Its well past time to look at the sea ice extent. I don’t have much to say, so here is a picture:
We’re currently well above the minimum – indeed, we’re pushing the maximum of the AMSR era. That’s not as meaningful as it might be, because 2012 was quite well up until only a few weeks back, so this could all change. But PIOMASS, too, is showing a slight recovery from last year instead of monotonic decline. This should all be no great surprise – we don’t expect monotonic decline.
As usual, if you actually care about seaice you’re probably better off with Neven.
wmconnolley: scienceblogs.com/stoat archive 
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2013/june
median outlook 4.1.
So 4.294 looks quite reachable this year. Whether it can stay above 4.294 by enough to compensate for 3.6 being .694 below and whatever 2014 does looks more doubtful.
No comments on a hole filled area north of Laptev & Barents or an unusually solid Beaufort? (Likely the result of long lasting low pressure? Which will have dispersed the ice and raised warm water by Ekman pumping so causing the slow decline in extent but now we get more melt from the raised warm water?)
How about subject of volume “[I still disagree about this. tantalisingly, I haven’t got time now to explain why. But I will, one day… -W]” ?
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This is the best June 16th sea ice coverage since 2004!
Which means exactly nothing. The detailed information still shows massive Arctic Sea melt and breakup that just hasn’t resulted in ice area loss – yet.
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Why look now?
[Because I can’t look at September’s ice yet -W]
This is the time of year with the least variation which seems to span decades. This appears to be the fastest period of decline during the year with little year over year variation. The 1 sigma region is narrowest here and this year appears no different. After solstice until equinox seems to be the real variation that deviates outside the norm and is interesting. Predicting sea ice based on March to June data seems a fools errand. am I missing something?
[Yup. You’ve missed the fact that I didn’t use this to predict anything -W]
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Neven’s site is for kids. It’s rank with burning desire for open Arctic waters. They’ve been oohing and aahing over the spring Arctic cyclone which actually happens most years and retards spring melt via cloud cover — poor Neven and his acolytes.
I note how flat the melt trend is so far, which I attribute to the stolid Kara Sea ice this year. With the sun going quiet (hey, has anyone noticed its magnetic poles have flipped now, so it’s passed its maximum) into a Maunder-type of minimum, we’re looking at a lotta cold coming up. You poor boys will pretty soon be the mouse that roared, then squeaked, then scurried away hoping nobody will notice them.
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“With the sun going quiet (hey, has anyone noticed its magnetic poles have flipped now, so it’s passed its maximum) into a Maunder-type of minimum, we’re looking at a lotta cold coming up.”
If that’s true, then we get lucky… what are you going to say when the solar intensity bumps back up 10 yrs from now and we have even higher CO2 levels?
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Sorry, Gator, a Maunder minimum lasts 100 years. Go out and buy some wooly covers for your bed.
[You’re predicting cooling? Not with real money, of course -W]
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“Neven’s site is for kids.”
I’m sure NZ Willy will point us to a *serious* site on sea ice. I’m ready, I just put back my tea mug.
By the way, Sea Ice Outlook is welcoming bets on sea ice area , deadline July 8th. Anyone feel free to contribute.
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Gator, I think it’s a little early for the Maunder Minimum prediction. Considering this solar cycle is similar to and often compared with Solar Cycle 14 which happened without a Maunder Minimum. I think it’s also a little soon to claim poles have “flipped”. More accurate to say the magnetic field has weakened into its most unstructured state which is when solar maximum occurs. It’s no longer even accurate to call it a dipole. It will be years before a dipole is evident again. It’s not clear to me that we would even have pole reversals during a maunder-type minimum as a strong and stable dipole is what drives the cycle minimum.
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Gosh, some of you people are silly. Sun’s polar fields flipped:
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NZ Willy displays his expected buffoonery once again: “They’ve been oohing and aahing over the spring Arctic cyclone which actually happens most years and retards spring melt via cloud cover — poor Neven and his acolytes.”
