Arctic sea ice could completely melt away by the summer of 2015

[donsutherland1]

Thanks Vergent. I'm looking for the numbers e.g., atmospheric concentration of sulfates in PPB.

[donsutherland1]

Thanks Terry. I'll look for it.

[Vergent]

Thanks Vergent. I'm looking for the numbers e.g., atmospheric concentration of sulfates in PPB.

http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/aerosol/globaer/ops_01/noramer/201208/2012082212_globaer_ops_noramer.gif

Anytime Don,

Vergent

search hint search "sulphates ppb", show tools, choose last month, then go to images. This link came up in a blog.

[Vergent]

Don,

The density of air is 1.225kg/M^3

That should get you to ppb

[tacoman25]

The decline in TSI alone can account for most of any slowdown. Perhaps some slight contribution from an increased occurrence of Ninas possibly associated with the -PDO.

There is actually a stronger historical correlation with PDO phases than with solar, so I'd weight that heavier (imo, the strongest influence of solar activity is related to atmospheric blocking). And I'm not sure why you'd use terms like "possibly associated" when the relationship between -PDO phases and -ENSO is as clear as day.

Of course, Dr. Hansen didn't realize that back when he predicted more and stronger Ninos because of AGW.

[The_Global_Warmer]

The trends really aren't that close if you are using linear regression on the data. Though he never gave me a text data link for that other graph he posted that came from NOAA...so maybe that one is closer on the two time periods than the CU dataset I used.

Yes I did, it's on that page.

http://www.americanw...80#entry1743676

I think linear regression in regards to sea level rise doesn't make sense. Sea level rise is highly dependent inside localized time frames on many factors. Trying to bundle that into trends will mask things taking place, it takes the thinking out the equation, why even ask why at that point. We can't turn a non-linear situation with a half dozen factors pressing on it into a linear data analysis.

For instance comparing Arctic sea ice extent trends from 1979-2012 vs Sea Level rise from 1993-2012 with linear regression can offer us a much better obs of the sea ice than the sea level.

The sea ice has noise but if smoothed even two days, maybe three days the noise is gone. During the melt and freeze up seasons even one day inverse to that season is very very very very unlikely. Even in Late March/April and September it's more like a switch happens, we do get mixed days but very little.

Sea Level is noisy, it's more important to establish the why and the how, that will tell us more about the future of it than any linear regression.

If we knew that OHC would march upwards at the 1993-2004 rate from 2013-2020 and glacial melt outside of Greenland continued to slowly rise and Greenland would stay round 2012 levels for that 8 years. It would tell us outside of enso variable a close proximity to where we would be.

the graph below shows a 40MM difference in Sea Level from the end point to the starting point. This is real. It's not the trend but it's real. And real has a why, where, and how? We already know the when and the what.

If that large spike was from a calving event that dropped 3000km3 into the ocean and it melted out as it worked into warmer waters we would know that ice is gone and a huge spike took place. That would mean going forward the sea level might drop down to 60MM with noise but never go back to the before level and continue to rise overall. How long before the linear regression showed that?

This reeks of the sea ice after 2007 to me. I guess now we just won't agree. While I do not think 2012 will spike to 70MM. I predict 2013 barring a big nina or volcano will reach 70MM on this data set during the peak season. I think this data set will hit 63-65MM this year. I also predict sea level rise from now till 2020 will go up a lot.

One last question if 2010-2011 dip did not happen and that period was raised up about 10MM across the board but the end point was the same would the trend go up?

I raised the sea level 20mm in less than 4 months (unrealistic) and the linear trend increased from 2.15mm per year to 2.50mm per year....which is still well below the 1992-current trend of 3.1mm per year on the same data set. The linear trend of sea level rise has slowed since 2004 on the CU data regardless of what happens the rest of this year....again, this is fact, not opinion.

