a sure thing.
Andrew_FL–
You are correct that one should not jump to conclusions about very short term changes. Nevertheless, as we get near the deadline for betting it can both be useful to know the current level of ice and the recent melt rate. Other factors are worth considering, but I leave it to each bettor to decide what factors to include when they are guessing or predicting. Some will just go by long term trends; some will modify that based on recent data. Some will look up weather forcasts for the arctic.
Still, looked at as a horse-race, these two graphs give some information about where the horses are and which whether one horse has been catching up or lagging. I think everyone can also see the loss rate graph is very noisy or “wiggly”.
I agree. We will see how it turns out soon enough. At the moment I think the odds are dead even for a new record or not, but much as I would have cautioned not take the earlier better odds of a new record too seriously, I would caution that one should not jump to conclusions now that the odds will stay even, either. Hm, I might actually work on developing my own forecast method. It will be too late for this minimum but I could participate next time!
I spent three days building a 15 foot tall, 6 million Km^2 Arctic umbrella out of stuff I had at home, my wife has been shouting about the missing curtains, and this is all the thanks I get.
I think you need to fly it to the edge of the arctic and shade some of the ice.
AndrewFL–
My preliminary estimate is that there is the probability of a record is 36.36187% 🙂
Ok. That’s way too many decimal places. I’ll explain my reasoning tomorrow. (I may change both my reasoning and estimate tomorrow.)
I’m expecting extent to fall off a cliff shortly. Area has been decreasing about twice as fast as extent recently. As a result, concentration is very low. A lot of that low concentration area is likely to drop below the 15% threshold before too much longer. Maybe. Weather has a large effect and a week or two of high cloud cover could make a big difference.
@Lucia,
I thought it might be interesting if you did a post on predicting ice growth in Antarctica.
Jay/Shoosh–
Feel free to start a blog and describe your own predictions of ice growth in Antarctica. Drop a link and I’ll be happy to read what you have to say.
Any chance of looking at 2011 and 2007 without the remainder of the spaghetti of the other years in these graphs?
Update: Kenneth ask for 2007 and 2011 only:
Thanks, Lucia and OMGIIWTWT, I think DeWitt’s forboding forecast might well be correct. If we lose ice to a record minimum by a significant amount it will be interesting to see how that news will play out with the advocates for immediate AGW mitigation and the public.
Kenneth–
Fast ice melting will tend to convince people action is required. That said, I think the hot July in Chicago and drought in Texas might do more because people live in Chicago and Texas.
I have not yet seen the hot weather in the Midwest and South of the US and more importantly wet weather in Midwest being used as a scare tactic to any great extent. Also interesting whether what has transpired in recent US records in temperatures and rainfall is allowed to pass as momentary weather and that Arctic ice extent/area is considered more as climate than weather and thus not given a pass as readily – not that the Arctic ice melt should be all that surprising except perhaps to some climate models and modelers.
“Fast ice melting will tend to convince people action is required.” The problem is the AGW PR Machine has already been going to this well. Another “worse than we thought” next to all the rest.
Andrew
I can’t begin to imagine what point you are trying to make.
Some “worse than we thought” claims were false. Others are true. To the extent that some observations are worse than predicted, it is reasonable to believe things might be worse than they thought. To the extent that some observations are less bad than predicted it is reasonable to believe things are less bad than they thought.
The sea ice melting does seem to be worse than expected a decade ago. It might be worse than predicted in the AR4– although I can’t say that I know. I’m not sure whether “they” made any concrete quantitative predictions of sea ice. If “they” did not actually make preditions, it’s difficult to say whether what we are seeing is better or worse than “they” predicted.
Kenneth
I’m not suggesting it is used that way. I’m suggesting that people suffering hot days are more likely to believe the climate is warming. I’m not saying it’s necessarily rational for people to extrapolate based on local heat waves, but people experience what they experience and I suspect it does affect their opinions.
“I’m not saying it’s necessarily rational for people to extrapolate based on local heat waves, but people experience what they experience and I suspect it does affect their opinions.”
And particularly when they get their cooling bills. We get hit hard in the summer and particularly hard when it is as hot as present here in IL. SWMBO likes it very cool in the house. We get an advantage in the winter from keeping it cool. I think though that people might be inclined to blame (rationally or irrationally) the utility companies more for these higher costs.