Neven’s post On Persistent Cyclones became – the day he posted it – the internet’s best resource on arctic persistent cyclones outside of peer-reviewed journals. If there’s a better summation of the scientific literature and these cyclones effect on the sea ice I haven’t seen it.
As opposed to being written for kiddies, the post cites four peer-reviewed journal papers and cites two blog posts that include references to more peer-reviewed papers.
Of course there are thousands of cyclonic events in the arctic every year – NZ Willy completely misses the point that the question has become are the strength, duration, and timing of 2012’s arctic cyclone and 2013’s arctic cyclone harbingers of change?
In this regard Neven asks 4 questions: Are they unique? Are they caused by loss of sea ice? Will they become more common? What is their effect on sea ice?
Let’s deal with the last question first – since NZ Willy provides us *his* answer — the arctic cyclone “retards spring melt via cloud cover…” This is, of course, contra what the science actually says.
If NZ Willy had actually read the article he would have seen that Neven quotes A. Kriegsmann and B. Brümmer, 2013, Cyclone impact on sea ice in the central Arctic Ocean:
“Strong summer storms on the Siberian side of the Arctic Ocean may have been important reasons for the recent ice extent minima in 2007 and 2012.” Doh!!!
In a previous post, Neven cited The impact of an intense summer cyclone on 2012 Arctic sea ice retreat Zhang J., R. Lindsay, A. Schweiger, and M. Steele (2013), GRL. This paper attributed 150 km^2 of the 2012 record minimum to the 2012 GAC. NZ Willy either doesn’t understand the science – or denies it.
Does Neven claim these cyclones are historically unique events? No, he points out they are not.
Does Neven claim these cyclones are caused by reduction in sea ice or that they will become more common? No, the answer to both questions is not yet known.
NZ Willy ought to actually read some of the papers that Neven refers to – perhaps then he’d have a better understanding of the actual physical processes that shape the arctic. Or he can maintain his usual ways and we can continue to admire how strong the D-K is in that one.
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I don’t have much time, but I’ll do Kevin O’Neill the courtesy of a quick reply. Neven’s site is for kids not because he writes down to kids but because he acts as one — cheerleading that the ice should melt away even while holding that it constitutes a great peril. Neven premised that the Spring cyclone was a unique and important event (like a kid seeing something for the first time, thinking it is unique only for that reason), then subsequently found via reasearch that they are common. The inconsistency of the site’s premise with its execution marks it as a kid’s site. Here’s another kiddy viewpoint that many of you will be familiar with — claiming that CO2 is a danger yet still opposing nuclear power. Kids.
Kevin needs to bone up on his thermodynamics, he misses the most important point about the Spring cyclone, that it is comprised of an air mass of a temperature which is below freezing. Sub-freezing winds beget ice, they do not melt it. Last year’s Autumn cyclone was above-freezing temperature, and so melted the ice. “Duh” back at you.
I do read papers, I also write them, in a real science field. Some of you should try that, it’s a great thought organizer. In a real field that is, not the snake-oil quackerism of climate science as it is currently practiced.
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” Here’s another kiddy viewpoint that many of you will be familiar with — claiming that CO2 is a danger yet still opposing nuclear power. Kids. ”
I never saw Neven express such an opinion – I would be glad if someone can redirect me to a source.
As for the comment on “real science” that we should try, although I cannot vouch for others, I thank you for your concern – fortunately it is actually quite misplaced. I may suggest although to the commenter to use other rhetorical methods * , as this one may be wrongly taken by some people.
* meant as “ways to convey one’s message through written sentences”, without any judgement whatsoever. Really.
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Yeah, I agree the forecast of a Maunder-type minimum is premature. I just like how the septics hope that the sun going quiet will make climate change go away…
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NZ Willy’s comments here are hilariously ill-concieved.
Where to begin? 1. More than a few readers of this site are actual scientists; so NZW’s pompous pronouncements about his or her own qualifications don’t particularly impress. 2. The attempt to change the subject to nuclear power just emphasizes how foolish NZW’s previous comment was. 3. Until one can point to a site anywhere on or off the Internet that has even half as much information on Arctic sea ice, one would do better to hold one’s tongue.