[ORH_wxman]

Yes I did, it's on that page.

http://www.americanw...80#entry1743676

I think linear regression in regards to sea level rise doesn't make sense. Sea level rise is highly dependent inside localized time frames on many factors. Trying to bundle that into trends will mask things taking place, it takes the thinking out the equation, why even ask why at that point. We can't turn a non-linear situation with a half dozen factors pressing on it into a linear data analysis.

For instance comparing Arctic sea ice extent trends from 1979-2012 vs Sea Level rise from 1993-2012 with linear regression can offer us a much better obs of the sea ice than the sea level.

The sea ice has noise but if smoothed even two days, maybe three days the noise is gone. During the melt and freeze up seasons even one day inverse to that season is very very very very unlikely. Even in Late March/April and September it's more like a switch happens, we do get mixed days but very little.

Sea Level is noisy, it's more important to establish the why and the how, that will tell us more about the future of it than any linear regression.

If we knew that OHC would march upwards at the 1993-2004 rate from 2013-2020 and glacial melt outside of Greenland continued to slowly rise and Greenland would stay round 2012 levels for that 8 years. It would tell us outside of enso variable a close proximity to where we would be.

the graph below shows a 40MM difference in Sea Level from the end point to the starting point. This is real. It's not the trend but it's real. And real has a why, where, and how? We already know the when and the what.

If that large spike was from a calving event that dropped 3000km3 into the ocean and it melted out as it worked into warmer waters we would know that ice is gone and a huge spike took place. That would mean going forward the sea level might drop down to 60MM with noise but never go back to the before level and continue to rise overall. How long before the linear regression showed that?

This reeks of the sea ice after 2007 to me. I guess now we just won't agree. While I do not think 2012 will spike to 70MM. I predict 2013 barring a big nina or volcano will reach 70MM on this data set during the peak season. I think this data set will hit 63-65MM this year. I also predict sea level rise from now till 2020 will go up a lot.

One last question if 2010-2011 dip did not happen and that period was raised up about 10MM across the board but the end point was the same would the trend go up?

Using linear regression is better when the data is noisy...as long as the trend is following something close to linear, which sea level is. Using just this recent spike is useless because we are entering a local max from El nino and will begin descending again fairly soon as it always does...just like it is useless to say sea level is falling when we enter a La nina...that is normal. we want to look at a longer timeline than just a few months or a couple years.

I didn't see that other link, so thank you for that. I will run the numbers on that data set and see if 2004-present is similar to 1992-2004 unlike the CU data set where 2004-present was clearly much slower.

If you do not wish to use linear regression on this type of dataset, then I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps I should argue that global temperatures have cooled since 1998 and you would agree with that? There is going to be inherent noise when we are talking under a decade...and even noise on a decadal scale too. But since people like to discuss change on scales of less than a decade, then we try to analyze the data in the most accurate way possible.

[TerryM]

ORH

Don't understand why you would prefer linear regression to track something obviously impacted by non-linear input. Ice volume and GIS melt rates both come to mind.

I'm aware of at least one of Wipneus's graphs in which he compares linear to exponential to Sigmoid extrapolations of sea ice volume, and finds the linear to have little relation to what is being observed. Perhaps I can convince him, after the melt is over, to graph SLR for comparison.

Terry

[Vergent]

Terry',

please deal with your heath issues as a to priority. Your mind has information that has significant priority. An email of what you saw about the invalidity of my theory would be appropriate now.

Verg

Sorry, RIP is not an excuse.

[ORH_wxman]

ORH

Don't understand why you would prefer linear regression to track something obviously impacted by non-linear input. Ice volume and GIS melt rates both come to mind.

I'm aware of at least one of Wipneus's graphs in which he compares linear to exponential to Sigmoid extrapolations of sea ice volume, and finds the linear to have little relation to what is being observed. Perhaps I can convince him, after the melt is over, to graph SLR for comparison.