Our electric utility sends, with the billing, a graph showing our energy consumption during the year compared to the average neighbor and the average of the energy efficient neighbors. We are way above the average in the summer and below the average in the winter, while the efficient neighbor is way below us and the average in the summer and not that much better than us in the winter. Our gas utility does not send out comparable graphs so I do not know where we stand by cooling it during the winter.
I have been attempting to figure out how our efficient neighbors consume so little electricity (the differences are impressive) and I think it might well be where the house is vacated for a significant part of the day with both parents working and kids (if they have them) in school. With programmed thermostats it is easy to dial up or down the temperature to uncomfortable levels when the house is vacated. Or they might be able simply to tolerate warmer temperatures with motivation of lower electric bills.
Kenneth–
I’m sure my summer electric bill is lower than my neighbor to the east. Reasons:
1) We put extra insulation in the attic the year we moved in.
2) Our roof is shaded by a locust tree and an ash tree.
3) I tolerate heat better than my neighbor and we run the AC much less frequently and keep the house at a warmer temperature. (They start AC in May. I kid you not!)
We have good shade and insulation that could be improved but I suspect the main difference would the turning the thermostat up/down in the summer.
When you say your neighbor turns the AC on in May, at our house, we would wonder why so late. Of course, we have proximity to Lake Michigan to consider in our area and we are far enough away that the lake has little effect.
To help The Moderator’s understanding: “The “worse than we thought†is a cliché… It is a satirical statement, intending to convey the oft repeated science by press release position that climate change is an escalating series of alarming press releases, each worse than the other.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/26/antarctic-ice-shelf-collapse-worse-than-we-thought/ -Andrew
Could not WTWT also apply to the modelers’ forecasts for Arctic minimum ice area/extent – as in our models/modeling are WTWT? In these ice threads has the subject of Arctic ice modeling, past and present, been discussed in any detail?
Final questions: Are there any other 2 years that have followed one another as well as 2011 and 2007 have to this date in the meltdown? I would assume that once the big 2007 melt occurred that a lot of new and thinner ice formed. Would the ice at the start of the 2011 melting season be considered “newer” than that going into the 2007 season?
Andrew_KY–
I recognize that “WTWT” is a cliche and can be said to convey … something. Nevertheless, I had no idea what specific thought you were trying to convey. If you wish to communicate notion that climate science is conveyed by press release, yada, yada, it would be more useful if you just said so.
Of course, had you actually written that, it would then have been clear that you wanted to introduce a tangent that has little to do with anything previously discussed in the post or comments. Still, at least we’d all know you meant to say something nearly irrelevant.
Kenneth
I’m not sure what you are asking.
Do you mean was a larger fraction of May 2011 year ice “new” relative to May 2007 ice? Maybe.
I could be wrong, but I think I’d expect that to be the case if the trend was for declining ice extent minima. That is: If the trend is real I would expect that– generally speaking– each year, the fraction of old multi-year ice will be smaller and smaller. This is because a smaller area will survive, but to some extent, during winter a somewhat constant amount might be added.
Of course, my notion might be totally wrong– it would be better to ask a glaciologist. But if I had to SWAG, I’d guess that during an honest to goodness secular down trend, the area of baby ice as a fraction of total ice in May would tend to increase. (And the fraction of older ice would decline.)
Lucia, you said you “couldn’t imagine” what point I was trying to make. Just trying to be as helpful as possible within comment limitations imposed on me by you, The Moderator. 😉
Andrew
Andrew_KY-
It’s true. I couldn’t guess. I often can’t guess when you have more words to use.
I should also note that you seemed to be able to explain your point within your word limit. So it seems to me that the word limit was not the reason you couldn’t make your point clearly in your first comment. I suspect you prefer to be obscure. (I have the same theory about ‘The Bunny’ and ‘Willard”. )
“I suspect you prefer to be obscure.” Lucia, and I suspect you understand my comments, and choose to respond to them by feigning uncomprehension.
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
I wasn’t feigning. I mostly choose to limit both the frequency and length of your comments and mostly regret those times when I respond with a comment.
Lucia, I was thinking in terms of 2007 providing a breakpoint – kind of in the terms of the opposite of an onset of glaciation when the snow from the past winter does not completely melt during the summer. Looking at the oscillating curves Carrick just posted on another ice thread seems to counter that on first look.
I guess I could/should look for papers in the field that deal with some of these issues and particularly that of the climate models and what the models say about Arctic melting and how much the models were wrong and the corrections needed to make them more correct.