Neven’s site does a great job of compiling information on every aspect of Arctic sea ice, as pretty much everyone knows. So the sneering about “kiddies” just makes NZW look like a fool.
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NZ Willy telling us he’s a scientist brings to mind a comedy bit by the late George Carlin: Somewhere in the world is the world’s worst doctor. And what’s truly terrifying is that someone has an appointment with him tomorrow morning.
“Sub-freezing winds beget ice, they do not melt it.” Oh, I guess NZ Willy has never lived at high latitudes. Anyone that’s lived where winter temperatures are often below zero knows that clouds are a warming influence. But there’s no need to rely simply on the collective experience of millions of people – science agrees.
For instance in The contribution of cloud and radiation anomalies to the 2007 Arctic sea ice extent minimum , Kay et al, GRL 2008: “Except for short time periods in the summer, longwave radiation dominates the Arctic radiation budget because of the lack of sun, the large solar zenith angle, and the high surface albedo (Curry et al., 1996). As a result, decreases in Arctic cloud amounts are generally associated with decreases in downwelling radiation, and enhanced surface cooling.”
Or The Role of Longwave Radiation for the Variability of Sea Ice from last fall’s AGU conference: “We find a clear correlation between negative (positive) sea-ice extent anomalies in September and positive (negative) anomalies in net longwave radiation the preceding March-through-May. This happens before there is any anomaly in the shortwave radiation; this anomaly appears later when the sea ice area has already started to also show an anomaly. Moreover, we also show that the anomaly in longwave radiation is due to an anomaly in clouds. Simply put, more clouds give more net longwave radiation to the surface which enhances the melt.”
Both of the above have been referenced at Neven’s ASIB.
Somewhere in the world is the world’s worst scientist …. and NZ Willy is trying hard to take his title away.
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At least I know gobbledygook when I see it, cheers.
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NZ Willy makes a very simple and common mistake. For most of the year the largest source of heat in the arctic is *not* the sun – it’s the ocean. Clouds keep the ocean heat from escaping.
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NZ Willy declares:
and
Well, really? He certainly could have fooled me into thinking otherwise, based on his performance in this thread.
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Anyone seriously advocating preparation for cooling is not worth extended replies. Ice took a dive this last week.
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Well regarding sea ice, I’ce recently stumbled across a pdf by David Wasdell – for those who do not know him, he’s a psychoanaylst and aims to “analyze” work in climate science –
on arctic sea ice, in which he claims it is quite likely that the arctic will be ice free this year. He made some weird claims before, for example that the IPCC would ignore the water vapor feedback, but still I’d be delighted to know how informed people here do evaluate his ideas.
pdf is here: http://www.apollo-gaia.org/Arctic%20Dynamics.pdf
[Up to page 8 it looks sane on a light skimming; past there he starts fitting exponentials and discovers what everyone else knows, that if you fit an exponential it intersects zero quite soon. Then it gets really wacky: In mid-autumn 2012, the world-leading authority on submarine-based research was politically denounced as an “alarmist activist” on prime-time British television. Access to the critical data from the most recent submarine voyage was subsequently withdrawn from the Cambridge research team on the grounds that its use poses a threat to national security. The two Londonbased academics working on the link between submarine-based information and the satellite data have both recently died in tragic accidental circumstances. All future submarine-based data-gathering trips have been cancelled. But since I don’t believe his exponential extrapolations, there’s not much point continuing past there -W]
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I’ve re-read his “paper”, and found this on page 16 :”If it (Greenland ice) collapses quickly then we can expect anything
up to about seven metres of sea-level change16 right across the world, possibly on a decadal
basis. That would be catastrophic for civilisation many of whose urban centres would be below
sea-level in the new situation.” Suggesting a Greenland collapse within decades is, iirc, extremely far off. Sorry to have bothered you with this “expert”.
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