Terry

If seal level rise was following a logarithmic pattern, then it would make sense to use something close to that to get an accurate trend. But its not. So linear regression is easily the best way to go

Again, the noise of the data (with a whole lot of data points) usually makes linear regression the best way to calculate a trend if the data is close to linear in its movement. Its never going to be exact. As mentioned before, this is why when we calculate the global trends, we use linear regression...the data is noisy from things like ENSO on a year to year basis...that's why we don't say things like "the global temperature trend is down from early 1981 to early 2012"...that is a misleading statement even though the first few months of 1981 were warmer globally than the first couple months of 2012. We don;t calculate trends that way.

Same applies with sea level rise. Sea level is going to start dropping again after the El Nino peaks, so using just a few months of rise during the 2012 summer is not an accurate way to measure the longer term sea level rise this decade just like using the colder temperatures of this past January/February during a La Nina is not an accurate way to measure the longer term temperature trends of this decade or decades.

[Vergent]

What happened to the melt gauges?

[csnavywx]

Apologies for the delay, playing catch-up here. Aerosols are mentioned quite heavily in the literature, but the estimate range is relatively huge (between 1 W/m2 and 2 W/m2 mostly looking at the probability distribution). This is extremely important because a higher value (of which the distribution is skewed towards with a "fat" tail) inherently implies greater climate sensitivity. It's frustrating that we don't have better measurements, but we do know that the effect is quite large. The Maldives experiment showed the dimming effect was 10-20 times what was originally expected mostly due to the indirect effects of cloud microphysics (there were other factors as well).

As promised, a small pile of literature on the subject. As usual, conclusions vary on the subject:

http://www.atmos-che...1-1101-2011.pdf

http://www.nature.co...ature03671.html

http://www.deepdyve....tury-0W2tEpja5Y

http://www.deepdyve....tury-0W2tEpja5Y

http://www.pnas.org/...69-483e3acc5d3b

http://www.sciencema...44/866.abstract

For reference, a chart on world coal consumption*:

*This data needs to be reconciled with the fairly recent deployment of SO2 scrubbers by the PROC, which will obviously now reduce the impact longer-term. They essentially had to do this because of choking pollution and a complaining population.

This rate of growth is similar to that during the oil/gas growth years of the 50s to early 70s. In other words, very high, with high aerosol loading on a short enough time scale to affect temperature response.

[csnavywx]

Adding to the reference pile, with some inclusion of the Maldive experiment in this impact study:

http://www.rrcap.unep.org/issues/air/impactstudy/Part%20I.pdf

As an anecdote, impacts to flight level and ground visibility from haze was something I dealt with on a daily basis when I was stationed in the Middle East. I remember observing and having to deal with forecasting those massive haze layers coming off the Indian subcontinent and China. You'd also get a mix of dust haze to infiltrate those areas from dust storm fall-out/remnants. The result of those pollution+dust haze layers was quite spectacular whenever MODIS shots were available.

[dabize]

Neven has posted the September PIOMAS number

http://neven1.typepa...32491387970b-pi

3.263 km³

That's down 80% from 30 years ago, 70% from 10 years ago and nearly 20% from last year, the previous record low.

The difficulties of extrapolation notwithstanding, I'd say that predicting a summer melt-out within 5 years can no longer be considered "unreasonable" in any way.

[The_Global_Warmer]

Neven has posted the September PIOMAS number

http://neven1.typepa...32491387970b-pi

3.263 km³

That's down 80% from 30 years ago, 70% from 10 years ago and nearly 20% from last year, the previous record low.

The difficulties of extrapolation notwithstanding, I'd say that predicting a summer melt-out within 5 years can no longer be considered "unreasonable" in any way.

If it goes ice free by 2015.

I won't be like oh Vergent is the King to rub it in.

But I will totally think it will be funny to see the egg on face and crow eating of how the term Death Spiral has been decimated by skeptics and fake skeptics(deniers).

If I were a Skeptic I would probably start to re-evaluate my position on the ice and why what I thought is happening vs what is happening are so far apart.

If I were a fake skeptic I would sit blindly touting the dumbest stuff and be blind sided when my brain and reality clash to hard and the brain quickly adjusts and my world view is radically altered.

[TerryM]

Wipneus has his graphs of the latest PIOMAS numbers up

https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/piomas/

Another year another record - but how many years are left.

What could reasonably have been considered as unnecessarily alarmist a mere 5 years ago must now be considered plausible.

The Death Spiral lives.

Terry

[dabize]

http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q210/Sekerob/Climate/ArcticSIA-PIOMASv20Max_Min.png

Yup - the "best fit" curve is right in line with Wadhams and would vindicate Verg's OP entirely. I must say that that until very recently, that was too soon for me

Even the linear fit - which has been touted here recently as the only reasonable default fit for a function that is driven by an unknown set of variables - is now hitting zero around 2020.

To me, this means that everyone (red tagged or not) who wants to be taken seriously on this subject will have to be willing to discuss the implications of the "unknown unknowns" responsible for this record at face value..........

[skierinvermont]

The trends really aren't that close if you are using linear regression on the data. Though he never gave me a text data link for that other graph he posted that came from NOAA...so maybe that one is closer on the two time periods than the CU dataset I used.

Linear regression is not appropriate in this situation. SLR has little short-term variability so once the seasonal component is removed we may assume that any single year value represents the true value of the parameter. Thus the correct way to calculate the trend from 1994-2004 and 2004-present would be simply to use the endpoints. With temperature we use regression because it limits the effect of short term variability on the trend line calculation because more data is used to make the calculation.

[skierinvermont]

There is actually a stronger historical correlation with PDO phases than with solar, so I'd weight that heavier (imo, the strongest influence of solar activity is related to atmospheric blocking). And I'm not sure why you'd use terms like "possibly associated" when the relationship between -PDO phases and -ENSO is as clear as day.

Of course, Dr. Hansen didn't realize that back when he predicted more and stronger Ninos because of AGW.

Any correlation between temperature and the PDO is tenuous at best given we have only gone through a couple cycles on which to perform a calculation. Having gone through a dozen solar cycles in the instrumental temp record, that correlation is much stronger.

[tacoman25]

Any correlation between temperature and the PDO is tenuous at best given we have only gone through a couple cycles on which to perform a calculation. Having gone through a dozen solar cycles in the instrumental temp record, that correlation is much stronger.

Like many things with climate science, the actual hard data is comes from a pretty limited time span. But given the data we have, the correlation between the PDO cycles and global temps is considerably stronger than solar activity. Or at least the correlated effect from PDO cycles is easily stronger.

[skierinvermont]

Like many things with climate science, the actual hard data is comes from a pretty limited time span. But given the data we have, the correlation between the PDO cycles and global temps is considerably stronger than solar activity. Or at least the correlated effect from PDO cycles is easily stronger.

First of all, the difference is not that much. The correlation for solar says that solar explains up to .1 or .15C. For the PDO, it says up to .15 or .2C. That's IF the correlations are actually causative.

The statistical probability that this correlation is actual causative are much much lower for the PDO. For the PDO, from a statistical perspective, the odds are no better than 50-50. For solar, the odds are virtually certain. Most likely, only a portion of the correlation between the PDO and temperature is actually causative. The solar evidence is basically that global temperatures and the PDO were both low in the 50s and 60s. The probability that this coincidence could occur by chance are quite high. I could find 1,000s of other variables in nature that have an up down up pattern (up 30s/40s, down 50s/60s up 70s 80s 90s). Such a simple basic pattern is not hard to come by.

[blizzard1024]

It is interesting to note that the sea ice melts now in the shallow parts of the Arctic Basin and in the parts of the basin

that receive fresh water inflow from Siberia and Canada. The northern Canadian Islands stay more frozen and are basically

islands so not as much fresh water influx occurs into the Arctic Basin from here as from northwest Canada and certainly Siberia. In addition,

the arctic ocean adjacent to northern Greenland and far northern Canadian Islands is mucher deeper vs the shallower areas that are

melting each year now. I wonder if this will be a new minimum pattern for a while...that is the ice collapses to the areas roughly seen between

2007 and 2012 by each September until 1) climate models are correct and much more warming takes place to melt the ice in this deeper ocean water of which

probably won't be until later this century or 2) it cycles back again with a recovery from natural processes....cooler AMO and negative AO.

Maybe this is why the climate models take longer to melt the summer sea ice...it is not a linear process I strongly suspect. Just my 2 cents.

[TerryM]

It is interesting to note that the sea ice melts now in the shallow parts of the Arctic Basin and in the parts of the basin

that receive fresh water inflow from Siberia and Canada. The northern Canadian Islands stay more frozen and are basically

islands so not as much fresh water influx occurs into the Arctic Basin from here as from northwest Canada and certainly Siberia. In addition,

the arctic ocean adjacent to northern Greenland and far northern Canadian Islands is mucher deeper vs the shallower areas that are

melting each year now. I wonder if this will be a new minimum pattern for a while...that is the ice collapses to the areas roughly seen between

2007 and 2012 by each September until 1) climate models are correct and much more warming takes place to melt the ice in this deeper ocean water of which

probably won't be until later this century or 2) it cycles back again with a recovery from natural processes....cooler AMO and negative AO.

Maybe this is why the climate models take longer to melt the summer sea ice...it is not a linear process I strongly suspect. Just my 2 cents.

Interesting insight, who would have imagined that the "northern Canadian Islands", are "basically islands".

What else would we assume Canadian Islands (whether north south east or west) comprised.

Also the Canadian Archipelago didn't stay "more frozen" - it melted out completely this year and last. The "far northern Canadian Islands" are named Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg - they too have been experiencing unprecedented ice losses for decades, ice loses not equaled for millennia.

The waters in the Canadian Archipelago are actually quite shallow, (sill depth is one of the difficulties faced during advection), and as I just pointed out they have melted.

The Kara Sea and the Barents are not receiving much inflow from Siberia, nor from Canada, and the Beaufort Sea is far from being shallow, particularly as compared to the waters "adjacent to northern Greenland and far northern Canadian Islands".

What is shallow is your argument. Your 2 cents worth is vastly overpriced as I have difficulty recalling a prior post so bereft of factual data, or one that misunderstood and misrepresented the data so completely.

Less than a week ago, on another thread you claimed you wanted to learn. Now, without even bothering to learn the names of the geographical features present in the Arctic, you pontificate about when and how we will lose our Arctic ice cap?

If you actually want to learn about Arctic Sea Ice, go over to Neven's blog and read the comments from the last two years - If you want to blather crap that would make Goddard blush, you'll find a welcoming audience at Watt's circus.

If you want to pretend to have an education, learn how to construct a sentence.

If you want to pretend to have an educated opinion re. the Arctic, learn the basics.

When you waddle like a duck, but cackle like a pullet, you're not a duck.

Terry

[The_Global_Warmer]

It is interesting to note that the sea ice melts now in the shallow parts of the Arctic Basin and in the parts of the basin

that receive fresh water inflow from Siberia and Canada. The northern Canadian Islands stay more frozen and are basically

islands so not as much fresh water influx occurs into the Arctic Basin from here as from northwest Canada and certainly Siberia. In addition,

the arctic ocean adjacent to northern Greenland and far northern Canadian Islands is mucher deeper vs the shallower areas that are

melting each year now. I wonder if this will be a new minimum pattern for a while...that is the ice collapses to the areas roughly seen between

2007 and 2012 by each September until 1) climate models are correct and much more warming takes place to melt the ice in this deeper ocean water of which

probably won't be until later this century or 2) it cycles back again with a recovery from natural processes....cooler AMO and negative AO.

Maybe this is why the climate models take longer to melt the summer sea ice...it is not a linear process I strongly suspect. Just my 2 cents.

So is the Beaufort Sea and Western Canadian Basin and it doesn't impair the very warm sub surface layer.

I think Latitude favors that region more than deeper waters.

plus Greenland being ice covered helps.

The ice in those regions has gone from 4-7 Meters to 1-3 Meters it's melting too.

Just slower. It is possible when it gets to 0.1-1.5 meters it just won't have time to melt out but it's been a very fast drop from the 4-7 Meter days.

[TerryM]

Friv

Strange that we responded within a minute of each other. This guy is probably 13 and gets a kick out of jacking with us. I'll probably leave him alone on other threads, but ASI is such an immediate problem that I don't relish having another BB trolling this thread. At least BB would take the time to copy and paste interesting (if erroneous) stuff from time to time.

It seems as though he has his sign mixed up re AO, but why even bother.

Do you happen to know what the IPCC projections were for sea level rise? Skier brought it up on another thread and may think I'm trying to trap him or something, but the truth is that I don't know & haven't been able to find the numbers on their site. I'd imagine that this year's Greenland melt would give it a substantial boost, but that data won't be immediately available.

Terry

[The_Global_Warmer]

Friv

Strange that we responded within a minute of each other. This guy is probably 13 and gets a kick out of jacking with us. I'll probably leave him alone on other threads, but ASI is such an immediate problem that I don't relish having another BB trolling this thread. At least BB would take the time to copy and paste interesting (if erroneous) stuff from time to time.

It seems as though he has his sign mixed up re AO, but why even bother.

Do you happen to know what the IPCC projections were for sea level rise? Skier brought it up on another thread and may think I'm trying to trap him or something, but the truth is that I don't know & haven't been able to find the numbers on their site. I'd imagine that this year's Greenland melt would give it a substantial boost, but that data won't be immediately available.

Terry

Nope.

Honestly I haven't done any research on IPCC. I think it's largely irrelevant to my understanding of the climate and when I first came here, it was used as a big time scape goat in arguments.

As it turns out the Sea Ice projections were terrible the global temp rise projections were apparently terrible, I say apparent I haven't seen them to closely but I believe Skier and others.

I don't think blizzard is trying to intentionally troll anyone, he clearly has a preconceived bias to believe against what's happening. I hope he can realize he needs to be highly flexible and change as the data, perceptions, and technology changes.

I'd also suggest forgetting anyone Else's ideas "Literature" and only stick to your own thoughts based on their work and data not ever take them word for word.

If you go down in flames, go down in your own flames!

[ORH_wxman]

Nope.

Honestly I haven't done any research on IPCC. I think it's largely irrelevant to my understanding of the climate and when I first came here, it was used as a big time scape goat in arguments.

As it turns out the Sea Ice projections were terrible the global temp rise projections were apparently terrible, I say apparent I haven't seen them to closely but I believe Skier and others.

I don't think blizzard is trying to intentionally troll anyone, he clearly has a preconceived bias to believe against what's happening. I hope he can realize he needs to be highly flexible and change as the data, perceptions, and technology changes.

I'd also suggest forgetting anyone Else's ideas "Literature" and only stick to your own thoughts based on their work and data not ever take them word for word.

If you go down in flames, go down in your own flames!

So basically avoid "mainstream science" is what you are saying.

Only look at the observations that support your preconceived ideas and avoid "literature" because some of their predictions are bad. That is a great recipe for confirmation bias.

[The_Global_Warmer]

So basically avoid "mainstream science" is what you are saying.

Only look at the observations that support your preconceived ideas and avoid "literature" because some of their predictions are bad. That is a great recipe for confirmation bias.

It means you don't need anyone to tell you what to think.

Read to inform oneself about knowledge but only predict from that knowledge, never use another persons literature to make a prediction or rely on the IPCC or anyone else.

The only time literature needs reference in my opinion is to fact check things like 360GT of ice mass loss on land = 1MM of SLR, or typically a TSI drop of 1-2 w/m2 relates to a .08 to .12C change in global temps.

relying on computer models to predict pretty much anything in climate change when the system has so many non-linear feedback's will end up worse than learning how these process's work and then teaching yourself how to mesh them together and then observe as much as you can and make your own predictions or ideas on what will come next.

You know as a pro met practice makes you better. You don't peer reviewed literature to tell you how to make a 3 day forecast from the current weather charts obs and the models.

But you did go to College and study peer reviewed literature to understand what all the obs and model data represent and how the atmosphere works.

You also supplement things like reading updates when the GFS or EURO get's re-modulated so you know if a cold bias in Summer will become a neutral one after the updates.

When things change like the the warm water off the E. coast of North America, you have read likely already what that means for weather systems, but you probably won't go looking for someone to tell you how forecast now because of it, you will use that knowledge and sew it into the algorithms running in your brain and now the three day forecast is slightly altered but it's still all yours.

You may notice in your up to date research High temps under identical mid level conditions during an Easterly on shore flow are 2-3F higher than you remember for all of your life and reading back. So you adjust. If you go by the book the way you were taught to perceive 850mb to surface translation you may end up wrong and if the new way fails you go back or blend it to another better way.

If climate modelers say the ice along the Southern 1/3rd of the Canadian Basin should be hard to melt out and will last till 2040-2050. And you take it on face value from an abstract or just passing without asking more questions or looking at real time data that says 4-6M has become 1-3M in Sept. Then maybe you decide to take a closer look at the paper and one small line in section 3.4 about decade thickness says in the 2020s thickness should be 2.5-4.0 meters and you notice it's already 1-3 meter in 2012.

Now another 3, 5, 10 factors will be horribly off and other non-linear feedback's will be happening that are not supposed to at this point.

Now you sit and think if X trend from 1979-2012 continues as is, the ice is toast (2015-2018) but the CMIP3 models say 2070, and CMIP5 say 2050. Lead Scientists in the field say 2030 now, but they said 2050-2100 6 years ago.

A few scientists talking about extreme changes in bottom ice melt, snow and ice albedo and so on say maybe 2015-2020 now and on top of that these guys take boat rides, do analysis on the ice see it from below in submarines from 1970s to now or 1980s to now. Or this guy in 2006 said it was toast by 2016 and that was pre-2007 super melt.

Well damn those guys were on the money and think everyone else in mainstream science at least on this issue is wrong. Then think well the AMO could go negative by 2025 but it was also negative in the 1960-1995 timeframe and the ice still dropped the entire time, on top of that the global temps will be warmer, GHGs will be higher, ohc and ssts will be higher, snow cover keeps receding in Spring at an advanced rate, even if that flattens out it's still a big factor. And 2012 was a big record from 2011, MYI has been decimated again and is thinner than ever by volume, there is no physical way the models or the 2030 predictions seem possible, I can't come up with one idea that could in the next decade outside a big brownish cone blowing solar dimming stuff into the upper atmosphere to cool this off and stop the ice from feedbacking out of the late Summer regimen.

Wow maybe this is happening, maybe I should change my view a bit.

That is the best I can explain my thought process attm.

[ORH_wxman]

Well I agree with a lot of what you wrote Friv, no doubt about that.

I think the one thing I am really making the point on though is only using one metric such as ice in the Arctic regions to make certain assertations about AGW.

There is a current disconnect between the Arctic and most of the rest of the globe when it comes to temperatures and melting ice (comparing to our other pole). Just because climate models have under predicted the melting ice in the Arctic, it doesn't mean that AGW is far worse than we thought. They are also over predicting temperatures on a global scale.

I think its important to recognize what effects AGW has on the arctic because clearly there are major effects....however, we should also be a bit more open minded as to what exactly is causing such a big disconnect. That is why sometimes we will bring up a known oscillation like the AMO...or the PDO, or known shorter scale internal warming events in the Atlantic arctic regions that are independent of the AMO.

[dan11295]

I feel an ice free summer in 2015 is a bit of an extreme scenario, however I would not be surprised at all so see it by 2020 given the trends. What I wanted to address are the suggestionsby alarmists that once the arctic goes ice-fee at summer minimum. it only takes another 15-20 years to make the Arctic ice free all year round. Even this past year the winter max wasnt far off the historical average, even though the volume has decreased obviously. One would think even if all the ice melts in summer, once the pole goes into darkness the air and water should cool fairly quickly to allow for new ice formation, even if it is thin ice.